Background
I have a Hewlett-Packard NC6000 laptop running Windows XP and have used it for work and personal projects for almost 8 years. I find it does everything i need and by performing routine maintenance such as disk cleanups and disk de-fragmentation the performance remains well above a minimum acceptable level. Although it is very old bordering on ancient in laptop terms it is a very well made product very firm with a rigid structure and shows little sign of excessive wear given the amount of use it gets.
Originally the laptop had 512MB of memory. A couple of years ago i upgraded it increasing the memory to 1GB and at the same time i added a Bluetooth module and a W500 internal wireless LAN module. All parts were original HP components purchased on EBAY. The total upgrade cost of the parts was less than £25. The list price alone for the W500 WLAN module was £80!
Recently i got some errors at boot time which indicated the CMOS backup battery was reaching the end of it's life. I checked the maintenance manuals only to find that the entire laptop had to be dismantled in order to access the lithium button cell battery. Of course the HP manual cunningly disguises this by describing the process in 5 or 6 simple steps. It is only when you read these steps such as "remove the keyboard","remove all screws from the casing" and "remove the LCD unit from the base" that you realise the scale of the task ahead. The battery is the small blue circular component with the red and black wires attached.
Originally the laptop had 512MB of memory. A couple of years ago i upgraded it increasing the memory to 1GB and at the same time i added a Bluetooth module and a W500 internal wireless LAN module. All parts were original HP components purchased on EBAY. The total upgrade cost of the parts was less than £25. The list price alone for the W500 WLAN module was £80!
Recently i got some errors at boot time which indicated the CMOS backup battery was reaching the end of it's life. I checked the maintenance manuals only to find that the entire laptop had to be dismantled in order to access the lithium button cell battery. Of course the HP manual cunningly disguises this by describing the process in 5 or 6 simple steps. It is only when you read these steps such as "remove the keyboard","remove all screws from the casing" and "remove the LCD unit from the base" that you realise the scale of the task ahead. The battery is the small blue circular component with the red and black wires attached.
This is what the laptop looks like after all the screws from the underside, sides, rear and inside are removed. Although the HP instructions suggest that the keyboard and LCD unit should be completely disconnected from the base i decided i could probably manage without doing this as the connectors are very small.
At this stage the disk drive has been removed as has the CD/DVD drive and battery,the LCD unit is connected only by interface wires, as is the keyboard, the accessory button panel has been removed as have various internal metal shields and the case is in two parts.
I was able to locate the CMOS button cell battery mounted on the underside of the top half of the base casings just to the left of the touch pad.
At this stage the disk drive has been removed as has the CD/DVD drive and battery,the LCD unit is connected only by interface wires, as is the keyboard, the accessory button panel has been removed as have various internal metal shields and the case is in two parts.
I was able to locate the CMOS button cell battery mounted on the underside of the top half of the base casings just to the left of the touch pad.
Rather than completely dismantling the case as HP suggest i managed to carefully open the case and locate the CMOS button cell battery. I was able to gently lever this out of its mounting socket then feed the wire back through the casing and remove the connector from the motherboard.
I de-soldered the connections from the battery and then soldered them to the new battery. Then i carefully routed the cable back through the case and using an insulated screwdriver shaft managed to push the battery back into its mounting socket. I then reconnected the cable to the motherboard connector.
I then re-installed all 30 or so of the screws used to hold the LCD unit and base together. After a few tests the boot errors had been resolved. In total it took about 1.5 hours to dismantle the case, install the new battery and re-assemble the case.
I de-soldered the connections from the battery and then soldered them to the new battery. Then i carefully routed the cable back through the case and using an insulated screwdriver shaft managed to push the battery back into its mounting socket. I then reconnected the cable to the motherboard connector.
I then re-installed all 30 or so of the screws used to hold the LCD unit and base together. After a few tests the boot errors had been resolved. In total it took about 1.5 hours to dismantle the case, install the new battery and re-assemble the case.