When it comes to family members and some friends, I'm were old computers go to their last resting place. So I either fix them and make them work again or dissect them for parts. I recently received an HP Notebook – 15-bs023ca that looked like it was in very good condition. I was told that the hard drive seems to be dead.
When I turned it on, sure enough, No Boot Drive Detected. Then I had an opportunity to press F2 to go into the Diagnostics. A quick check of the hard drive showed the same results. I assumed that drive was completely dead.
Now I had one problem. This laptop has no easy access panels on the bottom. I might have to take the entire thing apart to get at it's insides. I always said to myself that if I had to do this to fix a laptop, it'll never get fixed. But it's useless to me otherwise so I decided to chance it. I checked online and came across a few videos and some info on how to do this, so here we go.
First, remove the battery. There is usually a couple of switches there to help unlock and remove the battery.
Then I had to remove all the screws from the bottom of the case. Ten in all. I've highlighted them here on my laptop.
Sometimes you have to remove any plastic or rubber feet to get at the screws underneath. I only have two the other two were already missing. Just hook them out.
Now the hard part. You need something to hook in around the edges of the casing to pry it open. I used a knife blade that was attached to my pliers. You have to go right around the edge of the laptop.
To make that clearer, here's a video that I watched: HP 15-BS series Disassembly.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=keGKFpGop4k
And the final result:
I found out that the hard drive was gone. It was literally gone. The previous owner must of removed it. The hard drive you see in the picture is the one I put in. 298 GB. There were no caddy or screws for the hard drive but once the casing is replaced it probably keep everything inline.
So now I put the back on and carefully snapped everything together again. I didn't replace the screws right away but I put the battery in and started it up to run the Diagnostics on the hard drive. This time a full pass.
I'm hoping that was the only issues with this laptop. So now I debating about the operating system. Windows 7, 10, 11, Linux?
NOTE: The following was originally a separate article.
I wrote previously about a HP Notebook - 15-bs023ca that I acquired and what I had to do to replace the hard drive. I was wondering why anyone would give up such a laptop because of a hard drive issue. Then I discovered the real horror. It was possessed. :-)
It had flashing circles going up the screen and the mouse seemed to have a mind of it's own. I managed to get Windows 10 installed but doing anything else with a mouse I could barely control was a nightmare in itself.
I first assumed the touch pad was malfunctioning and tried to disable it. Some laptops, you you can do this by pressing on the FN key and the one that looks like a finger touching a square. No such setup with this one.
Some model HP laptops have a button just above the left-hand corner of the touch pad, no luck here. Or just double tap the top left-hand corner of the pad. Not in my case.
So I tried to go into windows, device manager and disable it. Still no luck. So I decided to go to extremes and remove it from the inside of the computer.
In my previous article I showed you how to get inside this thing. So I got in and removed the cables. Even unscrewed the pad and removed the circuit board itself. Still possessed.
So, maybe it was the keyboard. So, I unplugged the cable for the keyboard. Results the same.
I even thought it might be a bad memory chip. But I had no replacement.
I went online but honestly I didn't know how to word the search. So I just searched for “circles jumping up the screen”.
I came across an article dealing with a similar problem on a Microsoft Surface Book. And the solution involved disabling the touchscreen. And for the first time I realized that I had a touchscreen. I went to HP's sites and got the basic specs before I even put in the hard drive. I printed up a PDF version and when I did go through the list, guess what was covered up with an ad. The name of the display. I only saw the resolution. Didn't give it a second thought at the time.
So now I just had to try to get to the Device Manager and disable this thing. It took awhile but I did finally manage to do it.
Type device manager in search, and then select Device Manager in the results.
Then go to the Human Interface Devices section. Double-click on it or click on the little arrow in front then right-click on HID-compliant touch screen, and then select Disable. You can also try uninstalling the driver and it will be reinstalled once you restart the device. It's not important to me so I just left it disabled.
NOTE: I did try eventually to uninstall the driver but as soon as the driver was installed again, the problem came back.
And it worked.
Everything seems to be OK now. Don't want to speak to loud to jink it. I admit I should of searched first for a solution but at the time, like I said I wasn't sure what to search for and I was so sure it was either a touchpad or keyboard issue. I had computers in the past that acted possessed and it turned out to be a bad keyboard.
Anything else goes wrong with this thing, I'm disecting it for parts. :-)