you can do it if I can...
My 520 had all the symptoms: unexpected shutoff, very hot near the power connector, and so on. I followed the directions to get the LCD display off (pop the hinge covers and remove the two screws from the back that hold the top strip down; pry up the strip and carefully release the little plastic clamp that holds the connection strip in (and don't lost that little sucker!) so you can put the strip aside. Remove the metal plate screws, and the plate, and the keyboard screws and then you can remove the keyboard (a bigger plastic clamp, this time, for its connection). That information is available on the web.
So be SURE to carefully label all screws because they have various lengths and thread sizes but they're all tiny and in the end there will be like 20 of them.
Remove 2 screws that hold LCD to body. lift up LCD. I took off the left side connections (one plug, one ground to a screw) but left attached the right side's (one goes under the motherboard anyway and you can't get at it.) If you want, you can unplug the right side's two other connections, which are also plugs. that gives you a little more flex room
With an opened paper clip into the hole, open the DVD drive and with the door open you can gently pull it straight out and put it aside. Also remove the battery and the hard drive. No need to remove anything else underneath. Now you have to take out every screw that's visible underneath. I made a map of them and taped them to the map. Don't forget the one that was revealed when you slipped out the hard drive.
There are four more screws on the top that were revealed when you took the display off. Remove 'em. There's one more, deep in a hole on the metallized plastic on the right side, very near the power connector. You might not need to physically remove it since it stays caught in its hole but certainly unscrew it all the way. Things should be very floppy now, with the top pretty loose.
Now you can start to pry the top off the laptop. under the LCD area it's got a sticky strip of heavy foil tape that you have to separate (butter knife worked well) . Don't tear it. There are a couple of metal foam blocks above the ports; don't misplace them.
Also, the two DVD player rail screws near the opening need to come out, so you can lift up the motherboard. The rail closer to the rear has only one screw to remove and then you can push the rail in a bit and it will come unclipped and can be set aside. The other one stays in but take its outer screw out anyway.
Now comes the pry and play part. With your trusty butter knife, lever open the back of the case until it clears the power port (easy), the audio connectors (not so easy) and the DIN connector (a beast - but if you're careful you can do it without breaking the case!)
At this point you should be able to get some air and light under the motherboard and see the bottom of the power connector area. There's a metal shroud around this stuff and that needs to be bent out of the way. Notice how there's a piece of electrical tape that keeps the solder joints of the power connector from touching the shroud?? Wonder why? Because gateway knew the thing could easily short out there??
On my machine the solder joint for the central pin was basically destroyed. I surmise that when that joint went bad, from hard plugging/unplugging, the resistance went way up. The thing now had low voltage and so the battery was always in play, and the charger couldn't keep up because of the voltage drop and the big current draw by the battery. That cooked the insulation inside the connector pretty good, and so the center pin doesn't stay put, and it also did non-fatal damage to the charger plug (partly melted). The whole area near the connector would get hot enough to not touch.
To get access to the bottom of the motherboard you can pry things open enough to work. I didn't take the MB out, not even nearly, just gained sufficient access to get a soldering iron in there.
I resoldered the bad joint but it still was not working well. Notice how there's a little electrical tape on the REAR of the connector? Another gateway solution... if the center connector gets loose it can back right up and touch the metalized plastic post that's like 1 mm behind it. That's the source of the crackling noises people have heard... So I think the whole center pin (which is riveted badly to the board connection) was just no longer making good electrical contact.
Anyway, in the end I didn't install a new connector. I just tore out the old one with cutters and soldering iron and hardwired the charger to the board. There's no strain relief there but I think I can life with it for the time being. Works flawlessly.
Hope this helps
