We have an HP Pavilion laptop computer which gets a lot of use. A week or two ago, I discovered that the left-side hinge, where the screen part is attached to the keyboard part, was broken. When the screen part was moved, the lower case split open. I could pinch it back together, but it wouldn't hold.

Two different sizes of Philips-point screwdrivers were needed to take the cover off of the bottom of the machine. For some reason, I'm sure, one of the screws had to be really tiny. Others were hidden under the rubber pads that prevent slipping on smooth surfaces. Once inside, I found that the hinge was fastened with screws that went into brass threaded inserts, molded into the upper part of the case, but the plastic around them had broken in many places.

I used a dental pick and tweezers to extract all of the broken bits of plastic from the hinge area. Then, I mixed up a generous amount of J-B Weld (metal-filled epoxy) and tucked it into every empty space around the brass inserts, and up to the level of the hinge plate. Then I applied a C-clamp to the hinge (with a scrap of thin plastic to make sure that no epoxy oozed onto the clamp), and set at all aside for about 24 hours. (The package says that the epoxy cures in 8 hours, but I wanted to be sure that it developed maximum strength.)

After letting the epoxy cure, I took the clamp off, put the bottom of the case back on, and it's been working "like new" ever since!