Touch screen and game card reader stopped workin after fan replacement

Hi Tommy,

Forgive me if you already understand this but it may be helpful for others.

Have you ever repaired any electronics before?

Just trying to ascertain your skill level as you may have incorrectly done one of the connectors incorrectly. I mean what else could it be?

I suggest re-reading the IFIXIT repair guide several time with frequent pauses to review your attempted repair. There must be a small detail you missed. Believe me there are many things, that are important, that a very experienced tech might fail to emphasise enough. When writing a guide the points might seem so obvious to them because of years of hard won experience.

I know when I write help instructions it is very hard to find the balance between saying too much and not enough. You don't want to talk down to them but on the other hand you can't assume they know it. Static discharge is one example. I do that like breathing without even thinking.

@aactech thanks for the reply. as far as i know, I did everything correctly. i even had my roommate helping, who is a tech guy that builds pcs for fun. we have no idea what went wrong. the fan works perfectly lol. do you think the static discharge thing would be a possibility? im just worried about replacing a wrong part.

Hi @tommytaro ,

Did it work at all before you replaced the defective fan?

You sound sure the cables are all inserted correctly. Did you miss something perhaps?

hi @aactech. yes, i dissembled it for the 3rd time today to make sure. i cant push them or latch them any more forcefully lol. and yes, they all did work beforehand. its very strange. i wonder if the fan is causing this? thats the one thing i couldn't check since i threw the old one away. but yes, both of these things (game card reader and touch screen) worked right before I replaced the fan. to note, I have custom firm ware and many people complain about aftermarket parts of card readers causing issues with the touch screen. they go on to mention though that in this case, it still works with the Hekate custom firmware, just not on the official OS. I can confirm that my touch screen does NOT work even when i boot my custom firmware from my sd card. so it leads me to believe that its not because of using an aftermarket part (or whatever kind of part I bought from iFixit). instead, it seems like the hardware just flat isnt working anymore.

bump. anyone have an idea? I am about to go for replacing the card reader since it seems like the digitizer connects into it.