Need help with opening laptops and diagnosing HDD problems

[deadlock]

A friend recently gave me his Twinhead Pentium 2 Notebook to fix, and since I do Desktop repair work, I told him I'd try but I can't promise I'd be able to.

Now here's where you guys help me.

When I boot up, it says operating system not found. I put in a basic boot disk and the boot disk works, but there is no recognized hard drive (ie typing C: gives me invalid drive specification).

I gave it a reboot again, took out the disk, and magically all of a sudden the silly thing works fine, booting into Windows with no errors. I reboot again, and now it exhibits funny behaviour. It reads the Hard Drive in bursts of data, and it was extremely slow. It hit the Windows splash screen, then hung.

Ever since then everytime I try and boot the hard drive isn't recognized at all, reporting operating system not found. But there is though this weird very soft clunking sound, which I suspect is the hard drive. It sounds like a CD-ROM drive everytime it resets itself while trying to register a bad CD, except in a much deeper note.

Now what I want to do is open the darn thing and get to the drive to check it and the connections, but I have never opened a notebook before. I know it's usually something to do with the keyboard but I don't know what to do. Anyone with any ideas on how to open it up? It's a medium sized machine, the base unit taking up about an inch and a half in width. I've tried unscrewing it, but it doesn't open that way. There are some internal clips and I don't want to break anything by accident.

Please either tell me what's wrong or tell me how to get inside the notebook.

I don't have any manuals, the Twinhead website is crap, and I don't know how to get into the BIOS either. I know it's a Phoenix BIOS but the regular combo of Ctrl-Alt-Enter for Phoenix BIOSes doesn't work.

Would appreciate some help.

Thanks.

 

[Workin']

Don't know how to get into the BIOS, but there is usually some kind of easy external access panel or something like that to get to the hard drive. For example -

IBM Thinkpad 76X series, the keyboard lifts up by pushing the lid latches the opposite direction from opening the lid.

IBM Thinkpad 70X series, there is a snap-fit door along the front edge that covers the drive bay.

NEC Versa 4XXX series, there's a door on the bottom with a spring-loaded slide.

Apple PowerBook Duo series - These require opening the whole thing, it really sucks.

But since your machine is a PII, I would think it would have some easy way of accessing the drive via an external panel or tilt-up keyboard.

 

[Gunbuster]

Most lappys place the HDD around the edge in a slide out tray or under the keyboard and palmrest\touch pad