[momofgeek]

Okay, so I am the mom of a junior geek and I thought it might be the smartest to ask you guys. My son keeps taking my old computers apart trying to figure out how this all works and trying to fix them again. I am of no help whatsoever, but... I just gave him my old, pink Dell Laptop (latitude D610 if that's of any help) who doesn't start up at all anymore. I press enter in the beginning and it pretends to start and then goes back to the same black screen with the question if I would like to start up in a safe mode again. The screen works though. Before that he bought my Compaq netbook and unfortunately I cracked the screen the other day when sliding it across the floor. So now he had the idea to hook them up together. But we have no idea what we would put together and how. Or would it make more sense to take them apart entirely? He is just having fun with this and I do not have the money to spend, so I want to avoid buying cables to put them together and it would not work in the first place. Anybody know what the options are? What would you do, 13 years old and wanting to have your own computer, if this would be your basis, and you would have time available, but very limited funds?

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Hi momofgeek,

Laptops/Notebooks and similar are quite hard to work on, even for experiences Geeks sometimes requiring specialist tools to take things apart. They often contain custom parts specific to that manufacturer. Hard drives would be the easiest to swap but the chances of cobbling together bits to make a working unit are zero.
Unless you are trained to do so, you must never work on anything plugged into an electrical source, even an innocent looking Laptop's power supply unit has the potential to kill you if you go poking around inside it, and then there is static discharge, > http://hallicino.hub...lectricity-Zaps

The best way for your budding Geek to learn, is reading first, just fiddling around will lead nowhere and could cost you a fortune.
To get the Laptop going, you can try a restore to factory setting, > http://www.ehow.com/...y-settings.html
Or,
> http://www.ehow.com/...y-settings.html
Info for yhour Laptop.
> http://support.euro....10/en/index.htm

[iammykyl]

Hi momofgeek,

Laptops/Notebooks and similar are quite hard to work on, even for experiences Geeks sometimes requiring specialist tools to take things apart. They often contain custom parts specific to that manufacturer. Hard drives would be the easiest to swap but the chances of cobbling together bits to make a working unit are zero.
Unless you are trained to do so, you must never work on anything plugged into an electrical source, even an innocent looking Laptop's power supply unit has the potential to kill you if you go poking around inside it, and then there is static discharge, > http://hallicino.hub...lectricity-Zaps

The best way for your budding Geek to learn, is reading first, just fiddling around will lead nowhere and could cost you a fortune.
To get the Laptop going, you can try a restore to factory setting, > http://www.ehow.com/...y-settings.html
Or,
> http://www.ehow.com/...y-settings.html
Info for yhour Laptop.
> http://support.euro....10/en/index.htm