Laptop Repair & Recovery Tutorial (100% Useful)

Laptops are convenient for people to work, study, play games, and do many other things. For most people, especially people who are frequently on business trips, laptops are indispensable. Thus, when your laptop goes wrong, you must consider the laptop repair as the first thing. The following content will tell you how to repair a laptop and how to make a laptop recovery.

Laptop Repair Is Important

The main functions of the laptop are the same as that of the desktop. An important reason why people choose a laptop over a desktop is its portability. Whenever problems occur on a laptop, you definitely need to consider laptop repair.

Computer repair is a very broad and complex topic. You should consider the following three aspects when encountering laptop errors: diagnose problems, troubleshoot them, and repair laptops.

Hardware Components of Laptop

A laptop usually contains the following components, so the repair of it refers to the repair of corresponding parts.

• CPU: it’s the abbreviation of Central Processing Unit. It’s an important electronic circuitry to carry out the instructions of a computer program. The CPU has been applied to computers since the early 1960s.
• CPU fan and CPU socket: the former is used for heat dissipation while the latter is a connector on the motherboard that houses and contacts with the CPU.
• Heat sink/heat pipe: they are used to provide air circulation in a compressed space so as to avoid overheating.
• Battery: it’s the main power source for a laptop. The CMOS battery is used to keep the time, date, hard disk, and other configuration settings in the CMOS memory.
• Speakers: it is used to create sound so that you can hear a voice from your laptop.
• RAM: short for random-access memory, the RAM means the computer memory that you can access randomly.
• Hard drive: store videos, audio, documents, pictures, photos, and other sorts of data.
• Etc.

Among them, the hard drive is the most important component since it stores many significant data. Once you find your laptop hard disk is crashed, you must take action immediately to restore files.

Laptop Repair Tutorial

Laptop errors are mainly divided into hardware issues and software issues. The next content will show you how to fix these errors respectively.

Resolve Laptop Hardware Issues

Compared with software errors, hardware issues can be solved more easily. There are 2 situations for you to make a hardware repair.

Situation 1: Manufacturer Maintenance

Each laptop is provided with a warranty when you buy it. Once you find a hardware component is damaged or corrupted, you should first consider returning to the factory for repair. As long as the hardware is not broken intentionally and it’s under warranty, the manufacturer will fix it for you.

What to do with a dead hard drive?

The platter of a brand-new hard drive is not 100% flawless when it comes out from manufacturers. This is because the platter is very precise and has a high requirement in the manufacturing environment. Thus, even a speck of dust or a minor collision could lead to a few to hundreds of bad sectors.

When a hard drive is dead due to non-human factors (like physical scratch and logical damage during use), users can send their hard drive back to manufacturers for maintenance as long as it doesn’t exceed the warranty period. But before this, you should remember to back up hard drive data.

Situation 2: Personal Repair

If the laptop drive exceeds the warranty period, you can try to remove the damaged part and replace it with a new one. Under such circumstances, you need a screwdriver to take off the cover so as to replace the broken component.

1. Remove the screws with the screwdriver.
2. Take the cover off carefully.
3. Locate the component inside the laptop and take it out.
4. Mount a new one into it and put back the screws.

Fix Laptop Software Problems

To fix the software error that appeared on your laptop, you should get a laptop diagnostic tool to help you settle the problems.

• The built-in Mac repair tools available for you: Disk Utility, Apple Hardware Test, and OnyX.
• The built-in Windows repair tools you can use: System Restore, Troubleshooter, Disk Error Checking, System File Checker, factory reset, and Windows Defender (anti-malware tool). These Windows repair tools also work for USB drives.

Here, I’ll mainly introduce the methods of diagnosing and fixing disk-related problems by using the Windows repair tool in Windows 10.  

#1: System Restore

System Restore is a useful tool equipped with Windows. It can help you cancel the changes that cause the laptop problems and restore your system to the previous state when problems didn’t occur (the premise is you have enabled the feature and created system restore points).

1. Type Control Panel into the search bar and choose the best-matched option to open it.
2. Choose Recovery under the Large icon option of the View by category.
3. Select Open System Restore.
4. Click Next to select the restore point created before the problem occurs, then click on the Next button.
5. Confirm the system restore point information and click Finish to start the system restore process.

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#2: Troubleshooter

Windows contains various troubleshooters to help you resolve plenty of issues. To find and fix the device’s errors, you can run the Hardware and Devices troubleshooter.

1. Press Win + I to open Windows Settings.
2. Navigate to Update & Security > Troubleshoot > Additional troubleshooters.
3. You can scroll down the list to select the hardware or device you want to troubleshoot and click on Run the troubleshooter.

Your computer will detect and fix problems automatically.

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#3: Disk Error Checking

You can run this check disk tool to detect the logical and physical problems of the file system. There are two methods to use this tool.

Way 1: check disk in File Explorer.

1. Press Win + E to open File Explorer.
2. Select This PC on the left pane and choose the drive that needs to be repaired.
3. Right-click on the drive and choose Properties from the context menu.
4. Shift to the Tools tab and click on the Check button under the Error checking section.
5. If the system detects no error, it will show you a window saying You don’t need to scan this drive (you can still choose Scan drive); if any errors are detected, you’ll be asked to check the drive so just click to scan.

Way 2: run CHKDSK in Command Prompt.

1. Click on the search icon and type Command Prompt into the search box.
2. Choose Run as administrator on the right pane.
3. Type CHKDSK x: /f and press Enter to execute this command line. (You should replace x with the drive letter of the drive you want to repair.)

If the drive is in use, it will ask you whether to check the drive the next time you boot the computer. You can type Y to confirm and restart the computer, then it will detect errors on the drive automatically.

#4: System File Checker

Some software errors are caused by missing or corrupted system files. The System File Checker (SFC) tool, snap-in all modern Windows versions, is specifically used to scan and repair problematic system files.

1. Press Win + R to open the Run window.
2. Type cmd into the text box and press Shift + Ctrl + Enter to run Command Prompt as administrator.
3. Type sfc /scannow and press Enter on the keyboard.
4. Wait for the scan. (This command will scan the protected system files. If any corrupted files are found, it will replace them with a cached copy located in the %WinDir%\System32\dllcache folder.)

#5: Windows Defender

Windows Defender is an antivirus tool, delivered by Microsoft Windows. It is able to scan your drive for malware, viruses, and other security threats to prevent them from attacking your laptop. You have two choices to use this tool: enable Windows Defender real-time protection and schedule security scans.

How to turn on real-time protection:

1. Press Win + I to open Windows Settings.
2. Select Update & Security > Windows Security, then choose Virus & threat protection on the right pane.
3. Click on Manage settings under the Virus & threat protection settings section.
4. Toggle the Real-time protection switch to On.

How to schedule a scan in Windows Defender:

1. Type Task Scheduler into the search box on the taskbar and hit Enter.
2. Shift to Task Scheduler Library > Microsoft > Windows > Windows Defender.
3. Double-click on the Windows Defender Scheduled Scan option in the top-center pane.
4. Turn to the Triggers tab and click on New at the bottom left.
5. Configure the time and frequency and click OK to save.

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#6: Factory Reset

This method helps you to restore your laptop to its original manufacturer settings. It can fix almost all the common errors that appear on your laptop, but it will erase all the files and folders on your laptop.

The steps to factory reset a laptop are not all the same, you can get help from the corresponding official website.

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If you need to recover files after the laptop factory reset, you can go to this post: How To Recover Files After Factory Reset Laptop.

Laptop Data Recovery

No matter what kind of problems you have met, after fixing the problem, you’d better check whether your problems are deleted or lost due to a computer error. You should recover files once you find they are lost since data can’t be recovered if they are overwritten.

Firstly, you can open the Recycle Bin to find if the missing files are sent here. If you can’t find them in the Recycle Bin, the best and most convenient way is to try reliable data recovery software, such as MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

This free file recovery software gives you a chance to restore files from various devices, including USB drives, external hard drives, SD cards, etc. Regardless of the type of files stored on the device, MiniTool Power Data Recovery can secure them safely.

You can follow the steps below to retrieve files.

Step 1: Get MiniTool Power Data Recovery by clicking the button below and install the software with the on-screen instructions.

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Step 2: Launch the software and choose one partition that contains the lost files to scan.

If the lost files are stored on the Desktop, you can click on the Desktop option in the Recover from Specific Location section. Correspondingly, you can select a specific folder by clicking the Select Folder option if you want to recover files from a specific folder.

Step 3: The found files will be listed in a hierarchical tree structure under the Path category list. Browse files to find your wanted ones. But numerous files make it more difficult to locate target files quickly. Here are some features that can help you:

• Type: Change to the Type category list to find files according to their types, like pictures, documents, videos & audio, archives, and more.
• Filter: Set the filter conditions based on your situation to filter out unnecessary files.
• Search: Type the part or full name of a specific file into the search box to quickly find out the matched one.
• Preview: Preview the chosen file to verify it is the one you need.

Step 4: Add check marks in front of the wanted files and click on the Save button. You should choose a save path for these files that is different from the original one, which may result in failed data recovery due to potential data overwriting.

This is a complete guide on recovering files from a laptop with MiniTool Power Data Recovery. The free edition of this software only provides you with 1GB of file recovery capacity. You can go to the MiniTool Store to obtain a full edition for an unlimited data recovery capacity.

This software not only works well on deleted file recovery but also helps rescue files from unbootable computers. You can read this post to learn how to get files out of dead laptops: [SOLVED] How to Recover Data from a Dead Laptop Hard Drive.

Conclusion

You may encounter errors on a laptop without any signs. To avoid data loss, you are highly advised to make backups of your data periodically. If, unfortunately, your files are lost and you have no backups, turn to MiniTool Power Data Recovery to get help.

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After you recover files, you can use this laptop repair tutorial to fix these unexpected issues. Feel free to let us know your problems via [email protected].