Thinkpads Forum

I bought a used X61 with a WWAN card in the mini PCI-e slot. The two screws on of the card are stripped by the previous owner (see red circles in the photo). Does anyone have advice on how to extract them? Any tools or techniques? Also, is it possible to extract the female end of the screw from the backside of the motherboard?

This WWAN card clearly has no use nowadays given that none of the mobile carrier supports it and I thought it might be sitting there generating heat and consuming power. I really wanted to get rid of it.

https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/bW3qurFgrr6H.png

i changed that big picture to a link..
if it were me with those screws i would get a proper phillips screwdriver that really fits the screws..
also FWIW there are phillips screwdrivers with tiny serrations at the tip that grab the screw and prevent the tool from riding up in the screw..
is that clear..?

Thanks for the formatting. First timer here. I'll use image urls in the future.

I'll give those extraction screwdrivers a try. I've seen them for larger screws, but the problem is that the body of the damaged screws is very thin, so it's hard to find matching extraction bits.

the phillips screwdriver bit MUST fit the screw exactly.. and slop and all you do is mess it up..
you also need sufficient pressure to prevent the bit from riding up the screw slot..
beware messing up the system board..

Here's an interesting article about the various screw types: https://www.instructables.com/When-a-Ph ... -Phillips/ some of which you probably never heard of.

The one that Bill Morrow refers to is the ACR (Anti-Camout Ribs) Phillips, a.k.a. Phillips II.
(Step 15, 17 and 19 in above article).

Interesting information. Several of those I have used in the past, and many I've never heard of or seen.

UPDATE

I followed the advice from a friend a bought a pair of Neji-Saurus pliers from iFixit (they are $$$). One of the screws came out upon first try. The other took a dozen tries and eventually came out. I have to say, this tool is legendary. That X61 has a T8300 system board, which is rare nowadays, so I'm feeling at peace with how much I paid for the pliers.

You can see the extracted screws: https://storage.googleapis.com/openscre ... YTrm9t.png