STONE NT310-H laptop - broken hinge repair

Bit of an odd one this. Tonight I have been fixing a broken screen hinge on a laptop. Two things were odd.

First was that this was a "Stone" brand laptop. I've never of them before but the laptop seems like a nice one. The laptop is nice and thin and comes with a chiclet type keyboard. The specs on this model weren't massive but once I'd finished the repair, the laptop started up quickly, ran quietly, and seemed to function fine.

Second, it didn't appear that the hinge had actually broken. Rather, a bunch of screws from the casing had dropped out at some point. The resultant slack had resulted in the complete hinge popping out:

And here is the popped-out hinge. It looks as though the only thing stopping the whole thing popping apart is some wiring that passes from the main board into the screen surround:

So, now it was time to take it apart. I couldn't find anything on the net about this so I just unscrewed the (few) screws that were left  in the lower casing. I also removed the two access panels and removed the memory and HDD. I also had to remove the wireless card to access the flexi connector for the keyboard. There were two other flexi connectors which also needed disconnecting. All three passed through slots in the main board. I made a mental note of their configuration:

The next picture is of the "broken" hinge. The hinge is still attached to a plate that ought to be screwed to the inside of the lower case. This plate had become detached from the case. The brass "sockets" for the screws had pulled clear of their plastic housings in the case:

So with the aid of a pair of pliers I removed the brass sockets and super-glued them back into the case:

During dis-assembly I also noted that one of the mouse pads mounted on the underneath of the top panel had become detached. This seemed to be a failure of a plastic weld. I super-glued it back in place. No idea how long that part of the repair will last...

I left things to harden and then began the re-assembly. This was a bit tricky because I was about six screws short. Moreover, it was evident that several of the screws were into plastic rather metal thread. The screws wouldn't really tighten. I therefore dabbed a bit of super glue on each one. As far as the top corners go, I found that the screws holding my Dell Mini 10 together were a perfect match. I borrowed a couple which I put through the case and into the hinges. End result: a fixed laptop :)

More soon, no doubt...

D