Easy Bake Computer

[WhiteEightBall]

Anyone else have to do this to their computer sometimes?

Yes, that is a computer with a missing video card.

Yes, that is the missing video card in the oven.

Just you kiddies wait. I'll have my Windows Vista back. Soon. So very soon. :twisted: :roll:

I'd like to see and hear about the weird things you guys need to do to keep your laptops, computers and rigs operational. So let's get to it!

 

[MAC_HATER]

haven't had to do that before, but i have seen friends do it

a couple of friends had 8800GTS video cards that would "pack a mental" and not work correctly, and doing the oven trick would get them going again for a few months, out of warranty of course

then there is the "towel" trick for Red Ringed Xbox 360's again a friend tried that a couple of times with positive results

I have been told that the reason for these problems in the first place is the meddling hippies and their crappy lead free solder? is that correct?

 

[WhiteEightBall]

It is correct, you know your stuff good sir!

This lead free solder is crap. Once it reaches any sort of tempurature, micro cracks form in the solder and once these cracks reach completely through, they break the connection. This laptop had never reached over 45 C, definitely reached 45 on many occasions, but that is due to having ALL DESKTOP PARTS in the deviled thing. As you can see there is a bank of fans and a radiator that the Copper "tubes" or whatever lead to, that was suppose to be my plan to keep the stuff cool, I had never anticipated a crap video card though. Those MXM II cards were garbage.

Anyway, I bake the card for 15 minutes at 325 F and it warms everything enough to reconnect the solder but not enough to melt any important bits. Just waiting for the day that it stops working. Then I have the dilema of either buying another computer, or replacing the card for a couple hundred dollars. And maybe the HDD to SSD to cool things down even further to keep it from happening again.

 

[MAC_HATER]

haha yeah, Desktop parts don't make good Laptop parts, I recall years back work having an Asus "workstation" laptop, with a power brick the size of an actual brick, and a Great Stonking Desktop Pentium 4 3.2GHZ in the sodding thing, it would ide at 60 and easily reach 100 degrees under load, but the astonishing thing was it didint seem to mind, it ran for years like that, not a problem, and it will have been before the days of RoHS and Lead Free solder, and that will probably be why it was so resilient

While its cool that the oven trick works, it shouldn't have to be a "fix" - it shouldn't be needed at all, parts shouldn't fail like this, its just crap

in any case, a SSD will do wonders, if not for reducing heat, but speeding up the whole operation

 

[WhiteEightBall]

Hahaha

Indeed they do not make decent laptop parts. Though, even for being 7 years old, this thing can still hold it's own on benchmarks and what have you. Been doing this trick for roughly 3 years. :shock:

Most likely I need to just update and be done with it. It just holds some sentimental value because I designed a good portion of it and got this before it was released for sale to the public. A neat memento to keep around.