Sager 5760 COMPLETE disassembly

you can. . . but why would you want to just remove the case?

pretty sure on that model you you have to take the lcd off to bull the case apart.

Spartan:
I read your post in the tech support section and am having the EXACT same trouble as you are, and am also having the same trouble taking the notebook apart. Were there any screws underneath the keyboard that need to be unscrewed? Also, did you have any luck taking the LCD apart and did that let you open up the case? If you're successful could you post a picture or something?

- Chad

I finished taking apart my laptop after finding that there were in fact screws underneath the keyboard. I also found the culprit - the DC power adapter. When I pealed back the electrical tape covering the board underneath the DC adapter it was very clearly burned. What I'm wondering now is if this burn damage to the board is likely irreparable making it so that I must replace the entire board or if perhaps I can strap in a new power adapter and be on my way.

I've uploaded a photo of the damage here: http://s192.photobucket.com/albums/z301/Chase90007/

Thoughts? Is there a chance it's reparable? It looks pretty bad to me though, but judging from the thickness of the traces on the board it seems possible that they are still intact and might work.

Spartan: I bet yours looks pretty similar? Please let me know if you have any luck replacing yours and ordering the new part. I'm not too sure where to look for this replacement part...

Edit: I just unsoldered the DC Input and did some checking and it turns out my power and ground lines are shorted together somewhere and there's no telling where. I considered hooking up the DC input to the battery input, which is not a good idea to start with and and even worse idea judging from the size of the battery's traces, which clearly would not be able to handle the current. Anyway, hope your problem is more fixable than mine.

I also spoke w/ tech support and they said they could send me the DC Input for $15 + shipping, which while definitely over-priced is convenient.

- Chad

The only thing that comes to mind that might still be keeping your laptop together are perhaps the screw holes at the sides of the serial port and some other port. I'm talking about the things screw into when you plug in the adapter to keep it in place. I took those out too, although I was not sure if they were actually doing anything to keep the laptop together.

Other than that, the only thing I can think of is perhaps you haven't disconnected all of the wires connecting the top of the laptop to the bottom.

With burns that severe. . . i would question whether something else is toast as well. If its cheap to fix the jack i would. If not then i would try and send it to a clevo service center to see if they can check everything out.

Spartan, that's exactly how my motherboard looked after having the same problem as your computer. I was able to scrape off a lot of the burn marks and the board seemed fine underneath. I also unsoldered the power adapter from the board to see if it was the cause of the short and it was not.

My computer is currently being repaired by Sager who said they may actually try to repair my motherboard, which is surprising as an electrical engineer I have no idea how one would determine where the short is on such a complicated circuit board unless there was a component on the board which typically broke in this manner. When they repair my computer, if they tell me what is broken on the board I'll let you know since I'd say there's a good chance that part is also broken on yours.