ITLog #2 Preparing to Fix my Father's Laptop

July 10, 2020

My family has had an ASUS K435 since 2011. It's what I used to play Skyrim and waste my college days away. I have a lot of good memories associated with that laptop, but stopped using it when I started working and eventually left my parents' house.

Over time it became beat up and overly used, the screen got broken, there's probably an inordinate amount of viruses inside, the fan stopped working and the laptop keyboard isn't responsive.

However, my dad needs laptop for work, especially in this new times we live in. I initially planned to fix the Acer Aspire Timeline 1810tz a friend gave so I can give it to my father but since that didn't turn out so well, I had to go back to the drawing board. Luckily, my GF has a really, really old Toshiba Satellite L640 that's about the same size as the ASUS my family has. I thought to myself, maybe their monitors can be swapped- welp it turns out their monitors share the same specifications. Of course my research might be wrong and it might not work (though I've seen YouTubers use 11inch monitors for a 17inch laptop), but it's worth a shot. I originally wanted to make an HDMI monitor out of this screen but anything I can do to make my father's life easier.

This better work, I've had enough disappointments

We're going to my parents' house tomorrow so I can try to fix my father's laptop, and maybe talk to a cousin of mine because he wants me to try fixing his laptop and give me their old gaming desktop. I might or might not actually fix all those things but I haven't seen my family since February so being with them should be good regardless.

Here's my plan for my father's laptop:

1. Change the screens. Hopefully it works, they share same specs, according to a website I found.

Removed the screen. Really hope it works.

Even put it in this nifty box for a drawing tablet

2. Clean the keyboard. I really think a USB keyboard would be a better way to go but it's still worth trying.

3. Apply fresh thermal glue and see if I can do anything about the fan not working. For all we know, I might just need to clean the fan. Also this means the thermal glue I bought isn't going to waste.

Cash is hard to come by nowadays, so even 90php is valuable

and I also might put Linux on all their computers because they all share the same problems- Windows borking their laptop after an update. Anyway, here's to hoping I find success in the next few days.