PCA Forums

Does anyone know of a good place to get a power jack replaced in a Dell laptop ? I don't want to put too much money in it as it is an older laptop, but I really can't afford a new laptop right now.

I did this last month. I got the power jack from ebay.

Have you opened it up and verified it's a bad jack and not a cracked motherboard? 50/50 chance of it being either one. Cracked mobo is a lost cause.

Did it to the wife's lappy lastweekend... Spent 10 bucks on it and 4 bucks on parts and now she has a P4 3ghz widescreen HP from hell on the cheap.

I already have the new jack , bought it off eBay months ago, just been afraid to tackle the job. Is there any soldering involved?

Yes, there is some soldering and de-soldering involved.

Dell has excellent service manuals on their website with step-by-step instructions. Go to their support/download section, enter the service tag when prompted and you should be able to download all the service manuals. The one you need is for motherboard replacement - changing the jack involves removing the mobo and that's almost a complete disassembly.

This will take some TIME. You aren't going to knock it off in an hour. It may take an evening to take it apart and another evening to put it back together. Dissassembly will require a clean working area, preferably with a dark towel thrown over it so you can spot all the small parts that fall out easily. Use small containers to store all the little screws.

You will need to unsolder the remains of the connectors on the old jack - a de-soldering tool like a solder sucker from Radio Shack is mandatory. You want to use a LOW POWER soldering iron, not a soldering gun, and electrical solder.

Laptops are pretty tight and complicated inside, so this is not for the squeemish.

You might want to ask around the Mom & Pop computer stores to see if anyone does that sort of work. The local Mom & Pop here has a young kid with steady hands and the patience of a saint. They usually do a jack replacement for $100.

Thanks for the tips. I might be better off junking it on ebay. I noticed there were some of the same models with bad mobo etc going for $80 and up . Maybe an ebay "parts only , as is" sale is in order mackme

Check PM

Do not be afraid ... You will have to un-solder the old one off the board and solder the new one on. However I just took the computer apart and took the board into a local electronics store and paid $10 for them to solder the new one on.

Worked like a charm. I dont know how to solder properly.

Like FP said, it is not for the faint of heart, but is very doable & like RubberDuckie said, you can get someone else to solder it. If you remove the motherboard for them, it's really hardly even a minutes work.

Soldering isn't that hard allthough a MB is not the place to start practicing. I couldn't find a replacment jack to fit ours so I simply removed the old one and soldered in a pig tail that takes various size male power jacks and conveted the power pack over to a female jack by doing this it allowed me to use the solder points allready in place on the MB for the wires of the pig tail.

soldering really isn't hard but takes lots of practice. If you send mr the parts I'd do it for you

CaterpillarAssassin wrote:soldering really isn't hard but takes lots of practice. If you send mr the parts I'd do it for you

Thanks for the offer. eGo has it right now , but he does have alot going on. If he can't get to it, I'll take you up on that offer.

YHPM Nitro

ok glad you are getting it fixed.