Fixing an Acer Aspire 5517 with No Video (In Vancouver)

I was interested on this Acer Apire 5517 laptop because it was posted for TLC. I emailed the owner who provided additional details below:

...the only part(s) that *may be needed is a new usb port ...I think that's what this is called, but other than that its all intact with original box/manuals charge cord etc..

I picked it up on 25Jul2013 after work. The owner showed me the laptop which was running on an external monitor at the top. When I returned home. I checked it out. It powered up but no video on the LCD screen. I used flash light to check the LCD screen which had video image on it. The backlight had gone.

I ordered backlight for 15.4 inch LCD screen. When it arrived, I found that the wires were soldered in parallel with the backlight. Together with the wires, the backlight was too long to fit into the screen. I swapped the wires from the original backlight over which soldered them perpendicularly to the backlight as in the original backlight. However, the length was still longer by 2 mm. I messaged the seller who asked for photos. After seeing the photos, the seller replied that he would send the right one. I received one extra backlight with wires. I swapped the original wires to the backlight becase the original wire has rubber covers for better protection. This time, the backlight has the right length.

Removing the backlight was easy. Putting it back was a bit of challenging. I could not put it right on top back. After a few trials, I found the way to slide it back from the side. Even I did it in a clean area, when I powered on the laptop, I found two small particles beneath the screen. I disassembled the screen and used adhesive taped to remove the particles.

The laptop has recovery partition inside the hard drive. I ran the eRecovery and restored it to the factory image. I started up the laptop and tested it. Both USB ports on the left were not working. I disassembled the laptop and found that both USB ports were broken. I ordered two USB ports and replaced them.

When I tested the laptop more, it had a warning message that the hard drive was dying. I ran S.M.A.R.T test. The hard drive had critical problem. However, it still allowed me to create the recovery discs from it. I replaced the hard drive by a 160GB Hitachi hard drive. I ran the recovery discs. All 3 discs were loaded but Windows did not start. I went into BIOS, changed the disk mode to IDE and tried again. This time, Windows 7 was started up successfully.

I tested the battery. When it was charged 100%, it showed 1 hr 05 min. In actual testing, it was cross to an hour. On 2Nov2013, it was picked up by a young lady as a gift for her friend.