ASUS X5EA (K51AE) - baked to perfection....

As with all posts on this blog, I'm typing this entry up on my trusty ASUS X5EA laptop. I've had this laptop for about 18 months, given to me for free by a friend who had upgraded. I think it's about six years old. Specification is ok or, at least, perfectly fine for my requirements. It's had some issues though and I've lost count of the number of times I've had to open it up and fiddle with something inside. One problem that I've never managed to resolve is with the boot-up. If the laptop is up and running, it will reboot without any issues. However, if it is shut down or allowed to go to sleep, it is a real pig to get going again. Indeed, the problem is such a pain in the ass that I've set it to never sleep and I have it running 24 hours a day. Of course, sometimes it does end up inadvertently being switched off and then I spend an hour or two trying to get it going again.

This was the position a couple of days ago however, try as I might, it simply would not start. On pressing the power button, the power LED would light up. The hard drive and DVD would power cycle and then nothing. It just sat there, seemingly not even reaching the BIOS stage. After two days of arsing about with it (including leaving the CMOS out for a day and leaving it in the freezer for 6 hours), I was ready to chuck it. Once that stage is reached, when all seems lost, I find that it is time to switch the oven on. Whilst the oven was warming up to 220c, I stripped the laptop down and removed the motherboard. I removed all the plastic parts and stickers, and covered delicate components such as capacitors and SATA ports with tin foil. I also ran some liquid no-clean flux under the GPU and Southbridge chips and around other areas where the existing solder looked a bit iffy. And then I baked the f*ck out of it (for 8 minutes). Re-assembly was straightforward using the photos I had taken when I was pulling it apart (see below). Started first time :)

I've no idea whether this is any sort of long-term solution. However, lappy is working and that's enough for me right now.

More soon, no doubt...

D