when my g4 failed to recognise the hard drive i attempted hard drive swap and found the male socket torn from logic board. can i force the comp. to boot up using the original hard drive mounted in external usb enclosure ?

You should be able to. Just hold down the option key during startup to get a startup disk choice.

So the cable that connects the hard drive to the logic board in my MacBook Pro (15" A1211 model) had the adhesive wear off and as a result, the tiny little hook broken off. Apple quoted me between $300 and $1250 (great range huh?) to fix it, in spite of that apparently useless little Apple Care warranty I paid $350 for and have never used. Sorry, kind of really annoyed right now.

Anyway, I'm not paying that. I found a new connector for like $30. Has anyone had any luck reinstalling this part? Any tips or how-to's? Alternately, the hook is still there, and I've read forum posts about potentially soldering it back on, but there are no responses, so has anyone done that before? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Another issue is that my CD drive randomly stopped working. The guy told me something was probably just out of line, but they won't fix THAT because "there's a dent in the back of the computer." It's a tiny dent that has been there for over two years now, so...again, dumb. But I can't seem to get the screws off the optical drive to open it. Any suggestions for loosening really stuck screws?

Thanks in advance.