Fresh-baked laptop.

The story so far...

...I have a Dell Inspiron 5130. Not a powerhouse by any means, but it lets me art on the go. You read that right, I used "art" as a verb. It handles some games pretty well, so it's a fine little machine to have around, plus it's portable. 

  The computer scared me a few months back. I turned it on, and it just beeped at me. Nothing on the screen, but the LEDs on the front of the machine were on. That made me sad.

See? I'm sad.

  Tapping into my years of computer repair(and breakage) experience, I remembered something important: Beeps mean something. When a computer is unable to display information, it is built to beep very specifically so that it can ultimately be repaired, or junked if the needed repair isn't worth it.

  I payed attention to the beeps. 7 beeps, a pause, then it would repeat again. I loaded up Google, typed "Inspiron 5130 7 beeps", and found this was not an uncommon problem. It meant that the solder(soft metal holding components on the motherboard) on the GPU was cracked. The beeps indicated simply that the computer was unable to communicate with the GPU. Oh, yeah, if you're wondering, a GPU is what runs the display.

  To test if this was the case, I left my computer on for about half an hour. Those beeps repeated, and they are LOUD, and almost impossible to muffle.  Sure enough, when it was warm enough, I turned it off and back on again. Booted into Windows like it was no big deal. 

  Laptops are a pain to dismantle, so I just decided to keep it powered on. It has great battery life in standby mode, so no worries there. It was far from perfect, but if I was away, I could still bring my magic computin' machine.

I was less sad.

  Then, the computer got shut off, and wouldn't turn back on, even after leaving the power on for hours. It was hosed. I needed the machine. 

  Going back to my days in electronic repair - yes, I did it legitimately for a while - I decided to give reflowing a try. This involves heating up the motherboard to soften the solder enough to repair the tiny cracks, but not so hot that other things on the motherboard melt/explode.

  I would do this...DUM DUM DUMMMMM...In my oven.

The Recipe.

There is a TON of crap on the motherboard that can come off. I took everything off that would come off. I almost forgot the CMOS battery. That would have been bad.

 

I didn't want it to burn, so I propped the motherboard up on 4 balls of tin foil. I wasn't quite happy, as I didn't need the whole motherboard to get hot. The white square just above center is the CPU socket, the dark squares to the left of that, and the lower-left are the GPUs. Those needed to heat up, the other side of the motherboard was innocent, and had some soft plastic. I wrapped more foil around that part to insulate it better.

Crisis averted.

 I heated the over to 385. A reflow is done at 385 for no more than 8 minutes. I didn't have a fancy digital readout, so I guessed on the temp, and set my timer for 7 minutes.

 I worried. I fretted. The timer went off.

  Anyone who knows metal knows that you don't cool it off quickly. So, I turned off the oven, opened the door, and let it cool while I went shopping. I got vitamins.

  I mentioned briefly that laptops are a pain to dismantle. Re-assembly was no picnic either. I put it off for a few hours, because I didn't want to do all that to find out it wouldn't work. I finally sucked it up. I even added an extra 2GB of RAM, I guess as a bribe.

screwed it back in, reattached heat sink/fan, DVD-R, HDD, RAM (upgraded!)

 

Then the tiny ribbon cables to reattach the keyboard, fan control, and power switch. Clicked the keyboard back in place. Held my breath and hit power.

I was so relieved, I didn't even wait for the icons to load. Or dust it.

  Then I screwed in the mind-numbingly large number of teeny, tiny screws into the case, so the fresh-baked motherboard wouldn't get all bent. I'd never choose another Inspiron model, they aren't they friendliest to work on, even by laptop standards. They seem to be lower-end models designed for people who don't want top-of-the-line, but can get another one in a year.

 There were silly complications. I had to open it back up to reseat the wireless adapter, then I loaded Chrome, and got the message "This site is using a security certificate that isn't effective yet.". I forgot to set the computer's clock(The battery from before, you have to set the clock if you take it out).

  I won. I didn't have to leave it on, beeping, forever. It just worked. I had my portable workstation back.

It worked. And then I was happy.

 This is the story of a victory. Sticking electronics in the oven is not something you should try at home if you haven't had the training. Sure, you can't ruin something more than totally, but you need to recognize what can explode on you.