At some point yesterday when autumn was sitting out in the living room, I happened to be adjusting the angle of the screen when I noticed that the bevel that holds the power button and a number of other function buttons specific to Dell Inspiton laptops had popped out of space by a very noticeable amount. Looking at the side of the laptop, it became clear that something wasn’t quite right, though the extent of the damage wasn’t obvious. After spending about ten minutes looking at Dell support manuals, I shut down the computer and set to work.

It took a little bit to remove the bevel that had popped out, primarily because I hadn’t noticed that the screen had to be all the way back for the protective bevel to be properly removed. After we removed it, there was fairly obvious damage to the hinge on the left side of the laptop. We had to disconnect the LCD from an anchor point on the back of the plastic, then we were able to pull the LCD unit out of its retaining slots. After we did that, a side-by-side comparison of the hinges that allow the LCD to open and close became quite easy. It was quite clear that the left-hand hinge was badly damaged while the right-hand hinge was still intact.

Apparently, at some point within the last couple of weeks, the protective metal encasement on the left-side hinge began to bend back so that it was no longer covering the vast majority of the hinge. This seems to be supported quite well by this image, though the length of time it took for this damage to happen isn’t clear.

So after some consultation with Amanda, we decided to bend the hinge back into place if we could. Using a pair of needlenose pliers, we tried to do just that, but the deformed metal component ended up snapping off instead. Well, no biggie — that fixed the problem either one. But now the hinge on the left side is busted, though the bevel fits correctly again. This doesn’t seem to have drastically affected the usability of the LCD itself, though if I push the LCD too far back, it’ll go back as far as it can without my prompting. Well, I’m willing to live with slight defects.