Robert L Cochran wrote:
When I installed a new hard drive in my aging Sony Vaio PCG-F350 laptop this evening, two tragedies befell me. The worst...shudder!...is that I fumbled one of the 3 mounting screws for the hard drive cage on the motherboard, and I can't find the darn screw. It's somewhere in the guts of the laptop, possibly around the region of the touch pad. So far, the motherboard hasn't shorted out or shown strange problems. But the hard drive light stays on all the time now -- unusual -- and I had to turn off acpi in the 667 kernel. Can anyone suggest how to find a screw dropped in a laptop's motherboard area?
Clear out an area where you can definitely see and hear the screw fall. Dismantle the machine as far as possible and give it a good shake, in all different directions and orientations.
A corollary to Murphy's Law says a screw will always fall so as to cause the most damage. If you haven't been bitten by this yet, you will. So I too recommend not powering up the computer again until you find the screw.
-- David Liguori
