By Martin Jansen, Owner of Jansen-PCINFO
My sister gave me an old laptop that has been sitting in a closet for a few years. It is an Asus X551MA budget laptop with 4GB and a 500GB hard drive. When sold the laptop ran Windows 8.1, but had been upgraded to Windows 10.
I’m pretty sure that this laptop was very slow, knowing how Windows gets “garbaged up” over time. 4GB is not really enough to run Windows 10 efficiently. My intention was to change all that.
First, I found a YouTube video on how to deconstruct the laptop. The instructions were easy to follow, but soon I discovered that the laptop had already been opened. Prying off the keyboard and releasing three ribbon cables, I saw that the battery was missing. I also saw a blank plastic piece instead of a working DVD drive – another budget cutting move by Asus.
Further into the video, I saw that the one 4GB memory module was located on the underside of the motherboard. Fortunately the memory wasn’t soldered in as in modern laptops, but there was some doubt in online discussions whether the 4GB could be upgraded to 8GB. The hard drive, however, was easily accessible and removed.
Decision Time
Did I want to spend the time and resources to refurbish this laptop? I couldn’t change the lower end CPU, but the other parts needed to upgrade the laptop were readily available.
In the end I decided to take the plunge and make this laptop better than ever.
I started by ordering a new laptop battery which cost about $20. The 8GB DDR3L SODIMM cost another $10. Finally, I ordered a new SSD drive to replace the hard drive costing about $20. It took a few days for all the parts to arrive, but then I was ready to reassemble.
Reassembly
First I made sure the inside of the computer was dust free and then I set about removing the rest of the screws to lift up the motherboard to access the 4GB memory module. Fortunately, I didn’t have to remove any other cables – just carefully lift the motherboard, release the 4GB and replace with an 8GB module – then put the motherboard back in place ensuring no cables were pinched in the process.
Many screws later and the motherboard in place, I put in the new battery which went in easily.
I then replaced the hard drive with a PNY solid state drive.
Finally, I reattach the three ribbon cables (easier than it sounds) and press the keyboard down until the case snaps together.
Power Up
There’s always a moment of doubt after reassembling a computer with new parts. Will the computer boot up? Will everything work as expected?
The first good sign was when I plugged the power supply back into the laptop. The red led light came on showing that the battery was charging.
With some trepidation, I pressed the power button and then the F2 key. Good news! I was able to get into the BIOS and determine that the 8GB RAM was recognized by the system. It looks like I was ready to install an operating system (OS).
Linux Mint Cinnamon 22.1
I install Linux Mint on all my computers, it is a lighter and complete operating system designed for new users. The layout of the OS is similar to Windows 7, the most popular Windows OS of all time.
Another reason to install Linux Mint versus Windows 10: Microsoft will stop supporting Windows 10 in October of this year and this laptop (without a TPM security chip) will not run Windows 11.
The installation proceeded as normal until it came time to write the grub menu system to UEFI partition. I know, that sounds like unintelligible language, but suffice it to say, without a successful grub install the computer would not boot up Linux Mint. I tried several more times and failed several more times before thinking about the BIOS.
BIOS Update
The BIOS was pretty old and maybe designed only to run Windows. Other OS types need not apply. I found a newer BIOS online and downloaded the .zip file on another computer.
Fortunately, the existing BIOS has a utility called EZ-Flash. All I needed to do was unzip the file and copy the uncompacted binary file to a USB drive. After plugging in the USB drive to the laptop, I ran the EZ-Flash utility and located the binary file to update the BIOS. The EZ-Flash deletes the old BIOS and installs the new BIOS – best to keep the computer plugged in during the update.
Upon reboot of the system, the new BIOS came up and was working well. I made sure Secure Boot was turned off again before trying to install Linux Mint again.
Success!
With the new BIOS the installation went as expected and the grub menu was written to the drive. I booted up Linux Mint and installed the updates. I installed Chrome Browser and RustDesk, a remote desktop software for future support.
This Asus X551MA is now ready for sale.