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Not really a cry for help but I thought you all might be interested in my little saga.
My notebook is a five year old 'Rock' and 20 months into the warranty the graphic card died, so off it went and we waited for it to be returned, and waited, and waited, and waited - It took about five months in the end as new cards (last of stock) had to be shipped in from China.
Last night it failed again with exactly the same symptoms as last time ie: weird artifacts over the screen on boot and weird fractals everywhere. Now this machine has got one of the best screens in the business and even though it is five years old it keeps up with today's machines more than adequately and it was annoying to think that I had to throw it away as the graphic cards are no longer available (the nVidia GeForce 7950GTX had a reputation for overheating)
So what to do? There is a weird trick doing the rounds on the internet with regards to reviving dead graphic cards and I thought what have I got to lose?
So I preheat the oven to 200C Gas mark 6, place the card on some balls of silver foil and stick it in for 10 minutes..... Did it work? Oh yes! I've been running my 3d screen saver all day now - Perfect!
Apparently the trick works with all sorts of boards.
That's interesting - My son's HP pavillion laptop suffered from a well documented Nvidia graphics chip failure. I bought a refurbished mobo off eBay, it happened again a few months later, bought a second refurbished mobo off eBay, it happened again a few months later....
.....bought him a new laptop.
I *think* all they did to get the refurbished ones going again was re-flow the solder connections on the surface mount Nvidia chip with a heat gun.
But, as it is currently unuseable and therefore I've nothing to lose, I might try your method.
Many years ago I had an hard drive that I thought had died and I'd lost all my data. Being new to computers I hadn't a clue how to change a hard drive so called a mate of mine who happened to be a self taught expert. Removing the drive, he held it at one corner between finger and thumb gave it a wack on both sides against his leg. Then he replaced the drive in the case and fired up the PC. The my amazement it was now working.
He told me sometimes the read arms stick and a little shock is enough to get them working so we could get all the vital files, documents and photo's of the drive. Once we had done that we replaced the old drive with a new one.
Ha! Worked for me too - As mentioned above, my son's HP Pavilion with the Nvidia graphics chip was doing the dead graphics chip thing (see photos). I'd already bought two refurbished motherboards off eBay, so when it went for a 3rd time I bought him a new laptop.
The old one was just lying around waiting for me to trash its hard disk and recycle it. so, when I read @Autoquest's post I thought 'what the hell' and gave it a try.
I did 8 minutes in a fan-assisted oven at 200C, and it has brought it back to life!
I won't trust it not to go again. My son used to run dual monitors, lots of graphics, video etc., and it always ran very hot, so I figure that if I maybe drop its screen resolution down to, say 1024x768 and just use it for simple stuff (word processing and a bit of Internet), it might survive a while longer.
Morph
Reason for change by Morphology: Image previews don't look right?
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UK
I would try the oven bake rather than a heat gun as you will get a more controllable temparature
