Did a bit of baking today

[Stan_Lite]

"What's the senile old git doing posting a baking thread in here?" I hear you ask.

I wasn't baking anything food related - I was baking a graphics card.

A bit of background. I've had a Dell M1710 for a few years now but for the last 18 months or so, it's suffered the common problem of the graphics card dying due to a faulty BIOS. I've been umming and aahing about replacing the graphics card for a while but, at about £300, I wasn't sure if it was worth it.

While I was away at work, I was doing a bit of a search to see if I could find a cheaper card anywhere and stumbled upon a video showing someone baking their card in an oven and it coming back to life. Apparently it has something to do with micro fissures in the solder or something like that. I thought "What the hell, I've nothing to lose.

I videoed my own effort and here it is.

Video of the laptop booting up before baking:

Wt7bRlGdHbw

It's not clear from the video but it was basically a load of wavy lines and no display at all.

Some photos of the card removed and ready for baking:

Everything in bits:
http://r1wuga.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pvMRvvUhCNzXXPBDNvs0n_Y02NfCaAzFy1vJwoz51dRVNkF6 us24nV2-BKWcS3WtuuFJ0ubIbncjfhlEYF3MEwYfilAO3RKJZ/P1000384.jpg?psid=1

The offending item with the heatsink removed:
http://r1wuga.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pTgc0FACTDEwXLL3AdkBHdP-2WN4a0GBeEaI3lyJ_kg9aT7T_aXgJciRw-2yrWDsE1-LXgim0sLKy-y31vs-_CryL10jfm_Gz/P1000386.jpg?psid=1

Placed on some foil balls to let the heat get to it, ready for baking:
http://r1wuga.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pvzqijn_wOQbUOt-UKSQdBd9uSphQ4uTuq-DOzaEgHGMVpMG4a2YO1eOyHIpAkmHzFpnl4cVJFSIRgO8N6IbH dvumt4OisYxD/P1000387.jpg?psid=1

This video is the laptop booting up after the card has been baked for 10 minutes at 200C:

xUyadb7iSNM

Ignore the change of OS from Windows 7 to XP. I couldn't find any stable drivers for Windows 7 so had to re-install XP. The original problem manifested itself regardless of OS - even Ubuntu (trust me, I tried several). Also ignore the old geezer with the camera reflected in the screen :o

It's working perfectly well now. There were a few artifacts visible for a short time after doing it but, now that everything has settled down, it's working as well as the day I bought it. I'm delighted - it's still a damn good laptop despite its age and I'm glad to have the use of it again.
I've seen a few accounts of people having performed this fix and many say it's been working perfectly for six months or more and still going strong. hopefully mine will be the same.

[Feek]

That's good news, I can only guess that perhaps it suffers from some dry joints and baking it like that causes the solder to reflow slightly.

[Kell_ee001]

I'm delighted

Slight understatement ;D

Very cool fix though - I'm glad Daddy Laptop is back :)

[Blighter]

Strange that. Works on the Xbox 360 RROD sometimes too :)

(although instead of baking, you wrap it in a towel and turn it on for a few minutes)

[LeperousDust]

Did that with my old m1210 with the same nvidia problems, i despise nvidia for the hassle caused. It did work, but was a temporary solution for myself, 6 months down the line it went again catastrophically the next time. I gave in and bought something else, the laptop would quite easily still be doing me now if it wasn't for nvidias incompetence, whats even worse is they tried to hide the problem! The xbox problem is very similar, and funnily enough nvidia had a hand in that too!!??

[Davey_Pitch]

Strange that. Works on the Xbox 360 RROD sometimes too :)

(although instead of baking, you wrap it in a towel and turn it on for a few minutes)
Nope, you can bake the 360 as well, I've done it myself once before, and it did solve the problem for a little while, though I had other issues beyond the RROD which finally killed it.

[Jonny69]

Ha, who'd have thought it. Just like the old days of sticking car head units in the freezer to reset the security codes. I never did that though, er, officer.