HP 15-p Laptop Refurb & Chill - LFC 

31:00 - "Humans are gross!" 😂🤣 I love your vids, everything from new builds to SMC soldering. Keep up the good work!

2 things, I sometimes use my prying tool for such jobs, after I heated it up a bit, like 70 or 80 degrees. I use a glove so I don't burn my finger. Cuts through the adhesive tape good enough. Second, on people who casually use computers, like browsing, movies, light office use etc, I just install a 128 or 256 cheapo ssd. Waste of space for more.

The sound deadening is definitely noticeable.

3:42 what a nice view, love the hills and stuff.

hmmm hadnt thought of using a second wireless antenna this way - thank you Adamant IT

Screen bezel on those I find heat gun low heat from a slight Distance and loosen the Adhesive that way .. fluent left to right ,, Right to left Move ... Works for Me Graham ..

I like it how you went the extra mile, that shows class.

Never a waste of time, I enjoy watching you work and it's a learning experience for me, especially if I come across a similar situation.. I do have a question, how do you remember what screws go to what, when they are similar?

Your channel is highly organised (LFC...,LBC... etc) I wish I had come across it long ago. Thanks so much for selfless sharing ...

When I refurb machines, I'll sometimes buy new Intel badges. You can get 'em on eBay for cheap. I like stickers, so I think it's nice to put on a clean, new badge :)

Good Job on the referb!

I find that a bit of heat helps soften up the adhesive. Use your hot air at the lowest setting to get the area warm, but it shouldn't be too hot to melt the plastic. IPA is good at breaking up some adhesives too. (especially if you run into hot snot) You will have to play it by feel as to whether you need to wait for the IPA to dry and re-wet again for it to break down the adhesive, or have to keep it "moist" while lightly prying away.

Love this kinda vid!!

good to see that the oustide/air compressor cam stayed on the channel

Nice job done Graham. I was a tech for a secondary upper school for 20 years, and yes it was so gruesome some times that it would make you puke (witch some one did a time on the laptop)

This is the best visible way I have seen and helps me with my computer take-down

Great! With a missing bezel screw cover, I would remove the one you have so it looks symmetrical

would love to see more videos like this

''This was a waste of time ''. No , you now have peace of mind that its all o.k so it was worth the extra 10-15 minutes of time

Thanks it was very useful i have one the same brand and need to do that thank you!!!!

I bought one one these without any OS installed. Was going to use it for testing Linux distros. That turned out not to be ideal. Later I found out it had a WIn10 key embedded in the hardware somewhere. I was also disappointed with the weak screen brightness and narrow viewing angle. Great video & dual channel RAM tip.

Way back in the day I used fix broken old electronics and oftentimes I would find myself completely disassembling an unusually grimy piece and soaking the plastic housing parts in a solution of warm water and soap in order to get it clean.

Respect fully agree 26:55 ! Respect for that ! I'm doing refubrising like you but like most of people just format disk put new system and that's it. doing this job 18 years and saw so many bad second hand selling to that's crazy. :)

have a similar hp laptop that has a hinge problem. 🤔 the molded case standoffs were broken, better now with thru case screws. 🧐 thanks a lot. 🥳 great video.🤩⛷🐯🍑 ps great outside the door cottage view.🏘🚓

Thank you very much indeed

3:36 - nice to see that car is still there undamaged & no little towrags threatening it at all!

i would try to use hot air to warm the bezel up.. should make the glue more liquid.. ofc choose a temp below plastic melting point.. then use prying tool

loctite or 1 drop of krazy glue on the monitor hinge screws keeps them from coming loose with general use. But isn't so strong it will make removing the screws impossible in case of a monitor replacement. Loctite is my preferred option mainly because it is designed to come loose. Krazy glue is easier to access, so the less krazy glue you use, the better.

yes, and that is exactly what we would sound like, when we said 'you didnt do the thermal paste'

When removing adhesive from glued on bezels, I have some success by applying isopropyl alcohol and slipping an old credit card or other plastic in between. lots of alcohol will soften the adhesive a bit.

Love the Domo kun top! :D

I refurbed my one. Did a smashing job. I even renewed the thermal glue on the RAM and changed the button cell. I can’t get it to start since. It’s shame. I followed videos on YT as well. 🤣👍🇬🇧

amazing video

IsoPropyl Alcohol softens the glue from Dual Side sticky tape. This makes it MUCH EASIER to remove it WITHOUT trace and WITHOUT damage. Use a syringe with needle to make sure you are precisely dropping the IPA where it should be between the surface and the dual side sticky tape.

I laugh having fixed my fair share of laptops and stand alone pc . People just don't keep them clean next to poor heat sink paste jobs from the factory!!! Enjoy seeing You find the same problems i,ve found over the year's cheer's mate!

Great refurbish! Amazing what an ssd does to these laptops

I tend to use a hairdryer at distance to warm the adhesive slightly this then lets it out a little easier

Dealing with adhesives sticking screens/cases/etc - get yourself one of those El Cheapo bean type bag thingumys that you put into the microwave to warm up (for pain relief). Warm it up, and then lay it on where the adhesive is. It doesn't always work, but it usually helps by loosening it up quite a bit. Also good when trying to remove glued in lithium batteries. You don't need it to be super hot, but be aware it will 'sweat' a bit. It's 99% the same as the iFixit thing but without the ridiculous cost.

Adding the WiFi antenna seems like the best solution as a lot of laptops have a "WiFi whitelist" where they will refuse to boot with a replacement WiFi card. There is a solution to this, but it requires modifying the BIOS (or flashing something like Coreboot).

Hey great video, I like watching all the attention you put to details, now I'm itching to give some maintenance to my and my family's PCs. btw, I know you recommend the Tesco windows cleaner, but since there's no Tesco in my country, how can I know if a windows cleaner is good or suitable for this type of PC cleaning?

Hair dryer, to melt the adhesive, slightly. Same method for removing memory heatsinks.

to remove glued or taped bezels you can use IPA and or a heat gun to assist.

Gosh I'd like to be an apprentice at your shop, I would just love to tinker with pc's for living. PS. With laptops you haven't opened (in a while) theres always that one screw... or one two or three that you have missed xD

Perhaps a guitar pick for lcd panel removal and or a little heat. Love your videos and style!

42:00 Hello, you are wrong about the wifi card and the antenna, in rare cases like that windows installs the wrong driver where port 2 is the main one and port 1 is the secondary one i.e. turned off, if you had downloaded the official driver from the site you would have had a full signal because the ports would have been returned to normal order! This is 100% correct!

Great work. Fused keyboards are a fundamental evil.

Rubbing alcohol can loosen the adhesive so if you spray the area and it should help

16:11 You could've dripped some IPA on the tape to get it loosen up, or try heating it up with the heat gun on low?

hi to add to how i would deal with adhesive tape of any kind i would use low heat either dry up the glue/ adhesive careful not to heat the LCD glass or burn the pixels i prefer it over the slow and stead cut the adhesive away and risking hitting the screen

I work in IT too but on the side I refurbish desktops and laptops on the side. I stick with three SSD brands that do not hurt the wallet. Adata, Silicon Power, and I just recently found Timetec for 1TB for $85.

I have the exact job in front of me right now... upgrading (Clone) to SSD and 16 gig 1.35v ram the inside of the 17 inch looks exactly the same.

I usually use WD40 to remove glue, stickers etc... maybe this helps with the sticky Display as well?

When I do restoration though, if the keyboard is too grimy, I go as far as taking off all of the most commonly used keys, clean the underneath of them and also throw the keycaps into a thorough wash. There is a risk of breaking the keycap/switches but when you get experienced with that enough, the likelihood isn't as high as long as you aren't dealing with laptops that has plastics visually very brittle and falling apart. Maybe you should've kept the 8GB RAM stick, it's probably worth more than what you paid for the entire laptop!

I like to use the classic start menu

Getting the bezel off laptops where they use double-sided tape (which is a lot of them) can be a little annoying. Sometimes when I do LCD replacements, a new bezel is also included. Some laptops (I'm looking at you Lenovo) have very delicate LCD screens that are only held in with friction that requires you to pry up on a corner to free it. I've broken a handful of LCD screens removing bezels or prying up on them.

That red color is... hypnotizing.

Might be an idea to upload uncut cleaning videos like this on a second channel, I find them super relaxing and I bet a lot of others would too.

I do it the same way like you. Only always replace bios bat also and a keyboard like that also. And battery time need more then 2/3 hours or in will replace that to. And also always a SSD and dust free and cooling ect...... Also that sticker you take off putt it back on the clue you will take it easy off the old clue by tap on it with the sticker. And soon there will be Windows 11

These model Beats Audio HPs have a real bad issue with overheating due to the heat sink now functioning properly. Hopefully this one is ok. But just a heads up. Also on HPs you can just hit F9 on boot to the Boot options. F10 BIOS and F2 for the onboard diagnostics.

I’ve never had luck with Windows update giving good drivers, but for a laptop like that they’re probably fine-

When it comes to things like the glue holding the bottom of the bezel on, I'd dribble a little Isopropranol on there to dissolve the glue a bit. Works on MacBook batteries, why not HP bezel?

Hey Graham you can just press F9 instead of Esc then F9, also if the hard drive is blank and the BIOS is configured to UEFI, your USB stick should boot as the default device without the need of going into the boot options :D

I just upgraded my wifes new second hand HP 15-ab269sa today with an ssd, it's only a crucial m300 275gb but she doesn't need much space, and I also found out the return key doesn't work so she needs to use enter on the keypad

Same as my first ever laptop I bought with my own money when I was 15/16 years old. Damn I miss that laptop, the one I have now is far FAR more powerful but I still miss the red one (We Nicknamed Chelsea after Chelsea from Akame Ga Kill (Anime).

Would the application of small heat be enough to loosen the binding powers of double sided tape at 17:00 ?

One thing I do when "refurbishing" machines is enter sysprep (CRTL+SHFT+F3) instead of entering a username at the welcome screen. I can then install all the drivers/updates etc. before rebooting to the "out of box experience". It just means the customer isn't stuck with "user" as their username when they first get the laptop and is free to enter whatever they want. Is there any further testing you carry out? For example I use a HTML keyboard checker and just run over every key to make sure they work, and then plug something into every port on a laptop to test them etc.

I've never used This PC and User Files icon on desktop. Winkey+E FTW!

I see you got a nice place now. No more motorcycles or car noises.

Heat the edge of the screen up with a hair dryer ( less concentrated heat than your hot air station) and then continue to pry apart.

i use to use a hair dryer with low temp on the bezel

also much respect for not just changing that bios battery "just because you can" it proper annoys me when people do shit like that thus ramping up ewaste

I have several Crucial BX drives, they fall apart when you put a load on it. The MX drives (with dram cache) are so much better. In one of my systems I replaced a 2 TB BX with a 2 TB MX version, so much better and worth the little bit extrra cash.

I would go into PowerShell removing the apps. most of these apps can be reinstalled as long as you haven't tampered with the windows store. at the very least go into the settings app and turn off a lot of superflous apps from running in the bg, windows uses a lot of VRAM for suspended apps, so you want to keep those to a minimum. there's a page for it on windows 10 settings, but for windows 11 it's in the apps and features, you click the 3 dots on the app and if it has the option there, it will say advanced options, and then you will see background app permissions and you just set it to never run in the background.

Is that your red car Adamant nice little whip there

use rubbing alcohol to make theglue strip less sticky. It doesn't feel very good, while doing it, but the result is what counts.

dear graham, what kind of air compressor are you using ? any recommendations on that one ?

To get around the microsoft account during setup, just type test@test.com and enter a garbage password, it will say opps something went wrong click ok and you are at the enter a local unsername screen

My brother has the same laptop, but grey with different specs.. I used a string like you would cut wallmate isolation with a hot metal wire. Takes a bit of patience, but I think it is quite safe for the LCD. EDIT: Also, I´ve had BX500 240GB, and those bastards get HOT as hell. sold one, and installed the other on my mother's laptop with a thermal Pad between the controller and encloser. those are easy to open, but lifespan wise, those are not good.

Ur level of refurb is exactly what I would expect if purchasing a refurb product.

Those HP display bezels are flimsy

Good day sir love your video i learned a lot from your amazing channel. Can the BK 2709B measure smd ceramic caps like in the phone and laptops and tablet and smd resistors/diodes please kindly reply to know if i should buy it looking forward to your reply. i was looking at the Fluke 115 Compact True-RMS Digital Multimeter but if the BK 2709B can do the same job for cheaper price then i will buy it one time. What meter you use?

On the keyboard fluid "spritzing", am guessing you have to be careful with the amount. I prefer applying onto the cloth rather than onto the keyboard.. Learned that the hard way, I think I went too hard on the trigger and didn't clean quickly enough.

I had Bios Batteries which had 3 Volts but if they were placed inside a device they dropped down to 2 Volts or lower. I would replace if it it would have 2.9 Volt

I didn't see where you tested the sound, making sure the speakers worked.. I can also see this laptop was used as a gaming laptop where you can see certain keys are worn more than others.

I'm curious if you have tried upgrading a processor. :)

good useful video

I have my desk top Ausus ,when I shut it won't and for some time it switches it's self on , what can be the problem ?

to make the keyboard shine again and look new, a little bit of armoral tire dressing on a cloth and wipe it down .It works great! WD40 also works great when taking off glue from stickers

Spray the area with IPA it will soften up the glue quite nicely.

You can refresh the buttons with heat.

use a heat pad to soften the glue on the tape

Consider possibly sticking the old HDD in an $8 external enclosure and giving it back to the owner?

how about dripping a little isop. to try and dissolve the adhesive.

I wouldn't use windows' built in driver updater, snappy driver installer origin usually gets better drivers, although it's bit me once in the past 5 years

Hi Graham which screwdriver you use is ot something good?

I have a variant of this laptop and i get power on and keyboard leds are on but no display . Any idea ?

For older systems like this Linux runs a whole ton better than Windows. I use a T430 with an updated Gen 3 I7 true 4 core / 8 thread with 2133 memory DD3L. The OS drive is a sata ssd ( could have gone with an NVME ) and my home/folder drive is a platter 1TB which works very well.

Is that possible to put there some alcohol or just heat it to remove that bezel?

Use the guitar pick thing from iFixit or use a thin guitar pick to separate the bezel from the double sided tape.

May be try alcohol to weaken the adhesive? I'm seeing IFixit and others are using IPA to weaken the glue between battery and the case.