Changing keyboards on the Asus EeePC 1005ha

Changing keyboards on the Asus EeePC 1005ha is pretty easy as you can see below.

First you need to turn the computer over:

Remove the battery, then pull back tabs
Then you need to remove the battery in order to pull back the small tabs that are keeping the keyboard in place:

Note : to pull the latches back only a small movement is required if you use a small sized screwdriver, like in the image below where you can see I then also used to gently pry up the keyboard

Pry up the keyboard
I recommend using a small screwdriver (needs to be small as can be seen below otherwise you'll damage the keyboard) to pry up the keyboard. You need to do this with some force but most of all do it gently (ie. prying not wrenching). You will hear small clicks when you pry it off the points where it is clipped to the chasis:

Gently lift the keyboard out of its normal position
When you have successfully got the keyboard up you will see that it is attached (to the motherboard of the netbook) by a small connector so don't yank the keyboard out, you need to pull it up gently and then unlock the ribbon from the connector:

Remove the keyboard connector
In order to remove the ribbon from the connector you need to release it by using the two black latches that can be seen in the image below (circled in red) and are keeping the connector in the fixed position. These need to be gently pushed up. In the same way when you put the ribbon of the other keyboard back into connector you need to push these two small black connectors back in to their locking position:

Attach the other keyboard connector
Final step you then need to gently push the other keyboard ribbon into the connector on the motherboard and lock the ribbon back into the connector by pushing the latches back into their locked position so that the ribbon is securely connected to the motherboard. I used one finger to hold the ribbon in place then my small screwdriver to gently push the latches of the connector back into a locked position (sorry no photo of this, you need both hands for this operation 😉 ):

Push the keyboard back in
Probably the easiest step, you can now push the keyboard back in and then push the tabs under the battery back into their initial position. Voilà, now I hope this helps anyone that undertakes this fairly easy task, (compared to changing the hard disk) of changing the Asus 1005ha keyboard.

Note: check out Kevin's comment about new 'chiclet' versions of the keyboard and plastic tabs that may need to be removed (22 Oct 2011)