Kid's laptop got slow, then stop booting

My Problem

My kid's laptop started getting slower and slower til one day it stop booting. The laptop started up with the question mark folder logo. We initially thought it was a bad hard drive, but hooking it up to a USB case made it work.

Googling around, we saw that the hard drive cable sometimes goes bad, and it matched our symptoms. For $50 bucks, it was worth a try, and it indeed fixed it.

My Fix

Very easy fix.

My Advice

Draw an outline of the IR cable prior to removing it. That way you'll roughly know where to stick the new one.