A couple weeks ago my dad dropped his Inspiron and the screen cracked. Luckily my sister had an identical model Inspiron that was no longer being used (mangled keyboard amongst other things--don't ask!).
I ended up taking my dad's keyboard+hdd+ram from his laptop and replacing them on my sister's laptop. With some help from a friend who had opened up his dell before, it wasn't too bad at all (and did not involve a huge amount of disassembly).
I don't know what model inspiron this is, so I don't know similar this will be, but anyway:
Above the keyboard -- where the power button, power+wifi+hdd activity lights, etc are--there is a piece of plastic that runs the width of the laptop. It sounds like this is maybe the cover assembly piece you're talking about? I unfortunately threw the old one out just a week or two ago, but that piece is easy to get off. It took a little bit of forcing--on this model, it hooks into the left side of the laptop, and if you look at where the plastic piece ends on the right side of the laptop, there is a small notch that you can use to pry the plastic piece up. That's it!
Assuming you can get a replacement, it should be easy to do. Having said that, On this partially diassembled (and screen cracked) Inspiron, the screen is relatively stable still--it does have a LITTLE give in it (wiggles maybe 1/2 an inch?). The good news is, once you get that piece off, you can take the keyboard off as well, and can fully take off the screen if you want--shouldn't be more complicated than that.
Scott On Oct 13, 2009, at 12:15 PM, GPL wrote:
I've done the research and discovered the "Control Power Button Cover Assembly" is the part that is broken on my Inspiron 600m old laptop. Anyone ever take one of these apart and put them together? I've worked on many a PC tower but nothing really on laptops. Its broken on the left hinge where there are two screws now exposed and broken plastic. All still works but the LCD is not very stable and looks lousy. Am I supposed to completely open the laptop to get at this area or is there an easier path to replacing this cover assembly? Pictures available upon request.
