Take the 2-minute tour ×

here is the story of my day off: (you can pass to the read here section, this introductory) My audio jack was giving me some troubles, so i got annoyed and slapped the surface of the laptop. It was not a hard one, so I expected nothing will happen. However, my laptop didn't think so and gave me a white screen. It was obviously a graphics card or led screen related problem. So I connected it via HDMI to my TV and saw that it was working properly. My bet was the connector of screen must be pulled out somehow. By the way, my laptop is still in warranty period but it would take more than 10 days for them to fix my computer and I cannot accept that since I work on my computer to earn my life and they wouldn't me a spare for the repairing period. So, I disassembled it.

Read here:

While disassembling my laptop, I damaged a power cable (I suppose, it was red&black) cable which connects to the mainboard and to led screen or upper part the bottom surface (indicator leds, power button, volume buttons, wireless button, bluetooth button, backup buttons), it didn't wore off totally but if it would fail, I wouldn't be surprised. And, I reassembled the laptop, put it back on and I had a SMART failure: "Harddisk failure is imminent." I am backing my data up right now and probably going to but a new hard drive.

BUT, I am pretty sure I did not damaged or made something wrong except the cable thing. So I cannot be sure if I buy a new one and it wouldn't fail too.

The disk has a very slow performance right now, esp. for the access times.

What can I do to find the defect? And is my warranty void now? because I did not remove any "warranty void if seal is removed" seals, because there wasn't one.

share|improve this question
add comment

1 Answer

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Poor input electricity in and of itself can cause a drive to behave slower than it should (and a slow-spinning drive will generate SMART errors). So, if that cable was important, it may well be the cause. I would test the drive in another machine if at all possible.

I'm not sure of the exact terms of the Acer warranty, but I'm not aware of any base level warranty from any company anywhere in the world (except where required by law) that will allow warranty replacement of something YOU damaged. For example, on most laptops taking your keyboard off to clean it or replace it yourself is allowable under warranty, but that doesn't mean they'll send you a new one if you rip the connector off in the process.

share|improve this answer
So I'm gonna need a service manual in the case to see what was that cable is supposed to do, But I also believe that on laptops, both sata and power cables come through the the board, not with external cables. And on warranty, I know I damaged it but there is also a chance that they do not notice that I did and fix it under warranty, also if the cable is the one causing problems, I can replace it myself if I find a spare. –  Umur Kontacı Sep 27 '11 at 14:36
@fastreload - You're right about the SATA + power coming through the motherboard, but here's the key - weird power fluctuations anywhere on a motherboard can, in theory, have effects on other components down the line. Now, being unfamiliar with this machine, I won't speculate on the LIKELIHOOD of this, but it is certainly POSSIBLE. –  Shinrai Sep 27 '11 at 14:47
point taken. i'll see what i can do and post updates on it. thank you. –  Umur Kontacı Sep 27 '11 at 14:48
Ok. I've disconnected that slot which turned out to be the internal microphone (which is not the most important element). And checked all the connectors. My disk performance returned, I can say that from my benchmarks. However, SMART error still shows up. Is there a chance that my hard disk has damaged or do I need to remove SMART error myself or something? –  Umur Kontacı Sep 27 '11 at 17:55
@fastreload - I would download something that'll show you the SMART data (I think Speccy does this) and see what the exact flags on the drive look like. The error may be something significant or it may be something trivial. (Laptop hard drives are cheap enough that honestly you might just replace it as a precaution, but I'm not convinced it's necessary.) –  Shinrai Sep 27 '11 at 18:09
show 3 more comments

Your Answer


