Installed dvd burner, now laptop is dead

I am so screwed :cry My son sent me his laptop (he's in Iraq)and asked if I could beef it up. It was so slow, it was driving him crazy. Also, the cd burner wasn't working anymore, and it wouldn't play dvd's. When I got it, I found it only had 256M Ram, so got 2 1G sticks & put them in. Nothing - computer would not boot. took out 1G, replaced 256M - worked fine. Replaced that 1G with the other 1G - worked fine. Kept the 1G + 256M. MUCH faster than before. Today I replaced the cd burner with a dvd burner. Went to turn the computer on - absolutely nothing. No lights come on - nothing. Seems to have no power. I'm thinking that in disassembling the laptop, I must have done a bad thing :innocent , but I don't know where to start to find my problem. Any ideas? Or do I have to buy my kid a new laptop?

 

Lets explore all avenues firstly. To disassemble Laptops look at these links and you can look at several to use "generically":

http://repair4laptop.org/notebook_hard_drive.html

http://www.irisvista.com/tech/

for memory:

http://www.computermemoryupgrade.net/installing-laptop-memory.html

But firstly lets explore the battery pack and remove and reconnect it. Remove the DVD player and replace with old CD player and then try and power on. Gotta help those that serve.....

 

Ok, so you're saying the old ram works, but not the new one. Put the old ram back in, power on, press a key that's printed on screen to enter setup/bios (also mentioned in the manual), look through each section for memory settings, change them to AUTO/SPD, shut down, swap ram out.

If that doesn't work, you need the exact specs of the new ram, put them in the bios, it will work unless your laptop doesn't support the ram/config.

 

I'm not saying nothing!!!

Lets go back and explore what worked!

Then give me some data to work with!

Grab EVEREST and give me all you've got:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4181

I want CPU, Motherboard, SPD.....then I can start to make bare bones inferences! into what is happening........no magic!

 

Thanks, B.E. I had found the guides you referred to for disassembly - they were excellent, and I used them as a guide. I haven't been able to work on it today, but tomorrow, I'll do as you suggest: remove & replace the battery & replace the old cd burner. The RAM was not an issue. It was working fine with the 1G and 256M sticks in there. If after I do this, I still have nothing (no power apparent, lights don't even come on), I'll come back here to cry. I did run Belarc Advisor before I messed it up, so maybe there is some useful info there. Will get back here after I've tried these things. Thank you SO much (and thanks for supporting our troops!) :major