Wow, yeah, I had noticed the damaged pads on that one item, but was thinking that there is still enough copper for the solder to stick to. As for the layers, do you mean that there are actually components sandwiched in the middle of the board somehow?! That would make it very scary to attempt any sort of soldering!

As I say, I'm in the middle of Mexico, which makes getting stuff from Ebay and the like a bit...complicated.

And I'm not the original owner of this tablet, though it appeared to be in good condition when I got it, and performed fine for many months. Odd...

(and, yes, I had pm'ed ThoughtFix. I'm hoping now that he might have access to schematics...)

Thanks a lot for your input!