In the same vein as in my driver guide, I’ve started finding laptop service manuals and hosting them on my site. These are the professional, official documents published by the various laptop makers, either for their own technicians or for the use of the general public.
They generally detail the exact list of parts in each model of laptop – often down to individual screws, if you happen to have lost some and need to know the exact size for a replacement – and describe the procedure for disassembling and reassembling the entire machine, including panels, RAM, wireless cards, keyboards and touchpads and LCD screens, all the way down to the motherboard itself.
They’re difficult to find – you have to know where to look in their support site, or come up with the right Google search string, or beg and steal from someone you know in the industry. There are blogs and forums that post small numbers of these manuals every now and then; what I hope to achieve here is the most complete repository of laptop disassembly and service manuals available on the internet.
This page, and indeed my whole site, has no ads. I do not charge for downloads. This is not a community-run project where some files turn out to be incomplete, or the plain old user manual you already have, or completely the wrong thing. I do not hide files behind pages designed to confuse and delay you under the guise of providing a difficult service. I do not hotlink manuals on other sites – everything’s hosted in the same place as this page.
Every single file linked from here has been carefully handpicked, verified, sorted and uploaded by myself to make sure this page is as complete and accurate as humanly possible. Basically, click on the model number of your laptop below, and you’ll have all the information you need on how to take it apart.
Firstly, I do not claim ownership, authority or copyright of anything here on this page. These files, and the information contained therein, is entirely owned by the original publishers, be they Dell, Sony, Acer or anyone else. It’s possible I’m breaking some law or another by distributing these, but I’m going to take the stance that they’re generally difficult to get ahold of without this sort of project, and that everybody – Dell, Sony, Acer et al included – will be better off as a whole for it having been done.
If you happen to be in a position to say I shouldn’t be hosting these files, please consider the spirit of my little project here and think about what your company could do to support and promote the continued use of your own products. You might also consider that there are online businesses that make a profit reselling your copyrighted material who pose a far worse threat than I.
Secondly, I can make no claim as to the completeness or accuracy of these files. That falls back again on the original publishers, who themselves generally use the same disclaimer. What you do with your own property is your own business, and I cannot be held responsible for anything that goes wrong in the course of using one of these service manuals.
Thirdly, my aim here is to distribute knowledge, and that knowledge happens to be the general procedures for in-depth laptop repairs. Actually performing those repairs is something many people, including myself, frequently charge hundreds of dollars for.
If you do need help with this sort of thing, I suggest you enlist the help of your local computer repair shop, but remember it’s frequently not worth the cost to repair old laptops – replacement parts for obsolete gear isn’t cheap, and the hours of labour can stack up for even the simplest-looking jobs.
These files are all hosted on my website’s server, and individually available by viewing the directory that contains them: http://tim.id.au/laptops. There’s no need to go hunting in there file by file however; press ctrl+F here on this page, type in your laptop’s model number, and chances are you’ll zoom straight to the link you need.
Laptop models that are listed here but not actually linked to a file in /laptops are probably just waiting for me to upload and link them. If by coincidence you’re after one of these, email me and I’ll see about getting it to you ASAP.
Some of these files are quite large. If you have problems downloading a particular manual, I recommend using a download manager of some kind. If that doesn’t help, let me know and I’ll try emailing you the file directly.
Did one of these manuals help you out of a tight spot? Email me – I’d love to know what the problem was, and how you fixed it.
Do you have a legal issue to bring to my attention? Email me, and we’ll work something out.
Have you come here looking for a manual for a particular model, but can’t find it? Email me – I’ll have a look around the net and see if I can’t find a copy hiding somewhere. I might find several manuals for similar models at the same time, all of which I’d put up here as well, which could save ten other people the same trouble.
Have you found a service manual I don’t have? Know of another site with the same idea as here? Email me and you could have the gratitude of fifty happy people!
http://laptoprepairmanual.blogspot.com/, another blog and the source of some of my Acer material.
You don’t have to pay anything to use this page. I don’t sell repair manuals, or require you to click on ads or sign up for anything to get them. Donations are not required, but are appreciated, so if I’ve helped you out, consider throwing a few bucks my way!
Acer do have their service manuals on their site, but it’s behind some kind of member/partner login that isn’t open to the general public. To find your 4 digit model number here, change the last digit to a zero and look for that (eg. 1694 -> 1690).
Thanks to some incredibly kind people, I’ve been given a copy of basically Apple’s entire set of service and troubleshooting manuals published up to this point (late 2010). I’ve finally categorised pretty much everything now, so here it all is!
iBook – honestly, these are a mess to categorise without a degree in Apple products, and there’s aren’t that many of them anyway – folder’s here.
Apple Displays – including Monochrome, RGB, AppleColor, AppleVision, Multiple Scan, Cinema and Studio displays.
Miscellaneous manuals – including external drives, printers, ADB devices including keyboards and mice, eMate/Newton MessagePads, and various upgrade cards.
I recently had to work on an ASUS without a manual available; when I rang ASUS Australia the fellow was incredibly helpful – he wasn’t permitted to send me the full service manual, but could email me enough parts of the disassembly process to enable me to get the motherboard out. I strongly recommend giving your local ASUS office a call if you need help working on one of their laptops, it worked for me.
Sad news – I’ve called ASUS again looking for manuals, and I could no longer get ahold of the wonderful tech who helped me before. Instead I had someone tell me quite bluntly that “those manuals are our intellectual property and we will not distribute them in any way, shape or form”; after mentioning I’d had someone help me out before, they asked if I remembered who that was, because “that’s a punishable offense in this company”.
So, I now place ASUS in the unrecommended category – their laptops are pretty good value, quite reliable, and generally come with at least a 2 year warranty, but not only are they tight about spare parts, I’m going to say they treated me in a pretty hostile manner when I asked for some after-sales support. Sorry, ASUS, but that’s just terrible service compared to many other brands.
A customer recently asked me if we could replace the keyboard on his BenQ laptop. Not only could I not find an easy source for the part, when I rang BenQ to enquire about getting a service manual I was told “BenQ’s service manuals are confidential documents and cannot be distributed outside our service centres.” I can completely believe they do their best in that, as I’ve only ever found these four manuals. This would be a brand to avoid, IMHO.
Clevo laptops are also sold under many brand names, including Sager, Eurocom and Gericom. Medion laptops are probably all made by FIC. It’s hard to dig through the layers of notebook badge engineering, but I’ve seen more Clevos here in Australia than any other brand, so rebadged laptops will end up in this section.
Compal host service manuals for some models (IFL/JFL/IFT/JFT/JHL/JHT/KHL/KSW/KFT) on their driver download page here.
These manuals are reasonably easy to find on the internet, but I’m yet to find Clevo/etc spare parts shop that’s in or sells parts to Australia despite the prevalence of these machines here. Your luck may vary elsewhere in the world.
To celebrate HP being named the manufacturer of the least reliable laptop computers in this study of 9 different brands, I’ve decided to add a number of HP/Compaq laptop service manuals to this page. Each of these files has been downloaded from HP’s support website, and manuals for newer models (and more recent versions of existing ones) can be downloaded for free from there.
If you happen to own an HP or Compaq laptop that isn’t mentioned here, let me know and I’ll grab a copy from HP’s site and add it.
Reliability aside, these laptops are very easy to work on and spare parts are quite easy to find, often quite cheaply.
Dell’s support website is excellent and hosts the service manuals for pretty much every Dell laptop ever made. Look up your service tag or model number there and you should be able to find it.
Of all the laptop brands in that reliability study that provide both service manuals to all their machines and easy access to replacement parts, Dell are the most reliable. This firmly sets them as my most recommend brand of laptop to buy today and keep for tomorrow – every laptop I’ve personally bought for myself or others was a Dell, and I have not once regretted that decision.
For other Gateway models, you might have some luck here.
Lenovo’s support site is here.
There’s some crossover between these two brands – both seem to lay claim to the Versa name, and there’s a couple of manuals that mention both NEC and PB, so they’re all lumped together here.
I’ve found a decent cache of Panasonic Toughbook manuals. In the models listed below, a lower-case ‘x’ is a variable that notes various specs or intended regions or OSes for each laptop. Best way to sort through it is to go through it letter by letter with your Toughbook’s model number, pick the one that’s closest and see if the titlepage lists the variables that would match yours.
Toughbooks are notoriously complicated inside; they were built for durability, not ease of servicing, and because the manuals I’ve picked to go here have full disassembly instructions as opposed to mere exploded diagrams, they are quite dense. Proceed as you like, but it may be a hairier repair than you might think.
A large number of Sony service manuals are just circuit diagrams and exploded views, which look pretty but aren’t much help to someone trying to rebuild a laptop. Unfortunately there’s no way around this, but even an exploded diagram might help somebody out there – expect this section to grow very soon.
I’ve had someone email me and ask if I could find them a manual for a VGN-FW; unfortunately there doesn’t seem to ever have been one available on the internet at all. He contacted Sony, and their most helpful suggestion was that they could repair it for him at great cost.
I contacted Sony Australia myself to ask about service manuals, and was told: “We are not allowed to distribute Sony service manuals in any way, shape or form; they are copyrighted material and strictly internal documents only. Any manuals available on the internet are illegal, and Sony takes this policy very seriously.” Avoid.
On 31/7/2012, Toshiba Australia contacted me and asked me to disable the below links and to remove all Toshiba copyrighted material from my website.
Update 7/8/2012: Huge thanks to everybody who’s emailed me in the last few days – you guys are the reason I run this page, and I really hate to have to take anything down. For obvious legal reasons I cannot share any Toshiba service manuals right now. I’m currently attempting to negotiate with Toshiba to allow me to continue sharing these manuals and I’m hoping for a positive response. All we can do right now is wait and hope that Toshiba will follow in the footsteps of IBM, Dell and HP and allow their customers access to the repair manuals for their own laptops.
Update 10/11/2012: Toshiba have refused to allow me to continue sharing their laptop service manuals on my website. Please read this for details. Unfortunately, this means all Toshiba manuals are permanently gone from my website. If you are in need of a Toshiba repair manual, I urge you to contact your local Toshiba representative and ask them why they have decided to work against its customers in need of support.