I have a Dell Latitude C800 Notebook. I had to flip the unit over to make sure it was a C800; that point seems insignificant now but will make a bit more sense in just a minute.
The notebook is at least six years old.
About four months ago it fell out of my bag, roughly waist high, and dropped three feet or so; the latch broke.
The touchpad has been replaced twice to fix a drifting mouse pointer -- both times under warranty and neither time fixing the problem for too terribly long. Unplugging and replugging the touchpad connector fixes the problem for a short while. Using a PS2 mouse is a better solution.
Maybe a year ago the notebook started freezing when it was bumped a bit. I took the keyboard off and remade all the connections I could see. The problem went away for about a year.
When it reappeared I did the same thing. I took the keyboard off and remade all the connections I could see. This did not fix the problem. I repeated. Repeated again. Rinsed once and repeated a third time.
Well, I repeated a couple of more times, each time I'd try to take a little more out of the notebook. Once or twice I found something I'd missed.
Two days ago I sneezed with the notebook on my lap and it hung. I rebooted and ... and ... and I'd like to say I was browsing porn and the same thing that caused John Belushi to fall backward while on the ladder in Animal House caused my PC to hang .... but I wasn't browsing porn and besides, it would be giving me too much credit. (The hang/hung joke is too easy to make and I refuse to go for it.)
So, I got back to work making sure to do a save every minute or so. Eventually I overpunctuated and the extra pounding on the keyboard caused a crash. I started the reboot before coming to my senses and grabbing a screwdriver.
I took the whole thing apart. I had the screen off, the drives out, RAM out, the modem out, daughter boards were removed, if there was a screw to be unscrewed I unscrewed it and removed whatever it was holding down.
Sort of satisfied I slapped it all back together. The whole thing took about 20 minutes.
Thus far there have been no problems. And I should point out that between tying "Thus" and "far" I took a break and juggled the C800, a bowling ball and a kitten while whistling The Sabre Dance.
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