The Mad Max Laptop: Rescuing an 11-Year-Old Dell

I’ve spent the last two days working on a laptop that belongs in a Mad Max film. I’m not even exaggerating. A Dell Inspiron that, as far as I can tell, just turned 11. It belongs to a friend, so of course I felt like I had to help him revive the old beast.

The adventure began as they usually do—with pure naivety. I thought it was going to be one of those routine repairs, the kind I used to do back when I didn’t have a beard. You know the drill: swap the hard drive, install a new OS, wam bam thank you ma’am. But as soon as I opened it up, I realized this was going to be chaos.

Broken plastic pieces everywhere. What is this? I thought. Someone’s been inside here before, and that someone didn’t give a fork. The signs of no forks given were all over this computer—and yet I was the one who had confidently said, “This’ll be easy.”

Fun fact: when my friend showed me the laptop, it actually turned on. That’s undeniable. What I don’t know is how. The power barrel—where you plug the charger—was packed with mysterious “stuff,” making every attempt to connect it a battle of wills. And to top it off, the motherboard wasn’t even screwed in. Yes, you read that right: not a single screw holding it down. It was basically wedged in place by the case and the hard drive, which, lucky for me, was screwed in.

My friend complained the battery wasn’t charging, and I thought, easy fix—new battery. Wrong. The motherboard wasn’t receiving the full 19.5 volts. How was this thing even turning on? I kept asking myself. And then, of course, it stopped turning on altogether. Oh joy.

I grabbed my voltmeter and confirmed what I already suspected: the power supply he gave me was trash. I was about to tell him he’d need to buy a new one when I remembered my “dead laptop” collection. Yes, I keep one of those. I don’t like e-waste, and sometimes their guts save the potatoes. And sure enough, one of them did.

Excited, I plugged in a working power supply, ready to move on to the OS install, but nope. The laptop refused to turn on. At that point I knew I needed to step away before frustration made me do something dumb.

So I tore it all the way down. Cleaned every connector with industrial alcohol. Dug through my graveyard of laptops for screws and inserts, and slowly rebuilt it—this time with actual care, unlike the last mothertrucker who opened it.

One Hail Mary later, it powered on. Into the BIOS I went: changed the boot order, confirmed the hard drive, and installed Pop!_OS. Was I asked to install Linux? Funny you ask—no. But given this laptop’s impressive collection of viruses and malware, I’m going to use this chance to educate my friend about digital hygiene. Besides, Pop!_OS is beautiful and intuitive.

I promised him I’d be done by Sunday, and it looks like I’ll deliver. Hopefully this scarred-up warrior still has a few years of battles left. With the new OS, it sure feels like it.

One last fun fact: I typed this post on the old warrior itself. There’s a certain charm to a case full of scars.

MenO