The Journey of Upgrading My HP 250 G4: the Manual and Beyond

Being a software engineer does not imply any expertise in electronics repair/replacement, but I think that’s a valuable skill to develop. In addition to saving you some money, it’s an excellent way to refresh your device’s look, learn something new and simply spend some time during the quarantine :)

Final results

Note: by writing this post, I want to show that even a person with no previous experience can disassemble/reassemble the whole laptop. Also, since I’m not a professional, please do it at your own risk and don’t blame me if anything wrong happens with your device. Don’t treat this post as a complete guide but rather as a side note on what can go wrong and what is not mentioned in other articles/manuals.

In this story, I’m going to share my reflections, experience, pitfalls and conclusions made after upgrading my old laptop. So let’s get started :)

Specs and Upgrade Options

After switching to a brand-new Dell XPS 15, I’ve decided to give the old HP 250 G4 to my parents. However, its condition was pretty horrible: cracked plastic, dirty keyboard and poor performance — these are the reasons why I have decided to renovate it. Here are the specs:

Product image taken from an official HP website

• CPU: Intel Core i3 5005U / Intel HD Graphics 5500
• RAM: 8GB DDR3
• GPU: AMD Radeon R5 2GB
• HDD: 1TB
• ODD: yes
• Screen: TN HD Matte

Apparently, it’s not comparable with modern laptops, but with some tuning, it is a good option for office-like apps, youtube, skype, etc.

As you may have already guessed, the hardware upgrade consisted of 2 parts:

• replacing ODD with SSD (as hard-drive is a bottleneck for performance)
• adding extra 8GB of RAM

SSD should help to reduce Windows startup time and response time in general while additional RAM should help with multitasking.

After that, I also replaced all external components, which involved:

• bottom cover
• palm rest
• keyboard
• screen
• screen cover

First Steps

After prior research, I have found lots of youtube videos and an official service manual (for G4 and G5 models), which was pretty decent and helped me a lot later. It contained a detailed reference on how to remove/install every component in the laptop, so investigate it first in case you need some assistance.

However, the problems arose almost immediately :) I was unable to remove the bottom cover: 1 of the bolts failed to unscrew. To be more precise, it was screwing nice but didn’t come up. After 2–3 days of ineffective attempts, I’ve managed to find an ugly solution on one of the forums. I heated the bolt with the soldering iron and squeezed the bottom cover out without undoing the screw. The plastic around the bolt got soft, which helped me to lift the lid.

Bottom cover: problematic screw (left) as opposed to a normal one (right)

Pretty ugly, right? After further investigation, I concluded that it was the right decision because the plastic on the palm rest around the corresponding nut was broken. Hence, the nut was rotating with the bolt while undoing it. One of my friends had the same problem with the same laptop. He managed to solve the issue by unscrewing the bolt with an electric screwdriver on high speed.

Tips for unclipping the bottom cover:

• do it with some kind of card (i.e. old credit card)
• don’t put the card too far inside (otherwise, you are going to break the clip)
• get the ODD out and start unclipping from there
• you might want to use two cards at the corners of the cover
• you can use a flat screwdriver for undoing hard clips on top (where the battery is located)

First Look at the Internals, Hardware Upgrade

After the bottom cover removed and half plastic clips broken :), we can access the internals.

First look at the internals (the photo was taken while reassembling)

We can easily detect HDD (yellow), ODD(green) and a free RAM slot(red). In order to connect a second hard drive through an optical drive interface, I’ve bought an HDD caddy. However, since the drive connected via ODD line cannot be bootable and does not have high data throughput, we should replace HDD with SSD and put the HDD into the caddy (see this topic). OS should be ported to the new SSD drive. You can use some programs to clone the disk image or create a recovery flash drive and reinstall the OS from it. I did the second option. The manual on HDD removal is pretty clear and straightforward. So is HDD caddy instruction.

Tips:

• lift the motherboard connector before disconnecting hard drive cable

All these black connectors on the motherboard should be lifted before removal

• pay attention to the arrows on metal plates on the sides of the HDD
• make sure you fix the HDD with four screws after you installed it into the caddy
• do not open the lid without bottom cover installed and screwed (you risk to break the plastic around the hinges — learnt it the hard way)

RAM removal/installation is also easy.

SSD model(left) and the upgraded internals (right)

Results: Windows startup time reduced drastically, programs response time also dropped. The laptop became usable. Crystaldiskmark verified that SSD read/write speed capabilities were fully exploited. Additional RAM was detected by the system.

Disassemble Methodology, Keyboard and Palmrest Replacement

As I’ve mentioned earlier, the plastic on the palm rest was cracked. Moreover, I broke it on one of the hinges too. So it definitely needed replacement.

Apparently, all the electronics should be disassembled and transferred to a new palm rest. That brings up a question of how to store/sort the components in order not to get lost and be able to reassemble it. There is an urgency in some kind of methodology.

I’m going to share my approach, which consists of 5 simple steps:

1. Write down the name of the component.
2. Take a picture of the component.
3. Disassemble the component (refer to the manual if needed).
4. Put all the pieces (bolts, planks, etc.) into a package and label it (I used zip-locks for that).
5. Take a picture of the place where the component was mounted.

By doing so, you won’t be overwhelmed with different types of bolts, circuit boards, etc. Moreover, you will be able to assemble it back, because you have all the pictures needed and don’t hesitate about what pieces to use and where to put them. This might sound like overkill, but it’s always better to be overprepared, right? :)

You can start disassembling the components in the same order they are mentioned in the manual. Please do it one by one, don’t remove multiple parts at once. Here is what I’ve ended up with:

Laptop’s internals disassembled and sorted

Some tips I haven’t found on the manual:

• Heat sink: apply a little bit of pressure to undo the screws. After all of them are gone, use a tiny bit of force to lift the sink (that’s because of old thermal paste)
• Fan: if you are failing to unplug the fan from the system board, it is ok. I had the same problem. Apply force to do it, use flat screwdrivers if needed (I ended up using two flat screwdrivers :)
• Speakers: check the wires for integrity after removal (mine were exposed in one place)
• Make sure you have taken a picture of the display, wifi and power cables routing path.

Display, wifi and power cables routing path

When you are done, the only thing left is a bare palm rest with a keyboard and a metal plate that secures it in place. After some research, I’ve discovered that the keyboard is non-replaceable. That’s why I bought a new one. In order to fix the keyboard and a metal plate, you should melt small plastic ledges on the palm rest and a keyboard with a soldering iron and “glue” it to the metal plate. I must admit that I cheated here and had it done in a laptop repair shop (don’t put dislikes, everything else is done only by me :))

Metal plate, that secures keyboard in-place with melted plastic (black dots)

Reassembling and Further Problems

With the new palm rest and keyboard installed, it’s time to reassemble all the electronics and give it a try. With all the components sorted, that was a relatively easy task. I used Arctic MX-4 thermal paste to be sure that the cooling system functions properly.

Note:

1. Clean all the components with alcohol before reassembling (ports, old thermal paste, dust inside the fan, etc.)
2. Make sure you install the touchpad button board before the system board (otherwise it will be problematic to connect it to the touchpad board (green circuit))

However, that was another problem standing by. The new bottom cover I bought lacked a hole for the VGA port (although it was described to be compatible with my laptop). It was too late to return, so I ended up making the hole manually using a drill and a file (the only advice here is extreme patience).

More problems were about to appear. After installing the new bottom cover, I discovered that the keyboard was not functioning correctly. Weird stuff was going on. When pressing the keys from the top row (QWERTY), middle row characters were appearing on the screen (ASDFGH). There was no clear correspondence between the keys, but I assumed that the keyboard cable was not properly aligned with a corresponding port on the system board. The issue was solved after reconnecting the keyboard. But the problems didn’t end there :)

Salvaging the Old Touchpad

After solving the keyboard issue, I noticed that the two-finger scroll was not working. I have tried many things with no success: reconnecting the touchpad button board, looking for the newest drivers and even reinstalling the OS. Nothing helped, though. Then I compared a new touchpad brand with the original one. It was different! I couldn’t even think that the palm rest can have a different touchpad for the same laptop model and that this can be a problem. I double-checked my order and didn’t find any laptop model mismatch. As I read later, the original touchpad model is written in BIOS, so no other touchpad should be installed on the laptop.

I have almost accepted defeat, as no touchpad disassembling instructions were provided in the manual. But then I bumped into this video. The authors claimed that the touchpad could be separated from the palm rest with no damage done to both. After that, both surfaces should be cleaned up from glue. The touchpad can then be installed on the other palm rest with double-sided tape. I decided to give it a try on the old palm rest.
The worst part of the whole process was to push the flat screwdriver in-between the touchpad and the palm rest plastic in order to start separating it from the glue. I ended up starting with a small chisel-like screw followed by a big flat screwdriver. Once it is under the touchpad, it should be easier. The only tip here is extreme patience: take your time and don’t rush or you are going to break the plastic.

Salvaging the old touchpad: start with a chisel-like screw (blue) and continue with a big flat screwdriver (red)

I wanted to check if it still works, so I mounted it back on the old palm rest and moved the essential electronic components there. To my relief, it worked perfectly fine: all multi-finger gestures were appropriately recognised. After that, I removed the touchpad from the new palm rest and transferred the old touchpad there.

Broken Screen and Hinges

The laptop has started to gain a better appearance, but there was another problem: part of the display stopped working and went black. I detected that the issue occurs because of bad contacts inside the enclosure. It turns back to normal for a while after pushing on the plastic, but that’s just a temporary fix. Considering the fact that the plastic started to crack, I decided to disassemble the screen.

After a consultation with the manual, I found that the task is quite similar to what I’ve done before: a bunch of plastic clips around the bezel. However, I didn’t consider one thing: glue. It appeared to be no clips at the bottom (both on the manual and youtube videos), but that was not true. I damaged the screen with the screwdriver while trying to remove the bezel from the glue.

Note: there are clips at the bottom of the bezel too! Make sure you undo them first and then deal with the glue. The other parts of the screen were not hard to remove: a few bolts, 2 hinges and 2 cables (wifi antenna and a webcam).

To my surprise, both of the hinges were broken (that was the reason for the cracks on the plastic). So I definitely needed replacement parts: new hinges, display enclosure and a screen itself.

Broken hinges (left, both at the same spot) and screen (right)

I had doubts on the last, however. FHD models were not a part of HP 250 G4 laptops, but G5 models were equipped with them. Since G5 is just a slightly better version of G4, I suspected that it is possible to upgrade to FHD display. After consultations in a few online shops, I’ve collected different opinions. The major concern was the display cable capability of transferring FHD signal instead of HD (single and dual-channel cables). After reading G4 and G5 manuals, I discovered that all G4 and G5 laptops use the same screen cable model. So I decided to give it a try and ordered an FHD matte IPS panel. To my relief, it worked perfectly! That’s a noticeable upgrade in terms of resolution and technology (brighter colors compared to an original TN screen).

Testing out the new IPS screen

Final Assembly and Testing

Not much work here. Just replace old components with new ones, route the wires properly and give it a test try without a bezel installed. However, my display enclosure came as a bare piece of plastic, so I had to make foil and foam rubber paddings by hand.

Hand-crafted foil and foam rubber paddings

Tips:

1. Make sure you route webcam and wifi cables properly (mine were not working because I routed them incorrectly and they were pressed by one of the hinges)
2. Make sure you test all the components before closing the screen bezel (webcam, microphone, wifi, screen)
3. Watch out for the bezel (I bet mine was not compatible with the display enclosure because I couldn’t do bottom clips. I rolled back to an original bezel and it worked just fine)
4. Do screen bezel aesthetics at the very end (I transferred all rubber parts to the new screen bezel before recognizing that I need to stick with the original one)

Now it is time to gather it all up. After installing the bezel and connecting the screen to the palm rest, I installed the bottom cover and transferred all rubber supports in there. The laptop renovating was finished after doing the final screw into the bottom cover and unsticking the HP logo at the backside of the screen.

The test run went fine. I watched the same core temperatures as before the upgrade (both cores were around 37 degrees in idle mode). GPU also worked fine and helped me to watch 1080p video without lags (make sure you install Radeon drivers, however). The response time was pretty low in general.

Estimate

I was interested in calculating how much did the whole build cost me (all prices are in local currency):

1. SSD drive: 1969 UAH
2. display: 1670 UAH
3. new battery: 1146 UAH
4. palm rest: 1034 UAH
5. display enclosure: 916 UAH
6. RAM: 885 UAH
7. bottom cover: 605 UAH
8. hinges: 253 UAH
9. keyboard: 190 UAH
10. thermal paste: 179 UAH
11. HDD caddy: 167 UAH

So it’s 9014 UAH or roughly 330 USD. Considering post office fees and work in a laptop repair shop it is 380 USD.

Is it worth it? Who knows, maybe I should have bought a new laptop. But I can confirm that it was extremely fun and challenging. Moreover, it is cheaper than buying a new laptop with similar specs. I’ve gained lots of new experience and self-confidence and don’t regret it completely.

Conclusions

Here are my conclusions after all that I’ve been through:

1. Try to estimate how much your laptop upgrade would cost beforehand and whether it’s worth it (what seemed like a simple replacement of a few components ended up in “rebuying” almost the whole laptop)
2. Make sure you know the exact model of your laptop (mine was advertised as G5 but is actually G4 :))
3. Consider buying a metal laptop instead of a plastic one if you want to use it on an everyday basis or move it from place to place frequently.
4. Make sure you order exactly the spare part you need, and it is compatible with your laptop (wrong touchpad, missing holes in a bottom cover, no foil on display enclosure, etc.). Check the part number or call the shop to clarify all the necessary details if needed.
5. Don’t order the new palm rest with a touchpad if you can salvage the old one.
6. Use service manual as a primary source of information.
7. Do some aesthetics at the very end (rubber pieces, etc.).

I hope some of you will find this post useful and won’t repeat my mistakes. Step out of your comfort zone, develop new skills and progress constantly!