I declare success!

This was probably the most complicated bit of computer repair that I've attempted. My replacement laptop was delivered yesterday. It fired up and worked fine. So, obviously, the thing to do was reduce it to it's component parts and put it back together again.

I believe I said before that in order to get it to work in the office it needs to have the same MAC Address/Ethernet ID as my old laptop. Otherwise the network port shuts down. All I needed to move was the Ethernet Card, but that's built into the motherboard so the whole motherboard had to go.

That involved finding all 20 screws holding the bottom on and wiggling the case off, removing 3 more screws and a cable to get the DVD drive out, disconnecting another 10 teeny cables, pulling another dozen screws from the motherboard, shimmying that out, figuring out what saint needed praying to in order to get the new one in place, making sure the cables that go on top are on top and those that go on bottom are on bottom, figuring out which of those tiny ports that are almost indistinguishable from chips they all go to, making sure all the motherboard screws are back and in the right places, case back on, hunt down and get all those back in the right places, reseat the RAM, the DVD drive went back in long ago, batteries in, turn it on, turn it off, reseat the RAM again so things don't beep at me, close it up, and fire it up once more.

All in all much fewer scraped knuckles than with a big computer, but a lot more teeny fiddly bits than a big computer, too. Everything has to fit just so.

Now I have to make sure that it still works in the office.

Today: I hooked it up at work and it hopped right online. I'm posting this from my laptop in my office.

Now I need to put my fully populated hard drive in here.