Evidently none of the laptop companies think a hard drive will ever fail.
Today's fun replacement. Dell Inspiron N5110. Remove RAM, DVD drive, battery and case screws from the bottom. Flip it over and remove keyboard. Take the shield plate of. Remove top part of case, disconnect all cables and remove motherboard. Flip motherboard over and remove hard drive. Then everything in reverse before you can even find out if it will work.
1.5 hours of effort to do what used to take 30 seconds.
NONE of them want to put a hatch on the bottom of the case anymore-probably saves them $1 in costs.
AARRGGHH!! I want to do evil things to some design people.
and then I get to reinstall Windows 7-that is actually the easiest part of the whole mess.
= new reply since forum marked as read
It's just as bad. I'll be doing the display cable thing this weekend.
I agree with liberal N proud, they don't want it fixed. They want you to buy another one.
And what's with some cheap cable and connectors being $20? And why would it fail after 1 year?
Dell should change their name to Dixie, home of the disposable laptop.
You don't need to remove the RAM or MB.
The entire top of the case, surrounding the keyboard comes off.
It's still harder than it needs to be. Sorry you had to go through that.. At least it is now very clean and probably running cooler 
