HP DV9000 no video.

I dealt with the same model computer over the Christmas holiday. It is hard for me to imagine the video chip being a problem if the external video works. That being said, you are correct about MANY such computers having a video problem. I did the blow torch/ shield from the heat method, and the computer worked for about a day. Long enough to take all the data off the hard drive for the owner.

To tell you the truth, I would not put too much labor into this model computer. Especially with it's history. You could be making a career choice.

Hi Ken,

For $80 I can send the motherboard in to have the GPU reflowed and have a modified heat sink installed to keep it from overheating again. It comes with a 60 day warranty. The gentleman that fixes it says he's had a very high success rate and if he can't fix it, there's no charge and free return shipping. I'm curious enough to see if that will fix it for good. If this all works out, I'll let you know.

Thanks for your reply.

I also send out the boards for repair. I have the same hot air SMT desolding station, but have had lousy luck with reflowing the video chips. Of the various HP and Dell laptops with the alleged Nvidia problem, I've only successfully (long term) repaired 2 out of 7 attempts. The big problem is that I can't easily operate the motherboard outside of the case to see if I've succeeded. If I wanted to continue doing these repairs, I would need to build a fixture.

There are three types of repairs for this problem. The cheap and easy fix is to reflow the BGA video chip and hope that it hold. It usually will if you don't bend the motherboard when you reinstall it. That's probably why both yours and my reflow jobs were failing after a few days. The not so cheap solution is to remove the chip, clean up the pads, and reflow solder a new chip in it's place. That's much more work, more expensive, but far more reliable. There are also those that will remove the chip, clean off both the chip and the PCB, and reball the motherboard. I've only had one of those done, and it worked just fine, proving that there's probably nothing wrong with the Nvidia video chips. It's possible that the vendors that replace the chips are using recycled chips in this manner.

Some people have made a business out of replacing the chips, so prices have fallen.

Ask your vendor if they replace and/or reball the video chip. If so, they're probably ok. If they only reflow the existing chip with a heat gun or oven, you may have problems.

Incidentally, I had no luck when I tried to reflow the motherboard in a toast oven. I only did one and it was totally dead when I was done. Oops. However, these JetDirect cards worked 100%. However, LJ2300 controller cards had only one success out of three:

Hi Jeff,

I just sent an e-mail to the eBay vendor you linked and directly quoted your question about whether or not they do just a reflow or replace and/or reball the chip.

It turns out the guy that I was going to send my board to for an $80 repair needs the entire laptop so I nixed that idea.

Thanks for your reply.

That's odd. In order to reflow or replace the video chip, he would need to remove the motherboard from the case. I guess he wants the whole machine so he can check the results of his work. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing. Anyway, it takes me about 30 minutes to get to the point where I can reflow the board, and about 45-60 minutes to put it back together sufficiently to test the laptop. All that for $80 is a bargain.

This one looks interesting: On his workorder form, there's a check box for: [ ] Check box if ok to attempt Reball if reflow fails **If successful I will create a invoice thru paypal and send to your email for $30 which brings the price up to $70. He has a different listing for fixing the entire laptop for $120.

Hi Jeff,

I saw the service order form with the various choices for repair which made me wonder at what point do you have to replace the chip? Does he spend the time to reflow, then reball, then if those fail, then replace the chip? That seems very time consuming.

Here's the reply I got from my original question regarding whether or not he can replace the chip:

Hi. Yes I can replace the chip with a new one. That is the best way to get it fixed. If sending me the board only it would be 65 plus the cost of the chip. Or 120 if you want to send the whole unit. Chips usually run in the

James

I replied basically asking, "How do you determine if the chip needs to be replaced?" My thought being is it just to make sure the problem never occurs again?

The gentleman that offered the $80 repair is here.

and

Thanks for your reply.