stripped screw in very old, rare desktop replacement thinkpad. Any ideas?

[oali24]

I have this retro thinkpad a21p(pentium 3 processor, 512MB of ram)I really want to take this apart for cleaning, but I stripped the screws a very long time ago when I was 12, which was probably better becuase I probably would have broken the laptop if I got in at that age, do you guys know how I could remove it without damaging the plastic because the screw is sunk in,

[Levent]

You are in for a world of pain. I do have couple of things I try but first two it usually doesn't work when surface area is that small.

• Gorilla glue a screwdriver into stripped part of the screw.
• Using a Dremel to cut a slot into the screw so that it becomes a flathead.
• Using a Dremel to grind down the screw to its threads.

[SupaKomputa]

34 minutes ago, Levent said:

You are in for a world of pain. I do have couple of things I try but first two it usually doesn't work when surface area is that small.

• Gorilla glue a screwdriver into stripped part of the screw.
• Using a Dremel to cut a slot into the screw so that it becomes a flathead.
• Using a Dremel to grind down the screw to its threads.

You can't dremel it without damaging the body, it's sunken in.

My take is to sharpen a flat head tip, whack it just enough to have some grip.

More elegant way is to use screw extractor:

[Levent]

5 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

You can't dremel it without damaging the body, it's sunken in.

My take is to sharpen a flat head tip, whack it just enough to have some grip.

More elegant way is to use screw extractor:

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True, I use these and they work fine for M2-M3 screws as long as you take your time.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072B6D5CX/