Repairing laptops that won't boot and show the blinking caps

[clcassidy]

Just wanted to comment that the oven method worked for me on the first try.  I have a heat gun but felt that it was too risky since I didn't have any solder to test the time it would take to melt and the heat gun is very powerful.  I think the oven method is the most controlled environment to perform the reflow.  After removing as much as possible from the motherboard and covering everything except the GPU (top and bottom), I put the MB on the foil balls on a cookie sheet in the cold oven.  I turned the oven on to 385 F and allowed the MB to warm up along with the oven.  When the oven temp reached 385 F I turned on the timer for 10 minutes.  At the end of the 10 minutes I turned the oven off and cracked open the door so that the MB could cool down gradually.  After about 30-45 minutes the MB was cool and I reassembled the laptop.  When I turned the laptop on, I received 3 blinks on the caps lock which indicates a memory problem.  After doing a quick Google search I found that the CMOS battery might also need to be reset by taking it out for 20 secs and putting back in.  I reseated the RAM and reset the CMOS and the laptop booted up perfectly!

[clcassidy]

One more thing I forgot to mention is that I added a copper shim and new thermal paste in an attempt to help the GPU stay cool.  Some people have noted that there is a gap between the heatsink and the GPU on the HP G6 so the GPU tends to overheat.  We'll see if it prevents the problem from recurring. 

In addition to laying off heavy gaming to prevent overheating, I also suggest a break from streaming videos (youtube, netflix etc.)  so that the laptop doesn't overheat.

[ILoveMicrosoft]

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@clcassidy wrote:

One more thing I forgot to mention is that I added a copper shim and new thermal paste in an attempt to help the GPU stay cool.  Some people have noted that there is a gap between the heatsink and the GPU on the HP G6 so the GPU tends to overheat.  We'll see if it prevents the problem from recurring. 

In addition to laying off heavy gaming to prevent overheating, I also suggest a break from streaming videos (youtube, netflix etc.)  so that the laptop doesn't overheat.

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Nice to hear! I've also added copper shims and expensive thermal paste to those laptops. It's been quite a few years since, and I thought this issue was resolved largely because of the new laptops with APUs from both AMD and Intel (don't remember what the Intel equivalent is called) - the graphics chip is integrated with the CPU and replaceable using a pin system so there's no solder contacts. But it turns out this problem is once again appearing in newer, ultra thin models (laptop/tablet hybrids as well) where the APU is soldered to the motherboard, so I guess this method can work in those scenarios as well. I must say 4 years have done a lot in terms of improvements, both AMD and Intel have been gettting increasingly lower temperatures and TDPs in their mobile offerings which is very good news.