Troubleshooting Laptop Issues: A Comprehensive Guide for Technicians

as a technician you'll often find that troubleshooting problems with a laptop can be challenging these are very unique

computing environments that are specifically designed to fit a particular form factor and because of

that it can be a very challenging repair if you need to get inside of that device and make a change

you might often find as you look at laptops from different manufacturers that some laptops tend to be easier to

repair than others you'll often become very knowledgeable in one particular manufacturer's laptops because that's

the one that your organization will tend to purchase the most and you'll find over time you'll become much more

comfortable with repairing those particular brand of laptops many laptop manufacturers will provide service

information so you can learn more about the process required to replace the keyboard the display or other components

within the laptop our laptops are mobile devices so it's important to have some type of power

source when you're traveling many laptops will have batteries included and usually these batteries are very modular

you can unplug and reconnect those batteries to your laptop and you don't have to take apart the laptop to gain

access to that battery some laptops will have batteries inside of the laptop case and those obviously are not designed to

be modular many of the battery technologies we use today are lithium-ion or lithium-ion

polymer these batteries are designed to be fully charged you can discharge some of the battery and charge it back up

again without worrying that you're causing a memory effect or limiting the amount of capacity that battery might

have however each time you charge that battery it diminishes the capacity just a bit so after a number of years you may

find that you have to replace the battery because it's not able to maintain the charge that it once did

because laptops have a very specific form factor you'll find that the batteries used in these laptops are very

specific to a particular make and model of laptop so if you're purchasing a new battery for a laptop make sure you're

purchasing it specifically for that particular device here's an example of a very modular battery configuration on

the back of a laptop there are two different batteries underneath this empty space and you can see they will

slide in and lock into place you can unlock the battery with the switch that's on the back pull it out and

replace it with a new battery this means if you're traveling and use up the capacity of one battery you can easily

disconnect that battery and connect a fresh one to your laptop the keyboard is probably the most used

component of a laptop it is our primary input into the operating system and fortunately it's a very easy component

to replace there's a single device that's usually connected with a ribbon cable to the main part of the laptop

this is the back of a laptop keyboard and you can see there is this single ribbon cable that's used to connect and

disconnect from the laptop motherboard you do have the option on many laptops to plug in an external keyboard to a usb

interface so if you're running into problems with the keyboard that's integrated into your laptop you may be

able to work around those problems by using an external keyboard one of the challenges we have with

laptops is as the laptop becomes smaller there's less space to have a keyboard so we're using a lot of extra function keys

and changing around the layout of the keyboard just to be able to fit it into this small place you can see on this

laptop that we don't have enough room for a numeric keypad on the right side and the inverted t that we use for arrow

keys is put underneath the shift key on the right side some larger laptops can include other

keys for example this laptop does have a numeric keypad but you'll notice a lot of the function keys for home in page up

and page down have been moved just above the numeric keypad and you can also see that the function keys also have

secondary functions associated with them so the key that you would normally use for f1 has a question mark which is

probably the help key for this particular laptop function two looks like it is a brightness or brightness

down setting and f3 is a brightness upsetting the way that we would access those secondary functions is to hold

down the function key on the keyboard and press the appropriate key on the function keypad

because these laptops are mobile we tend to sometimes have things fall within the keyboard itself or the keycaps

themselves might be damaged and we might have to replace them these keycaps though are very fragile so make sure you

check with the manufacturer's instructions and you follow exactly what they recommend when changing anything

with that keyboard you don't want to break any part of the keycap itself when you're removing it or placing it back

onto the laptop and you want to be sure that the mechanics underneath are not damaged at all this picture shows just

how delicate these tiny little plastic pieces are underneath the keycaps so you want to be very very careful when doing

any type of maintenance on that laptop keyboard all of the programs that are executing

in your operating system are executing in memory and if we ever need to increase the amount of memory in our

laptop then we'll probably want to use sodim or the small outline dual in-line memory module this form factor is very

common for laptops and other mobile devices and often there is a window or an opening at the bottom of the laptop

that allows you to easily add and remove these memory modules some laptop manufacturers have decided

not to create a modular way to change the amount of memory inside of the laptop and in those cases the memory is

not on a so dim module instead it's physically soldered to the motherboard of the laptop this means that you can't

upgrade or change the amount of memory in that laptop and if you needed to make a change to the memory you would have to

replace the entire motherboard for that laptop and that is certainly a very costly endeavor when all you might want

is additional memory in your system here's a picture of a sodim this one is in context with everything around it so

you can see this is a relatively small memory module especially when you compare it to the larger dimms that you

might find inside of a desktop computer to be able to install the so dim you place it into the memory slot on the

laptop push it down so that it locks and now you have additional memory in your laptop

our laptops also need some type of storage space so that we can retrieve or save files to that system older laptops

might have storage in the form of a magnetic disk this is the hard drives that we traditionally think about these

are spinning physical drives but they're in a form factor that's around two and a half inches this two and a half inch

form factor works well for these portable platforms especially when you consider that desktop platforms have the

larger three and a half inch size hard drives many newer laptops will instead have solid state drives or ssds instead

of spinning hard drives as the name implies a solid state drive is solid state there are no moving parts inside

of an ssd even though the ssd shown here in this picture looks identical to the form factor and connectivity you might

have for a hard drive this makes it very easy to perform an upgrade because you can unplug a hard drive and connect an

ssd to the same interface using exactly the same form factor one significant advantage of the ssd is

the greatly increased speed for reading and writing data to this device and by simply upgrading from a hard drive to an

ssd you can greatly improve the performance of almost any device there's also another interface type

available on many devices called an m.2 interface this is an m.2 interface on an ssd drive and you can see the size of

this ssd is much smaller than the larger and more traditional sata connected ssd this means we can fit a lot more storage

in a much smaller space and we don't have the cables that you would normally find on a traditional sata connected ssd

this is also a very modular form of storage you can simply plug it into a slot use a screw to connect it and you

now have additional storage inside of your system here's another view of these two storage devices together one is a

spinning hard drive with a sata connection the other is an ssd using an m.2 interface and you can see these are

very two different kinds of connections using a very different form factor inside of the laptop

if you need to replace or upgrade the storage that's inside of your laptop you may find that everything is internal to

the laptop and you have to open the entire back of the laptop to gain access to that particular storage bay or there

may be a window or an opening on the back of a laptop and you simply need to open one single window to gain access to

the entire storage area whether these are drives that are inside of the laptop or they're accessible from a cover on

the back of the laptop they're relatively easy to replace there are probably a few screws you would remove

you would disconnect it from the santa connection that's on your laptop and then slide it out of that particular bay

to add a new drive you simply plug it into the cable screw it down and now you have a new drive inside of that laptop

if you're connecting to an m.2 interface it's even easier it's a single screw that allows you to either connect or

disconnect that m.2 drive and it simply slides out of that m.2 interface very similar to the interface you would use

for installing memory on a system this laptop happens to have a cover in the back that gains access to the

storage drive you would unscrew that cover and remove it from the system and then unscrew the mount that is keeping

that drive in place inside of the laptop on this laptop you simply slide the drive back which disconnects it from the

sata connection and you can remove it from the laptop it's a similar process if the drive is

inside of the laptop without an access cover you'll just have to remove the entire back of the laptop to be able to

gain access to that drive and if you're lucky enough to have a laptop with an m.2 connection there's

probably a cover on the back that you can remove and then you can add the ssd use the single screw to tighten it down

replace the cover and now you have a new storage drive on your laptop because the performance of a system can

be improved dramatically by replacing a spinning hard drive with an ssd it's very common to perform these migrations

and move an operating system from an existing spinning hard drive to a new ssd on these laptops you can do this a

number of different ways one common way to do it is to install an operating system on the ssd and simply move over a

user's documents and any applications that they might need however this can be time consuming because it requires an

additional operating system installation and then you have to manually move over everything that user might have in their

user documents and then manually install any applications that are important for that user

another way to migrate from a hard drive to an ssd and a method that's perhaps more elegant is to create a clone or an

image of the hard drive and move that image to the new ssd this means that you don't have to install a new operating

system on the ssd and when you move this image from one system to the other you're moving everything all of the

user's data and all of the users applications to perform this migration you'll need software that can create the

image on the hard drive and move that image or copy it onto the ssd there are a number of applications that can do

this many manufacturers will include an application with the ssd that can provide this imaging function but there

are many commercial and open source options available some organizations will create one

single image file and use that image file to create multiple copies across multiple systems you can also perform a

drive to drive image where there's no intermediary image file you're simply taking everything from one system and

copying it sector by sector over to the drive that's on another system this would require that you either have two

systems running simultaneously so you can perform that drive to drive image or the system that you're using supports

having multiple drives inside of it simultaneously on many newer laptops you may find that

wireless functionality using 802.11 or bluetooth connections are built into the system board or motherboard of that

laptop older laptops may include many pci or mini pci express interfaces so that you can add additional wireless

connectivity for example you could plug in one of these cards and you might have 802.11 access that will provide you with

local area network coverage on wireless networks or this may be a bluetooth connection so that you can connect over

a personal area network to earpieces speakers and other bluetooth components this is designed to be user replaceable

so there's usually a cover that you can remove on the back of the laptop that will allow you access to the mini pci or

mini pci express interfaces this is an older laptop that has a couple of storage bays here's the memory

in the middle of the system there's some cooling here for the cpu and you can see right here on the bottom right are two

mini pci express interfaces one of these is for wireless local area network and the other is for a wireless personal

area network or bluetooth here's a better view of these there's actually three slots available on this laptop

we're using two of them one for 802.11 and the other one for bluetooth but there's a slot right in the middle

specifying for wireless wide area network which would be a cellular connection so that you can use a

third-party cellular provider to gain access to the network when you're away from 802.11 or any other type of network

these cards are very modular so it's very easy to slide one into a slot push it down and you've installed the card

for these wireless cards there are usually antenna wires connected as well so you would connect those to the

appropriate ports on that wireless card our newer operating systems may provide us with additional authentication

options which can be really useful on a laptop computer for example instead of typing a password to gain access to the

system you might want to use biometrics our operating system can look at our face it can look at our fingerprint and

be able to determine if that's really us and if we should gain access to the system there are usually two components

to this there's the software in the operating system so that it can support this method of authentication and then

you'll need some type of hardware that can provide either the view of your face or the view of your finger so that it

can determine if that's really you wanting to gain access to the laptop if you look at the options for

authentication in your account settings in windows you'll see the different options that are available we're all

very familiar with the password option for example but if you wanted to use biometrics you could use windows hello

face which will use the camera on your system to look at your face or use windows hello fingerprint which uses a

fingerprint reader since it's difficult to duplicate your face or your fingerprint these are

relatively secure ways of authenticating into your laptop and in some cases you might use multiple forms at the same

time to provide additional factors of authentication for example you may have to type a password and use your

fingerprint just to make sure that you really are the person gaining access to that laptop

this is the laptop keyboard we were looking at earlier you can see on the right side underneath the keyboard is

the small sensor that's your fingerprint sensor so to be able to authenticate to the system you simply slide your finger

across that sensor it will recognize your fingerprint and give you access to the operating system

we're also seeing nfc or near field communication being used more and more with laptops it's a technology we've

been using for quite some time on our mobile devices now we're starting to see it integrated into our laptop systems

this allows us to transfer data or perform authentication to the device without physically touching the device

if you're in a store and you paid during checkout with your phone or your watch then you were using nfc but you could

also use your phone or your watch to authenticate to the laptop this is great if you're in a hospital or a warehouse

where you might be using this laptop only occasionally and you need it to quickly authenticate each time you walk

up to the laptop by using your phone or your watch you're able to provide that authentication without having to touch

anything else on the system input any extra passwords and quickly gain access to the operating system

you