Bent Pins, Lost Screws

[David Liguori]

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