Help & troubleshooting

Laptops

• Laptop repair or replacement? A cost-based decision guide

  A good rule: if the repair costs more than 50% of a used replacement, replace. But the details matter — age, fault, upgrades, and sentimental value all shift the line. Here's how we think about it in the workshop.

• Laptop overheating, loud fan and throttling — step-by-step fix

  An overheating laptop throttles itself, making everything slow. 90% of the time it's dust in the fan or dried-out thermal paste. Both are fixable — and fixing them can make a 5-year-old laptop feel new.

• Laptop painfully slow, long boot, occasional freezes — is the drive dying?

  If your laptop started slow one day and has never got better, the drive is almost certainly dying. SSDs fail silently, HDDs fail noisily. Either way, act now — the window to save your data is not forever.

• Laptop keyboard keys not working — liquid, crumbs or failed ribbon?

  A laptop keyboard with dead keys, stuck keys, or an entire row out is telling you one of four specific things — and the fix differs wildly. Diagnose before you buy a replacement keyboard.

• Laptop hinge broken, screen wobble or cracked case — fix or replace?

  A wobbly laptop screen or a crack around the hinge will only get worse. They start small — annoying but usable — and end with the top half of the laptop ripped off the bottom. Fix it now or pay a lot more later.

• Laptop won't turn on or black screen — step-by-step diagnosis

  A laptop that won't turn on has maybe six possible causes. Work through them in the right order and you'll know in 20 minutes whether it's a £10 fix at home or needs to go to the workshop.

• Spilled liquid on your laptop — what to do in the first 10 minutes

  The first ten minutes after a spill decide whether your laptop lives or becomes scrap. Almost every 'rice doesn't work' post online is a laptop that was handled wrong in the first 60 seconds. Here's what to do.