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How to fix ribbon cable attachment to touchpad

How to fix ribbon cable attachment to touchpad

I opened my laptop to clean dust out and while prying the keyboard open two of the three ribbon cables came undone on their own. I've fixed one (the skinny one on the right when you're facing the screen) but the one leading to the touchpad (skinny white one on the left) possibly broke? The end connected to the motherboard with a snap in latch is still attached, it's the other end that attaches to the touchpad may be broken (there's no way to snap it in - did I break that?) The cable itself seems intact and the end of the cable has the silver metal lines that make the connection.

Asked by: Guest | Views: 357
Total answers/comments: 2
Guest [Entry]

"The ribbon cable has exposed metal connectors on one side, and on the flip side of the ribbon cable the metal connectors are not exposed. Here's what you might try: Put some small pieces of scotch tape on the non-exposed side. Make sure that the pieces of scotch tape are just wide enough to fit on the non-exposed side of the ribbon cable without any tape extending past the edge of the cable. Putting the pieces of tape on the cable will make the cable thicker, causing the cable to fit more snugly into the socket. Keep adding pieces of tape and plugging the cable into the socket until it is thick enough to stay snugly and securely in the socket. In fact, make it as thick as possible and still fit into the socket. Hopefully it will stay in the socket securely if you make it thick enough.

Good luck."
Guest [Entry]

"Sorry about this late answer….

But this just happened to me last night with my laptop, I had to open it up to get at the battery, go figure, a hard wired battery, yeah no kidding hey, so the battery was dead and it no longer powered up and everything I was reading said to remove it, so I got in and took it out, meanwhile the keyboard's ribbon had become dislodged.

Where it plugged in also has a little flip top locking bar, so slide it in, lock the bar down without moving the ribbon then you can even test it without putting it all back together, power it on, if the keys all work, then great, if not then just reseat the cable and try again, you'll get it, have a two inch by two square of packing tape close by, or whatever you have on hand, after seating the ribbon then you flip the locking bar down and immediately stick the whole area down with the tape,so the bar doesn't flip back in up or the tape pops out, there's nothing in that area that produces any heat so the tape won't hurt anything.

Be careful though because there's another ribbon there sometimes, depending on how yours is put together, it's about a ½ inch wide & fits into a similar type of locking connector as the other one, just smaller.

With my system, BOTH ribbons popped out upon opening the laptop case, the smaller one works the same way, with a little wee tiny flip bar on top.

Put tape over that one too afterwards of you like, again, no heat issues by using tape in that area. Actually, I'd suggest using a little tab of black electrical tape rather than the “scotch” type or the “packing"" type that goes in those dispensing guns for taping boxes.

While you're in there, everywhere you already see tape holding down a connector, just reapply a new piece over top of the existing peice, over time all these stuckdown prices come loose from heat and age, wouldn't hurt to secure them all.

Give everything a good huff and puff, get the dust out, you'll see a fan blade, an old tooth brush lightly down inside then flick up and out of the blade and again, huff and puff the residual dust out of the machine.

Or just blow it all out of everywhere with an air canister.

I know this post is years late but people are still reading it I'm sure, hopefully it helps someone, it would have helped me last night. However, I did get the ribbons seated and the original issue fixed, by removing the dead battery pack from inside, now it runs fine, it just isn't mobile anymore, it'll work so long as there's a plug close by, fine by me! I never really took it anywhere anyways.

Best regards to you all, may your issue be swiftly rectified!

Daniel.

penticton@post.com"