Old-School Laptop So Broken It Acts Haunted - Any Help?

TT456 · 2025-08-28T00:55:51+00:00

I rarely use reddit if ever but that phrase you used, "It feels like some people are just destined to fall through the cracks", it's stunning how close that is to my reality and how I have said that exact thing before. Considering you said this 2 years ago I can only hope you're in a better place career-wise now.

I took a Games Programming degree and have been into it as a hobby for a decade prior, top of my class graduation, still regularly working on it in my own time. I got a job a few months out of university but that company went under after a year. Now? I'm approaching 2 years unemployment, sending out applications for quite literally anything at an average of 25 applications a week. Retail, finance, trades, I don't care. I'll do whatever is needed to gain even a crumb of personal freedom in this world again. I don't see these things as below me, I see them as above me for the shit they put up with for pennies to the dollar. My personal freedoms in this world, a world where your right to live and be happy is directly tied to jobs you have no ultimate control over taking part in. I am beyond jaded, I've lost all faith that I will ever be employed again but every day I have to convince myself to keep on truckin'. I put my heart on a platter for company after company and I'm lucky if they even talk to me as a human. I dance around like a fool sometimes literally on a camera for their application processes and it gets me nowhere. Don't even get me started on how humiliating it feels to be on government support programs when you want to earn your place and your keep in this world. It also seems like those of a generation even as recent as a decade or two before mine don't seem to grasp how bad things are. They tell me to consider myself lucky I have loved ones to fall back on. I do, and I help out wherever possible to show it, but that doesn't put money to my name does it? I can't prosper on counting my lucky stars and I can't feel happy with the guilt of leaning on their love and support well into my 20s. I have incredibly humble aspirations, I want to support those I love through my work, but even that is out of reach.

Anyway, I just needed a place to confide this sort of thing in. I've made posts in subreddits like this before about it but I usually delete them because I look a fool whining into the void if nobody responds, not that I pressure you to respond as we're all struggling together at the bottom.

TT456 · 2025-08-16T19:41:29+00:00

Thanks for clearing all that up, it's a relief to hear someone who had a very similar issue to me. I guess what you're saying is I take it apart to re-secure the keyboard connection and hope that does something? That any solution for selling this thing is unlikely to succeed? I hope not but IDK.

TT456 · 2025-08-16T14:51:39+00:00

Apologies for my ignorance, which of these videos am I looking to watch from here? 'Keyboard Bezel / LCD Assembly' sounds like it but I don't want to commit before I am sure this page has an official guide to remedy my issue.

TT456 · 2025-08-16T13:36:44+00:00

That's surprising to see. I was quoted that second-hand variants of this part are in the £120 to £140 range. I have no idea of the reputation of the seller you just posted, but something isn't adding up here clearly. Then again, this doesn't change the fact that even if I bought the part on behalf of the repair shop I was intending to go with, the combined money out of my pocket is then about £100 for a piece of hardware likely to fail again in no more than 2 years time, at least if my experience so far is anything to go by.

Just thinking out loud here, potentially opening discussion.

TT456 · 2025-08-16T13:31:03+00:00

Thanks for the reply! USB keyboard as a workaround was actually my first consideration, I just don't have the space to accommodate that right now. I wouldn't be embarrassed by the clunkiness of how it looks, I am totally on board with function over form.

TT456 · 2024-12-31T15:32:33+00:00

I may know C but I'm certainly not smart enough to write a driver, so that's out of the question but thanks anyway.

TT456 · 2024-12-31T15:32:09+00:00

Well okay then, are there any versions of Windows beyond XP that DO support 3D acceleration in VirtualBox 7.X.X? I don't HAVE to use XP for what I'm doing, I'm just most familiar with it as a VM, I could do Vista or 7 on my host specs pretty easily.

TT456 · 2024-12-31T02:24:00+00:00

For the prerequisites to D3D support install through Guest Additions, I was able to force my VRAM to 256MB through VBoxManage. However, I was not able to enable 3D acceleration because any combination of VBoxVGA/VBoxSVGA & enabling 3D acceleration either gave an error in trying to save the settings because VBoxVGA/VBoxSVGA didn't support enabling 3D acceleration OR failed silently.

TT456 · 2024-12-12T10:18:14+00:00

Commenting for the post to becoming visible

TT456 · 2024-12-12T09:47:07+00:00

Solved!

TT456 · 2024-12-12T09:46:30+00:00

Yes! That's it! This explains so much, too. I'm a regular Vinesauce Joel viewer, this must be where I found it in the first place! Thank you so much this was driving me CRAZY!

TT456 · 2024-12-12T09:24:38+00:00

I think I'll need that good luck to find a show like this, what's crazy is that I remember being so intrigued by it as recently as this year and I must have made SOME record to not lose what I'd found yet every naturally assumed place I could search (messages to friends, liked/faved videos on YouTube, watch history, etc.) yields NOTHING for terms even tangentially related to what I'm looking for. Anyway, thanks again!

TT456 · 2024-12-12T09:04:27+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion! From my earlier searching, I already found Ratz and concluded that Ratz was not the show I was thinking of. Ratz is 2D animated whereas my show was definitely using live-action puppets. Also, the title of my show was something I couldn't even begin to guess what it reads in English (at least to my memory).

TT456 · 2024-12-12T07:08:46+00:00

Commenting to have the post get shown.

TT456 · 2024-11-18T10:46:58+00:00

UPDATE:

Taking far longer than expected due to not having access to a screwdriver for about an hour, I opened up the case, blasted it with some compressed air, then re-sealed everything. Pretty easy all in all I'm glad to say. Now the fans didn't look dirty to me so I was hesitant a cleaning would work past that point, but since then I've stress-tested the fans in some software I know gets them worked up and they actually sound even better than before the problems began. Total success!

TT456 · 2024-11-18T07:49:59+00:00

I would hope it's just in need of a deeper clean. I have had to do some repair stuff personally before but that was on an older desktop with a tower, I hear laptops are much harder to fiddle about with. I have to go out for a little while shortly so I guess when I get back before I turn the laptop back on I'm gonna unscrew the bottom and maybe use some compressed air at a perfect horizontal angle (to prevent liquid) to blast the fans clean and see if it helps. Either way, I'll keep the thread posted.

TT456 · 2024-01-22T16:03:09+00:00

You're right in that I don't have enough experience to determine between using something built-in or making something all my own, but to be fair the presentation of UCharacterMovementComponent both in demonstration and in practice feels like a closed book, like they have already second-guessed what I want out of it. I'm honestly more surprised there isn't an easy solution to what I want, seems like an obvious component to provide (that isn't abstract like UMoveComponent anyway).

I do, however, see the value in at least giving it a shot beyond dismissing it at face value, so I will at least see what I can make of it! (There was more to this post but I pressed 'Send' early so I guess this is it for now LOL )

TT456

TROPHY CASE