Sep172012

What can I do with an old laptop that won’t turn on anymore?

Ricardo Cao asks:

I have an old laptop just sitting at home and I have been wanting to get ideas for projects I can do with the spare parts that I have. Almost every single part still works: screen, ram, hard drive, fan, etc… The full laptop is not functional anymore as the motherboard is dead but most of the spare parts work.

I am looking for suggestions about projects that I could do with the spare parts. Preferably projects that are cheap!

Thank you.


Browser: Chrome 21
System: Windows 7
Tagged: , , , ,

Comments for this Question are closed.

If you are looking for help, please ask a new question here.

We will be happy to help you!

22 Answers -

0 votes

Prathamesh Saygaonkar

September 17, 2012

Well,Thats a interesting case. You Can Always Reconstruct the laptop using various guides available online..Now a days motherboards are cheap too If You have a website you could always do away with an extra server. Also You Could Boost the speed of the computer you are using by parallely dividing the work of your computer. also you could sell the spare parts to a laptop repairing agency and make some extra bucks.. Also you could give it to a local school for teaching students computer science.

0 votes

susendeep dutta

September 17, 2012

Five Things to Do with Your Old Laptop -

http://gizmodo.com/5666465/five-things-to-do-with-your-old-laptop

10 Brilliant Ways To Reuse Your Old Laptop -

http://walyou.com/recycle-laptop/

0 votes

mohit kumar

September 17, 2012

Use them in desktop!

0 votes

ro ot

September 17, 2012

I fix my old laptop with ubuntu on usb stick. that works fine. and easy to run

0 votes

Erlis Dhima

September 17, 2012

Hmm…
I don’t know how they can be used, since I don’t know their size, type etc..
For example, if you have a RAM = 1Gb, you can build a ‘so, so’ computer..
If you have a RAM = 2Gb, then you can build a good computer! But it’s not only the RAM that is important!
So, in other words, if you give me the full specifications for your laptop parts, maybe I can give you a better suggestion..

0 votes

Elrick Browne

September 17, 2012

buy a hard drive enclosure and put the laptop hard drive in and make a external drive for backup! (sata or pata) according to you connection and the hard drive

0 votes

Abaquin Dharence

September 17, 2012

the best thing you can do is to go to the nearest, repair shop on your place!

0 votes

Dylan Brendan

September 17, 2012
0 votes

Eserpess der

September 18, 2012
0 votes

Bernardo Delapasion

September 18, 2012

You could always use the spare parts whenever your new laptop has a problem, if you have one and it’s compatible Not much of an answer but hey at least you’ve got some ideas *_~

0 votes

Rajaa Chowdhury

September 18, 2012

You can actually build your own Tablet out of it. I did watch a video in youtube of a chinese person doing the same. Check this link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbfMHAdHtz0

0 votes

Bruce Thomas

September 18, 2012

Old laptops are good for putting in the bottom of fish tanks and letting the inhabitants have a go.

0 votes

Brian

September 18, 2012

I had the same issue, I sold the parts on ebay.

0 votes

Vishwang Bhaskar

September 19, 2012

reuse and recycle the parts u can …… liked the fish tank idea :)

0 votes

EL

September 19, 2012

Take it apart, and then try putting it back together!

0 votes

Angel Vinod

September 19, 2012

Well, what I’d do is to get a cheap motherboard, and assemble this laptop such that it looks like a helpful Item on my study desk, Seperate screen from the keyboard and it’ll look cool.

0 votes

Alexis Akridge

September 19, 2012
0 votes

Dimal Chandrasiri

September 20, 2012

a good advice: if you r interested in computers, just try to disassemble the Laptop. find a compatible main-board for a cheap price nd fix it. you’ll get to know the hard ware. you’ll exp disassembling. then finally, sell the working laptop nd make some money! win win. :D

0 votes

vasu gupta

September 21, 2012

reconstruct it or just sell it for a few bucks

0 votes

Declan Lopez

September 28, 2012

you could make an external hard drive, you can easily find cheap enclosures online

0 votes

Jim Chambers

October 7, 2012

On many laptop motherboards there is a surface mount fuse labelled F1. Short across it with a fine piece of wire and the laptop may come back from the dead.

0 votes

Abba Jee

November 25, 2012

either you can pay some money to repair it from market or sell its parts ( something is better than nothing )