After a hard tug on the cable of an external USB drive, the USB outlet on back of the Inspiron 4100 is loose. The whole laptop needs to be dissassmbled to reach the soldering point of the USB outlet. The contact is soldered again - took 4 hours to get it done.

Getting the Inspiron 4100 to start is becoming harder and harder. The micro-switch below the on/off button starts to fade - nothing helps, only pressing harder.

Blue screen of death - BSOD

The Inspiron 4100 suddenly is starting to have sudden blue-screens. 0x0000001 Stop message appears on the screen. At first it seems the BSOD is related to an USB issue. Removing an USB stick causes a BSOD more often. Later the phenomena starts to appear during startup. Then suddenly the BSOD's are gone for a week.
 

The A and K of the ketboard is starting to fade, The keys only respond when pressing hard. Removing the keyboard helps clearing the stuff accumulated under the keys. All key caps are removed and everything underneath is cleaned. Some of the micro-mechanism are sticky from a spill of pepsi-coke months ago.
The keys work a bit better after cleaning, but apparently the keyboard is starting to retire.

The right batter clip on the bottom side of the Inspiron 4100 has broken. It holds either the 2nd battery of the CD tray - a piece of duct tape now hold the battery inside.

The big left button of the touch pad starts to wear out on the Inspiron 4100. Clicks do not register, only by pressing harder it responds. Next the button starts to "hang", causing a continous click. Removing the button cap reveals a micro switch. Turning the small knob while pressing down sorts the problem, the click comes back again. Also the button doesn't stick anymore.

The touchpad surface of the Inspiron 4100 starts wearing down - the middle of the pad is now very shiny and has a faint dent in the middle. Operating the touch pad with greasy fingers is almost impossible, dry clean hands make it work again.

After a huge speedbump the Inspiron 4100 kissed the dashboard quite hard. The screen closed kind of funny. Removing the hinge caps revealed a broken hinge. With the sloppy hinges the screen now has only one hinge. Amazingly the screen keeps it place way better!

The hinges of the Inspiron 4100 get sloppy, the screen falls backwards very easily. The laptop has 2 hard years on the dial. A look at the hinges reveal there's nothing to service. Full replacement is necesary. Pretty dificult when in Turkey in the middle of no-where. As a temp solution, Nichiban duct tape is used to keep the screen up.