Ebay laptop

[suityou01]

Got a laptop from ebay and thought it was just the HDD at fault. Not so. Very unstable, sometimes recognises the HDD, sometimes does not.

I was speaking with a laptop technician in the pub last night and he reckons you need to bake the motherboard in the oven to "refloat" the solder joints.

Thought about putting this in technical, but then thought it may be a laugh to put it in here.

Updates later. Anyone been bonkers enough to try this?

[Tingles]

Mate did it with his XBOX - wrap a towel around it.

Worked a treat.


T

[d000hg]

The microwave would be better. Or perhaps the BBQ.

[northernladuk]

Waiting patiently for MF to come along with a tale about his mate doing this and.... etc etc...

[northernladuk]

Reminds me of the support call we had years ago about guy who logged a call saying he had spilt coffee on his keyboard so agent told him to run it under warm water and leave on a radiator to dry out. Next day guy was on complaining his laptop wouldn't boot up anymore! Class
In the days before laptops were common place so am sure it happened more than this once.

[al_cam]

Nothing funny about that - it is how the boards are made in the first place.

Some small electronics firms even use dishwashers to wash the flux off the boards.

All very domestic really.

Al.

[Paddy]

Got a laptop from ebay and thought it was just the HDD at fault. Not so. Very unstable, sometimes recognises the HDD, sometimes does not.

I was speaking with a laptop technician in the pub last night and he reckons you need to bake the motherboard in the oven to "refloat" the solder joints.

Thought about putting this in technical, but then thought it may be a laugh to put it in here.

Updates later. Anyone been bonkers enough to try this?

You can bake it but you will need to add flux to the board. I would not recommend it as a first fix especially if you have not done this sort of thing previously. It is more likely the hard disk at fault. Try a spare hard disk.

If there is a problem with the board; you could try flexing it and tracing where any dry joints are.

[suityou01]

You can bake it but you will need to add flux to the board. I would not recommend it as a first fix especially if you have not done this sort of thing previously. It is more likely the hard disk at fault. Try a spare hard disk.

If there is a problem with the board; you could try flexing it and tracing where any dry joints are.

I replaced the disk and memory as both were faulty. Still buggered.
Now what should I take off the board before I bake it?

CPU?
CMOS battery?
What else?

[The Wikir Man]

I replaced the disk and memory as both were faulty. Still buggered.

Purely out of interest - how much did this eBay bargain cost / save?

[suityou01]

Purely out of interest - how much did this eBay bargain cost / save?

£80