As an ardent lover of all things electronic, I get so so sad when I see images of busted
up-computers.
Like, PETA commercial sad.
And because I still have not found a chapter of “People for the Ethical Treatment of
Electronics,” I’m here to contribute to the cause the best way I know how: teaching
you folks how to repair your broken gizmos.
Hi, I’m MJ with iFixit, and today I’m going to show you how to replace a broken
display assembly in a white Unibody MacBook.
Compared to a lot of other notebooks this repair is surprisingly simple, but any successful
self-repair person will tell you that good, clear instructions are key.
So, while this video is a great overview, I wouldn’t recommend doing this repair without
first going to iFixit.com and pulling up the corresponding repair guide.
We’ll put a link in the description to make it easy peasy.
While you’re pulling up the repair guide, I’ll gather my parts and tools.
For this repair, I’ll need...
1 Phillips #00 Screwdriver 2 Spudger 3 T8 Torx Screwdriver
Instead of getting separate drivers I am going to use our 54 piece bit driver kit.
It has all the bits I will ever need for any electronics repair.
To get started I'm going to flip the computer over and begin to remove the lower case by
removing all eight of the phillips screws along
the bottom.
Once those are removed, lift the case slightly at the back of your computer and slide your
fingers between the upper and lower cases until the it pops off.
With all the guts of the MacBook exposed, the First thing we want to do is disconnect
the battery from the logic board, to prevent any power surges.And to do that we are going
to use the flat end of the spudger to pry one end up and then the other, rocking it
up and out of place.
With the battery safely disconnected we are going to move on to the rear vent which is
held in place by a total of 8 screws.
Now that the rear vent has been removed we have full access to all the cables that are
attached to the display assembly.
The first ones we are going to disconnect are the Airport/Bluetooth cables with come
up with a little help from the pointy end of our spudger.
Next up we are going to disconnect the Display Data Cable.
You are going to want to gently pull the black tab lifting the locking mechanism up, then
pull the entire cable straight back, parallel with the logic board.
Once that cable is disconnected we can move straight to removing the display assembly.
To get started rotate the computer on its side and open it up.
Using your T8 Torx driver, remove the remaining screw on both of the hinges.
With those final screws out carefully begin separate the upper case and display assembly.
And that is all there is to it.
All I have to do is install my new display assembly and reassemble my computer.
Of course you can find all the parts and tools for this and many other repairs at iFixit.com,
and if you run into any problems during your repairs there are lots of solutions in the
macbook repair guide on our site.
For all the latest tear downs and repair videos be sure to subscribe to our youtube channel
and follow us on twitter at twitte.com/ifixit.
Thanks for watching and happy repairing.