The idiots at best buy who worked on my computer, last seemed screwed the screws into my motherboard on my laptop with an impact wrench, as of now I have 3 of the 4 out, and the last one is so tight, the screw is starting to strip, and as it appears I cannot get it out. Anyone have any tips for me? Oh I suppose I should mention I trying to replace my hard drive and the screw holding that in is the one giving me trouble. It's a Sony Vaio, about 3 years old. Here's the screw, I have now seemed to have stripped it, go me.
apply LOTS of pressure and have the correct sized tip. if it's gone, an extractor will be needed, just make sure you vaccume up all the bits of metal...
Laptops are just a pain to work on, that's why mine are either cheap enough I can toss it if I couldn't fix it or it has a warranty on it, say through Dell or something, so that someone else can either fix it or replace it. Last time I went into a laptop to fix something I ran into something very similar to this except it was a clip that was apparently made only to snap in and never come out without breaking it. Ended up just leaving the modem card it was holding in. And wow, I thought I liked the Sony Vaios for their size and features but that hard drive is a pain to get at. My old Thinkpad has a tray for it that you just remove one screw and slide out the hard drive and replace it. What's wrong with the hard drive? If it's OK and you're just upgrading to larger let me know if you want to get rid of it. I've got no less than 3 FireWire powered enclosures for 2.5" drives.
If the screw head it sticking up at all (not flush with the surrounding surface), you might be able to take a small, sharp pair of diagonal cutters and grip the screw well enough to turn it. I've done this before when I didn't have the right tip and didn't care about ruining the screw.
just like working on a car. drill and tap (after the head becomes a circle) i would not recommend using wd40 in this case.
Awesome, pretty much what I thought I was going to have to do, I went to sears today, and bought some easyouts and $40 later, I'm done, in fact I just pulled it out seconds ago. So hopefully thats the only problem I run into. Thanks again, Nick
