Mildly Infuriating

Laptop repair guy here! This problem is common in consumer grade laptops. As far as I am concerned, it’s purposefully weakly designed, because these break a LOT.

Not the hinge is broken, but the mounting points for the screws that keep the hinge in place. Sometimes it breaks on the bottom case, sometimes it breaks on the screen side.

We fix these issues regularly with epoxy (and massive skillz, lol). With most hinges, you can adjust the force a little lighter to relieve the pressure on the mounting points. That way it doesn’t fail again, after repair.

Oh I hate these shitty joints that are designed to fail eventually. It's just not made to last.

JB weld epoxy might be a good choice if you either don’t plan on replacing the screen again, or to recreate the holes and patch the cracks if you pull it all the way apart again. I did it to the back of a tv when the vesa screw mounts ripped and it held for another 5 years.

This happened on a decent spec'd HP laptop I bought my mom a couple years back. No easy way to repair without ordering new hinges that were impossible to find and the PC repair shop quoted over $500 repair on a $700 laptop when it was new.

Now she just leaves the laptop open in the 180 degree position with the laptop being held into a stand & bungie cord strapped to it to prevent it from falling foward. It is now a desktop PC and no longer a laptop.

HP by chance? Had this happen to a 360 HP laptop (and I almost never used that functionality!), repaired by replacing the backside of screen where it screws in. This of course required disassembling the whole damn laptop. I was horrified by how cheap it was and now have a ThinkPad T480.

I used to work in a computer repair shop. Unfortunately this is a lot more common than you might think, and it's almost always due to poor quality plastic and nothing to do with the end user. Sadly I've yet to see a case where this is covered under the warranty either, but it's worth a shot if you want to go through the headache of their customer support.

You can try epoxy like someone else mention, but it comes with a few problems you might encounter. First you can't put too much epoxy or it'll spill over onto the computer components (which could damage them) and as a result it may not hold. Second, even if it does hold you're putting it over screws, which means you most likely won't be able to remove those screws down the road if you ever have to repair or upgrade it.

You could also just leave the laptop permanently open and never touch the hinge. Some people already this anyways with their devices so for them it's not worth the hassle. As long as nothing else is damaged and you're careful with it, this can work too.

Ultimately, the best solution is to just replace the plastic casing part where it ripped out of, which is usually either the housing around the keyboard and track-pad, or the one behind the LCD. Sadly because all the parts are likely made with poor quality plastic this is likely to happen again down the road. In your case it looks like the former, the housing around the keyboard. For some devices the keyboard isn't easily removable from this housing, so it's probably going to require you replace the keyboard as well, unless you like dealing with tiny rivets.

Oh, and you probably don't need to replace the hinge itself. like I said it's usually the brittle plastic in the housing that's at fault, not the hinge seizing and refusing to move.

This is why if you need a budget laptop get something from a used business line like lenovo thinkpad dell latitude and hp elitebooks these will have far better quality and be (in some cases) more easy to repair

You've gotta get those screws to the right torque after taking it apart. Too loose OR too tight and you've sealed your fate.

Did you open it without the backplate on?

Anyways this is crappy anti consumer design by the manufacturer.

HP?

Laptop hinges are the worst, cant imagine how many laptops I've seen with cracked plastics where the hinges are.

Honestly, this looks like it would be repairable with the appropriate sized heat-press insert, and a longer screw. Granted, things are pretty tight in that area; but it looks like there is enough beef left on the underside to repair this 'properly'.

At least it didn't crack the screen with the bad hinge. I think it happens when the screws get a little loose and the angles shift. I work k-12 edu and have seen hundreds of Chromebooks do this.

Cheap laptops don't hold up. I've seen so many broken devices which the screen just breaks off

Yeah this is not a fun one, I have done repairs and now do retail this issue is insanely common. Pretty much all budget laptops have this threaded into cheap plastic and I have had many customers devices hinges fail within 4 months in retail.

From what I can tell you also got quite lucky the hinge snapped on the base and not the screen. I've had a couple customers unlucky enough to have it snap on the screen and shatter the glass and or LCD.

The cases where it doesn't completely destroy the screen or base you can normally use epoxy glue, melting or something similar. But that still is normally a temporary solution it will probably break again. If that can't be done or a more permanent solution is needed, I've found that repairs with a metal plate and bolt seem to last I've also seen some people just use an L shaped metal bracket and not close the laptop again...

Regardless its a really annoying thing, I try to purchase and recommend devices with Metal frames (base and screen). Unfortunately even mid range laptops are now following this trend of plastic screwed hinges.

Yep, happens a lot, I've got a cute little pair of nuts that replaced the inserts in my thinkpad

ooh my old laptop had a problem like this too, but instead of ripping off it just got so rigid it would probably completely destroy the whole hull if i tried to force it open, to "fix" it, me and my cousin just opened the laptop and (carefully /s) completely removed the hinges (or at least the part of it that connects to the base of the laptop), now it is right beside me here hosting a jellyfin server with the screen being propped up only by a wi-fi router >:3

Used to do laptop repair. It’s insane how often this happens with the crappy plastic shells.

That sucks.

Happened with my previous laptop and couldn't find replacement parts unfortunately.