In a previous post, I told the story of replacing the faulty HDD in my Panasonic Toughbook CF-W2. Back then I have followed a guide on a forum linked from repair4laptop.org, which has disappeared since. I also wanted to upgrade the built-in ipw2100 miniPCI WLAN adapter to an ipw2200bg, so I decided to document the upgrade process myself too. The results are here:
First of all, the most important rule is: don’t try to fix if it ain’t broken!! A working Toughbook is a charm, but the same machine as a paperweight is useless. Taking it apart is a long and tricky process, putting it together needs just as much care and attention.
All right, so yours is broken, and isn’t so lucky as “Tsiolkovsky” to have a Panasonic Laptop repair shop around, and you think have the skills, patience, and guts to disassemble it, and YOU UNDERSTOOD THAT THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL GUIDE, AND I TAKE ABSOLUTELY NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY POSSIBLE DAMAGE OR LOSS EVEN REMOTELY CONNECTED TO THIS POST. The fact that I’m managed to repair and upgrade my CF-W2 this way does not guarantee that you’ll be as lucky as me.
Ok, enough said, let’s see the process…
Make sure you have the proper screwdrivers, some chewing gum, or a magnetic head screwdriver, and some thermal compound at hand, also prepare the new parts to be built in. Allow yourself at least an hour’s worth of time dedicated to the process.
1. Back up all your precious data to minimise damage if anything goes wrong.
2. Clear some flat workspace, and have something to hold the screws in.
3. Before shutting down, open the CD/DVD drive cover (there’s a screw beneath to tackle later).
4. Turn off the computer, remove the battery and unplug the power cord.
5. Take a big breath.
6. Remove the plastic cover on the WiFi antenna on the right side of the notebook. It is secured with two plastic tabs. You may need to strain it a bit.
7. Unwind the screw in the CD/DVD drive
8. Unwind the two screws at the wifi antenna on the right side of the laptop.
9. Unscrew the two bolts holding the VGA out connector.
10. Turn the notebook upside down.
11. Unwind the memory extension’s screw, remove the plastic cover.
12. Unwind the three long screws that hold the keyboard, remove the plastic cover.
13. Flip over the notebook.
14. Dislodge the keyboard. On the top, two plastic tabs keep it in place: one to the left of F1 and one to the right of F12, and a couple more plastic tabs around the spacebar. The keyboard is also glued with some sticky tape on three places, so a little force is needed to dislodge it from the casing. Its cable is also needed to be unplugged from the main board. Take extra care not to harm the ribbon cable during the process.
15. Unwind the 6 black screws underneath the keyboard.
16. unwind the 2 hidden screws: these are very tricky. you may consider using a magnetic head screwdriver, or a bit of chewing gum to prevent the escape of these screws into the casing.
17. Close the screen, then turn the notebook upside down. By closing the screen panel you actually secure the casing together while the bottom cover is removed.
18. Unwind all 8 screws on the bottom of the notebook. Some screws may stuck at first disassemble, be sure to use the right tool, otherwise the head will suffer, and you might be unable to take the notebook apart without considerable damage. There are four short, and four longer screws, mind their positions. (Update: Brett told me that if you mix the short and long screws, you might end up punching a hole in the motherboard during the reassemble, so better check it twice!)
19. Unwind the 2 screws securing the screen panel on both sides.
20. Carefully remove the bottom cover.
Now you can access both the HDD and the Wlan card in the miniPCI slot. Apart from the memory extension and the keyboard, these are the two modularly replaceable parts in the Toughbook W2.
21. The Wlan card has two antenna plugs (a main and an auxiliary). Simply, carefully pull them, then you can flip the module from the bay, and insert the upgrade module instead, and finally don’t forget to attach the antenna plugs.
Upgrading to an ipw2200bg or an ipw2915abg doesn’t raise any hardware compatibility issues, only a driver upgrade is needed then. You can find many of these cards on the second-hand market, usually originating from broken notebooks. I got a 2200bg for around $27 on an auction site.
22. Concerning the HDD: you need to know that most Panasonic Toughbooks use a low voltage (3.3V) HDD, which you can’t readily buy in retail shops, so you need to mod a 5V notebook HDD by clipping pins 41 and 44. (At least this worked in a few reported cases, including my Samsung SpinPoint HM080HC 80GB 2,5″ HDD).
I’ve found this HDD upgrade guide useful.
Ok, now that the parts have been replaced, you can put it back together.
23. Secure the back cover with the 2×2 screws fixing the screen panel, and the 4 long and 4 short screws fixing the cover to the casing (remember, DO NOT MIX THEM UP, as the long screw in a short’s place might damage the motherboard), then turn the notebook around and open the screen.
24. Continue with the two hidden screws: again, use a magnetic head screwdriver, or a bit of chewing gum to secure the screws while twisting. Should they fall, you’ll need to open the bottom panel again to get to them.
25. Next, take care of the the 6 black screws.
26. Now comes an important step: clean the surface of the processor (and the metallic part on the bottom of the keyboard), then apply some thermal compound on it. This is particularly important, as otherwise the CPU can get pretty hot, up to an unhealthy 90 degrees centigrade with processor intensive tasks running.
27. Plug the keyboard back, flip the plastic tabs in place. Again, handle the ribbon cable with extra care.
28. Flip the notebook over, secure the keyboard and the plastic cover with the 3 long screws, then the memory extension cover.
29. Flip once more, screw in the 2+1 screws, and put the WiFi antenna cover back in place.
30. Finally, screw the VGA connector’s bolts back to their respective place.
Now put the battery back in place, and hold your breath while starting up the notebook. If it works, well, congratulations, you’re done. In every other case, I’m sorry to say, but now it is your turn to find out what have gone wrong.
Should you be succeed or fail, I’d like to read about it, so please do post a comment here. Thanks!
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Update: This guide has just been linked from repair4laptop.org, where you can find guides for other models and brands as well.
I’ve recently upgraded a CFW2, and also upgraded it with this exact hard drive. You DO need to cut pins 41 and 44.
Samsung SpinPoint HM080HC 80GB
The story.
I put the whole thing back together without cutting the two pins. The machine ran fine, and installed fine. The problem is when you are running on batteries and AC, and unplug the AC while the machine is on. The whole machine goes into a bad hang state.
Once the pins were cut, everything was back to normal.
Here is a link to an image of a mini IDE HD pinout diagram
http://www.unitechelectronics.com/hardriveinfo.htm
I followed your guide step by step and it really saved my butt. Girlfriend had dropped her laptop and it tosted the hard drive. Did everything to try and get it working again but no luck. Though i would have to pay buko-bucks to get it fixed (since she bought it in Japan and it is all in Japanese). Bought a $80 hard drive off newegg. Cut the 2 pins and its still running a week later. with no problems what so ever. Thats so much for putting up this guide, really helped.
My only advice to people doing its is get 2 long strips of tape. tear one up and mark numbers on them and put them on/or near the screw holes. On the other tape, write down the corresponding number that you taped down to the laptop and stick it to the tape. making sure you know which screws go where is where it comes down to.
I followed the guide step by step….My internal hdd had gone kaput so had to take it out…..magic….installed linux(ubuntu)on to the external hdd….now just gotta do that pin cutting job to replace the internal hdd……cheers
I’m thinking of upgrading my harddrive. Does clipping the 2 pins reduce battery life?
Hi Charley,
While I haven’t measured the difference, the battery life did get shorter after the HDD surgery. However, it still depends on many other factors, such as the new HDD drawing more power than the OEM one, and – as we all know – Lithium batteries lose their full capacity over time. That being said, I personally doubt if the clipping of the pins has anything to contribute to this loss.
First, amazing guide. I couldn’t have done it without you.
Second, regarding the on again off again thoughts on pin clipping. The replacement drive I installed (A Seagate ST980815A 80 gig 5400RPM) installed fine and allowed a post without the pins clipped. I went on to install Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) on it and noticed a strange gag at network detection. It appears related to the ipw2100 driver and firmware. That said, it also popped up with an ACPI message. Reading around, I discovered someone had installed a drive without clipping the pins and experienced some ACPI issues with AC power and locking.
Summary: I suspect that while this drive appears to be working fine without pin 41 off, it _may_ be contributing to some ACPI issues, and in this case, causing havoc with the ipw2100. I’ll tape off the pin tomorrow (as per http://www.leog.net/fujp_forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5649&whichpage=2 ) and report back.
I just thought I would drop this out onto the ether should someone else be experiencing strange issues after a non-pin removed HD change.
Thanks once again!
Sincerely,
TJS
UPDATE *SUCCESS*:
After trying to get the pins taped off and wound up mired in a WWTMCO (Why Won’t The Motherboard Come Out) scenario, I gave up on the hope of taping the ribbon and bent pins 41 and 44. If you bend them near the base, you can get them low enough that the ATA female will merge to an almost 100% seated position. This seemed to do the trick.
Handy reference for the pin bending for those out there who get extremely worried:
http://www.unitechelectronics.com/hardriveinfo.htm#3rd
(Note that the above hard disk pinout diagram references a hard disk with the label area on top. In the CF-W2 the hard disk sits with the label down. Pay attention to the pin count and / or use the missing pin 20 as a reference. As with the diagram, pin 44 and 41 are the target pins. 41 is up and right of 44 according to the diagram.)
After reassembly, I powered up the identical Ubuntu 7.10 install and all worked fine. There was no hanging at boot for extended periods and the ipw2100 card worked normally.
The net result of this experiment is that you _must_ remove contact of pins 41 and 44 (Alternate posts comments on pin 44 may or may not apply to your model — I’d bend both unless you enjoy the disassembly process). If you fail to remove contact with pins 41 and 44, you will generate conflicts with ACPI and potentially other power ’strangeness’ that may adversely affect your system performance.
Your system may post fine and _appear_ normal without disengaging the 5v connectors, but I can assure you that the woes I was experiencing were a direct byproduct of leaving them connected.
ADDENDUM NOTES: Image http://files.forwhatitworths.com/cfw2_pic08.jpg should probably have two additional arrows indicating where the _four_ combined LCD hinge points are and a warning that you can easily strip the two long screws — be careful (I have since stripped both
). In addition to this, the long set screws that seat the back plastic laptop cover should be carefully tightened – they too are subject to stripping.
Also, regarding the heat sink compound application:
The heat sink compound should be normal depth on the center contact, while the left contact needs to be remarkably deep (1mm or more in some instances) as the contact seems to float slightly higher than the chip.
Amazing documentation once again.
Hi guys
my gf dug up a toughbook cf-w2 but the lcd is suffering. it does not function properly but isnt broken. i think it could possibly be the ribbon or something along those lines – unfortunately i do not kno much sbout these things so if someone could give me their email and i can send them a pic of what it looks like, so that they can tell me what it might be as i do not want to get scammed when taking it for repair.
thanks so much in advance guys
Dear tamasdecsi,
Thank you so much for these EXCELLENT instructions! They saved my life in repairing a customer’s toughbook (HD upgrade)! I found out that you ABSOLUTELY must clip pins 41 and 44 for it to work properly, and that it DOES NOT impede detection or use in a regular system; we cloned the old HD to the new one without incident in our desktop server with appropriate notebook drive adapters.
I also found out that you MUST NOT under ANY circumstances turn the notebook rightside up or vertically while working on it; the CD eject switch, power switch, power switch board, and notebook lid release switches will fall out! 2 of these have micro springs, and if you lose them or cannot put them back the right way… look out! Thankfully I am a technician of 32 years, and another one of my techs and I were able to re-assemble correctly, with a new 160 gig drive, and none the worse for wear… but a lot of time and a few choice words spent. I started off saying “I will never get near one of these again”, but I ended up saying, “okay, this is doable!”
I owe it all to you, and thank you so much for posting this vital information! It really saved our butts!
Dr. Jeff Parker
St. Pete Computers
Thank you so much for these EXCELLENT instructions!
You ABSOLUTELY must clip pins 41 and 44 for it to work properly.
Everything worked perfect!!!
I popped in a Samsung HM121HC (120GB) and it works very
well. Clipping pin 41 was complicated. Had to clip off
part of the plastic guard in order to get to the pin. Also
need to take care when removing the plastic cover of the
wireless antenna. We first freed the bottom end near the
SD-card slot.
Hey…
Am revisiting this place, where i had been half a year ago. The update is that now I have xp-sp3 and server 2k3 R2 running on an external HDD instead of Ubuntu.
Here is how I did it.
http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176
and very here’s the surpise…Automated conversion of O.S. to make it boot from a USB
http://www.usboot.org/
I’ve had a CF-W2 for quite a few years now (around 5-6 yrs?, I think). The computer has been acting strange for a while and I finally decided the HD is going bad. I stumbled onto this website (THANK YOU) and went ahead with replacing the HD. I tried successfully to buy the exact HD mentioned here (80G Samsung) and followed the procedure. My computer is back and running the way it was intended.
I did cut pins 41 and 44. Cutting pins 44 is a no brainer since the original Toshiba HD also had pin 44 missing. I also cut pin 41 out but am still curious what this does.
You’ve done a gr8 work. thanx
Awesome! My manager had one of these notebooks and I opened about 2 years ago with no instructions and it was a nightmare! Took a day to do and was very frustrating. Now my bosses HD was failing so I had to do his. I followed your instructions with the addition of Sean M’s tip to number both the screw holes and screws (I just numbered a bunch of little white tags, folded part of the sticky part for easy removal and put them beside each screw hole where removed, then taped the screw to a piece of paper and wrote the number on the tape with a Sharpie) it seems like a lot of work but it made reassembly sooo much faster and easier IMHO. All in all took less than 2 hours for the whole process. Thank-you very much for this post!!
Hi, thanks for the detailed instructions and pictures. I was able to back up all my files when the computer crashed. Thanks
However, when i put my laptop back together again, the screen would not come on, even if the HD and cd rom shows activity. What did i do wrong? what can i check?
don’t worry, i donot hold you liable for anything. i am actually learning a lot from this site.
Hi I had the same problem with my W2 and needed to replace the hard drive. I had a 60 gig Hitachi Travelstar model IC25N060ATMR04-0 and followed these directions. I cut pin 41 & 44 and installed it. Once I powered the W2 all I heard from the drive is clicking but would not boot and the BIOS could not find the drive. Can anyone tell me what may be wrong? I now have a 60 gig drive that I can’t use and a W2 that is dead.
Thanks to this post and discussion, and especially the instructions at http://homepage1.nifty.com/~goemon/pc/pana/lets_note3.htm, I managed to replace the failing Toshiba MK4025GASL HD of my CF-T2 with a Transcend TS64GSSD25-M 64GB SSD drive.
A somewhat scary operation what with the drive being so expensive, but I was encouraged by the SSD manual claiming support for 3.3V also (in addition to 5.0V). I did remove both of the pins, and in fact the cable had no hole for pin 44.
The machine is now booting off the new drive, and I’m not noticing any significant speed difference or anything. But now there is no sound. A silent laptop with a matte display, no such things on the market today.
Hi,
Great posts. Very helpful. I am about to start replacing a drive and this has been excellent. One question. Has anybody experimentated with much larger drives? 320GB, etc??