Opening Up the Lenovo ThinkPad T440/T440s

So you have invested in a new stick of RAM or a new hard drive and now need to swap out what is currently inside your Lenovo Thinkpad T440/T440S machine. No problem. Removing the base cover from these laptops is a fairly simple process. However, there are a couple of things you will need to be aware of before beginning. Whether you are new to doing this sort of tinkering with a laptop or you just want to get a feeling of what need be done without breaking anything, then you have come to the right place.

The Details...

The base cover and the main body of the laptop (keyboard, motherboard, screen, etc) are attached via screws and clips. The screws can easily be seen by looking around the bottom of the laptop. The clips are located near the edges of the main body and they attach themselves to square sockets/ holes around the edges of the base cover. Unfortunately, the clips are not visible when the laptop is one. If you can not picture the clip design do not fret, you will see by continuing on.

Figure 1. Two example clips located next to some ports on the main body of the laptop.

From the Lenovo website the following diagram can be found showing you the locations of the screws and clips.

Figure 2. Diagram showing how to remove the base cover from a Lenovo T440/T440S.

The process to remove the base cover is:

0. Take out the removable external battery.
1. Unscrew all the screws that are circled in the diagram above. The screws can not be removed from the base cover so losing them should not be an issue.
2. Detach the clips at all the locations shown in the diagram with a "2". You can use a prying tool or your finger nails for this. If you use a prying tools I would suggest using a plastic one to avoid scratching the laptop. With the prying tools you should be able to detach the clips directly. However, if you want to be cheap like me and use your finger nail, you may need to slide a nail around the entire laptop to detach the clips, rather than trying to do it directly. Detaching the clips should get easier as you progress around the laptop with your nail. Please read the next section before carrying out this step as there are some caveats that you need to know about!
3. Remove the base cover from the main part of the laptop in the direction shown.

Caveats to Step 2

Snap Off Bits!

During step 2 be careful around areas where the ports are exposed. As you can see in the images below there are small pieces of material from the base cover which slot in-between port. Some are clipped in and some have notches to help stop them bending. You don't want to use to much force to pry the clips as you may snap these small bits of material of your base cover - not a good start to a upgrade! But also be aware, they are still reasonably tough so you don't need to be too pedantic. The point is be on the side of caution when dealing with these.

Figure 3. The small bits of base cover material that slot between various ports found on main body.

Figure 4. Inside view of the base cover. Locations to be careful of are shown.

Hidden Clips

There are two clips which I couldn't pry open which are shown in Figure 5; note, these seem to be missing in Figure 2 for some odd reason. These clips are located around where the removable external battery usually slots into. After detaching all the other "documented" clips I put some pressure on the base cover in the direction shown in Figure 6. This pressure popped the clips from the base cover holes and I was now able to remove the base cover as describe in step 3.

Figure 5. Hidden clips.

Figure 6. Inside view of main body. "Hidden" clips shown with red circles. Red direction arrow show which way I applied pressure on the base cover to detach hidden clips.

Final Words

Now you are ready to swap out your RAM/ hard drive. If you are swapping out your hard drive be careful not to lose the small screw that goes with the plastic enclosure which holds the hard drive. Once you've finished with your upgrade, go through in reverse from step 3 to 0 to reassemble your laptop. Make sure all the screws are screwed and visually check all the clips are clipped (I actually found one of mine weren't whilst writing this post!).

If you haven't noticed already, I opened my laptop to upgrade my hard drive from a HDD to SSD. You can find some upgrade benchmarks here if you are interested. Also, I had some issues re-installing Windows 8 after installing the new SSD; unfortunately, you will likely face problems as well; a post on this will hopefully be out in the near future.

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