Hi all,

I think this is one for the active I.T community on here, but I'll take any help given on this please.

My son's best friend has an Advent 4214 netbook, which following some quick investigation, it is very apparent that the hard drive is no longer of this world.

What I need, if anyone can help is a link to a repair maual for said article, or failing that, an idea of how the keyboard comes out, as there does not seem to be much slack on the ribbon cable peering into the casing now that I have removed the securing screws.

I could imagine how to get the cable out, but it looks a right **** to get it back in without the keyboard out of the way to be able to see what you are doing.

Any help or links would be much appreciated, and feel free to pm me if any info does not belong on a public forum.

Many thanks

Phil

http://www.fixya.com...ual_advent_4214

first comment

HTH

Thanks for that, I had come across that earlier today while having a google . The thing is, the keyboard appears to be retained to the upper outer casing with what appear to be plastic studs that have been heat melted over at the factory. even if I did move the touchpad, it would not help in connecting the keyboard ribbon, as I would have to disconnect it again to refit the touchpad if you see what I mean?. It is the keypad that needs to come out of the upper casing, to allow you to see the ribbon cable connector to slide the ribbon into, but for the life of me I can see no way to achieve this

You quite often have to take pretty much every screw out of a netbook to get them apart, plus there are lots of clip together fittings that are easy to break.

I've had a couple apart and they were a nightmare.

It would be highly unusual for the keyboard to be permanently fixed in -it might just look that way. I have a Packard Bell netbook and the keyboard is held in by little plastic lugs, I suspect your machine will be similar -use a credit card or guitar plectrum to push these back out of the way and the keyboard should pop out.

Further to that I've been looking for replacement keyboards for you on eBay and found a good picture:

It looks as though the clips you need to push back will be along the side closest to the screen and possibly down the sides -the front edge nearest the track pad hooks under

This is the predecessor to your model but yours may be the same:

http://youtu.be/p_3ha68r31A

I've done a few where the top part of the keyboard needs a small flat head to lever it over the plastic tags so in effect -------/ does that make sense lol

It's just enough to slip it under the plastic lugs then flip it towards you and out, oh yeah some boards have a screww holding them in form the back of the unit too !!

once you have replaced the hard disk you do have the resources to reinstall windows correct? it wont just be a drag and drop job. You will need a new install disk.

Kinda weird that you need to remove the keyboard, all the laptops I've used and my brothers netbook the hard disk is accessible via the bottom or one side not from under the keyboard. Might just be that my brothers is different to some others, not checked my sisters one and I must say I cant see an obvious way on the bottom of my stepdads netbook.

I got an acer NB with the hdd under the keyboard. Pita

Mine has the screws that hold the bottom cover on underneath the keyboard. Netbooks are not as easy to mess about with as a normal laptop

Thanks everybody for your help, with all this extra info it now makes sense. 6677, thanks for the prompt, but I have the original harddisk backed up on a recovery memory stick via the recovery software, (am I lucky or what that we did that just before crimbo), so that is not an issue. I bit the bullet last night and disconnected the keyboard ribbon and lifted off the top casing to get to the hard drive. Hard drive has completely lost its format across the drive and cannot be recognised by any of my drive testing software, so I think we will call that fubar.

Once again thank you very much to everyone for your help

Phil.

It would be highly unusual for the keyboard to be permanently fixed in -it might just look that way. I have a Packard Bell netbook and the keyboard is held in by little plastic lugs, I suspect your machine will be similar -use a credit card or guitar plectrum to push these back out of the way and the keyboard should pop out.

You are a genius, credit card worked a treat job is simple now, brilliant tip - thank you very much.