The operation was a success!

Yesterday, the replacement motherboard for my Dell Latitude CPx J650GT came in. This afternoon, I borrowed a friend's dining room table to perform the work, since I didn't have a clear spot available at home to work.

I had an online copy of the service manual, and someone's online notes on disassembling this laptop model. The operation went smoothly -- all but one of the screws came out easily. As I took out the screws, I placed them in an empty egg carton so that I could keep them segregated and sorted. The hardest part was popping the CPU card and putting it into the new motherboard. I re-assembled everything in reverse order. Then I booted up the system....and realized I forgot to plug in the display. So the keyboard came off again, connected the display, and put the keyboard back on. I booted again.....and everything worked. I also checked the amount of memory, and all 512 Mb were recognized.

I ran both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux, and both OSes ran well, without any glitches. I also ran a Memtest86+ test, and it passed with flying colors.

I am now looking forward using this laptop for years to come.