Everex Stepnote - Replace DVD?

aidan80

This one has me lost and without throwing the thing against the wall out of pure frustration does anyone out there have any idea how to remove an optical drive from an Everex Stepnote VA2001T?

It’s my wife’s laptop which won’t read CD’s anymore reads DVD’s perfectly.. I bought a new DVDRW drive but can’t seem to figure out how to pull the old optical drive? There’s nothing obvious, no screws for it no clips. I can’t even get the cover properly off the bottom of the laptop as two of the screws at the back near the LCD hinge seem to be glued in place or stuck they won’t budge and they do seem to be holding everything else in place. I can’t get at the DVD from the HDD bay either, HDD came out as expected in two seconds.

I tried to contact Everex for over a month with only a few responses in broken English back to me all of which were irrelevant I don’t think the person who read my questions could even understand what I was asking. Their website it a joke, I tried to get XP drivers for this thing and the links are all dead. I contacted about this as well a few times without any response. I will never in my life ever buy anything from Everex ever again. Grrrr…

dynamik

Can you throw a few pictures up?

aidan80

Here's a few pictures:

It looks like Everex isn't working in the US anymore..grrr. The replacement drive I've got of course does not fit the stupid laptop anyway! I thought I could pull the plastic cover off the front of the old drive and stick it on the new one.. same as I've done with desktops but not with this stupid thing. I can't afford to pay $100 for a used DVD drive for this thing or $200 for a new one.. The laptop wouldn't really even worth $200 now! I mean you can get a new laptop for $350!







Thanks for the help I'll update my eBay add and if anyone out there wants it they can come get it otherwise I'll just use it to kill virus' off customers computers.

Thanks,

dynamik

What a hassle. You haven't even been able to get it all the way apart yet? You might just want to get an external USB drive and use it as needed. It doesn't seem like this is worth putting a lot of time and money into.

skrpune

have you checked ebay for parts? if you do some googling, you may be able to find non-exact replacement parts that will fit - that's what I ended up doing with my dvd drive for my old Vaio laptop. I lucked out and at the time I was working for a small IT repair shop, so I just went through the bins of spare parts and found a drive that had the same internal connections...I had to do some modifications to the door/plastic cover part, but I had a working drive after that.

Your other option is to sell this one bit by bit for parts. You can sell it whole as is for parts, or you can piece meal it out and make more money. There are probably other folks out there who are looking for drive covers, cooling fan, wrist rest...etc. and there's money to be made in the parts business.

joecontreras

I dismantle and repair laptops as part of my job duties on a regular basis. I see about 5 to 6 a week that I have to take apart and repair with most being the bigger name brand systems but I have worked on some Everex laptops.

If I am not mistaken I think you have to take the screws off the bottom to release the keyboard, then remove the power button panel (this may be held by the screws on the bottom or the screws on the hinge cover), then remove the screws holding the keyboard in place and once you remove that you may see a screw or clip that holds the dvd drive in place.

Most decently put together laptops have a screw on the bottom with a picture that looks like a circle with a dot in the middle that once unscrewed releases the dvd drive. If you have that and have removed that screw you may just have to "very gently" pry the drive out as sometimes they get wedged in real good.