purplecatty
Active Member
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2007
- Messages
- 3,792
- Reaction score
- 5
A week ago, my wife's friend brought her 15.4" laptop. It's Compaq Presario F700 and she said it had been rebooting itself and won't load Windows. She told me that she took it to Best Buy and they told her that her laptop is no good and buy new one. I told her it's all BS!! They don't dig in deep to find real problem, but only to just do basic checkups and tell customers that it's broken.
I decide to bring it to my house and try "wiggle and jiggle" the laptop, removing and replacing hard drive and swapping DDR2 SODIMM sticks. I finally got laptop booted up and it ran Windows fine. I thought it was some connection problems inside. She took laptop home and later in the evening, She texted me that her laptop just won't boot up Windows again. She even replaced BIOS battery and still won't work. I suggested her to bring back to me and I will tear it into million pieces to find what's exactly wrong.
She brought it over and gave it to me and I tore the laptop into pieces. I check website and found out that the common problems are Nvidia chipset that had problem with solder. When chipset overheated and melted solder, it dislodge itself from circuit board. There were lawsuit against Nvidia. HP offer free repair or replacement but deadline was March 2011. It was too late tho.
The guy in blog said he fixed the chipset by covering the motherboard with aluminuim and leaving Nvidia chipset exposed and used Heatlamp or Heat gun to heat it to 420 degree then press the chipset with towel and hold it there till it cools off. After that he put laptop together and bingo he got it working.
So I decide to try his method despite I warned her that I can't promise her it would be fixed or not. She told me she decide to buy used laptop so she can use it as a backup. I went ahead and use an expensive duct tape (shiny foil tape) which was a left over from basement finishing. I taped around Nvidia chipset and use heat lamp and IR thermometer. I monitored thermometer until it reached 390 degree before my thermometer went berserk because I held it too close to heat lamp
I immediately shut off heat lamp then grabbed towel and pressed down chipset firmly for 3 minutes. After it cooled down. I assembled mobo with Heat pipe, RAM, power switch, monitor and power supply then test ran it. It finally booted and showed Compaq Logo. I found out that GPU's spongy heat transfer sticker was a problem. I decide to sand down both sides of penny then use Thermal paste on both sides. I also cleaned and put in fresh Thermal paste on CPU as well. I assembled Heat Pipe on CPU and GPU then I went ahead and assemble millions parts back together and booted up the laptop. It finally ran great and I am currently typing AD blog on Compaq laptop. A Penny sandwiched between GPU and Heat Pipe worked so well!! Better than stupid spongy thermal sticker!!
I downloaded and installed HWMonitor and it showed that GPU is running at 98 degree and CPU (dual core AMD Turion X2) showing 98 and 104 degree which are perfectly normal.
I told her it's fixed now and return her laptop. It was my very first GPU chipset repair and was successful on it!!
Catty
I decide to bring it to my house and try "wiggle and jiggle" the laptop, removing and replacing hard drive and swapping DDR2 SODIMM sticks. I finally got laptop booted up and it ran Windows fine. I thought it was some connection problems inside. She took laptop home and later in the evening, She texted me that her laptop just won't boot up Windows again. She even replaced BIOS battery and still won't work. I suggested her to bring back to me and I will tear it into million pieces to find what's exactly wrong.
She brought it over and gave it to me and I tore the laptop into pieces. I check website and found out that the common problems are Nvidia chipset that had problem with solder. When chipset overheated and melted solder, it dislodge itself from circuit board. There were lawsuit against Nvidia. HP offer free repair or replacement but deadline was March 2011. It was too late tho.
The guy in blog said he fixed the chipset by covering the motherboard with aluminuim and leaving Nvidia chipset exposed and used Heatlamp or Heat gun to heat it to 420 degree then press the chipset with towel and hold it there till it cools off. After that he put laptop together and bingo he got it working.
So I decide to try his method despite I warned her that I can't promise her it would be fixed or not. She told me she decide to buy used laptop so she can use it as a backup. I went ahead and use an expensive duct tape (shiny foil tape) which was a left over from basement finishing. I taped around Nvidia chipset and use heat lamp and IR thermometer. I monitored thermometer until it reached 390 degree before my thermometer went berserk because I held it too close to heat lamp
I immediately shut off heat lamp then grabbed towel and pressed down chipset firmly for 3 minutes. After it cooled down. I assembled mobo with Heat pipe, RAM, power switch, monitor and power supply then test ran it. It finally booted and showed Compaq Logo. I found out that GPU's spongy heat transfer sticker was a problem. I decide to sand down both sides of penny then use Thermal paste on both sides. I also cleaned and put in fresh Thermal paste on CPU as well. I assembled Heat Pipe on CPU and GPU then I went ahead and assemble millions parts back together and booted up the laptop. It finally ran great and I am currently typing AD blog on Compaq laptop. A Penny sandwiched between GPU and Heat Pipe worked so well!! Better than stupid spongy thermal sticker!!I downloaded and installed HWMonitor and it showed that GPU is running at 98 degree and CPU (dual core AMD Turion X2) showing 98 and 104 degree which are perfectly normal.
I told her it's fixed now and return her laptop. It was my very first GPU chipset repair and was successful on it!!
Catty
