My Dell Inspiron 5000 started hanging recently. The problem increased significantly, and now I cant get it to work even for a few minutes at a stretch. At times it does not start at all.
I eventually narrowed down the problem to the CPU daughter board, which mates with the main motherboard by way of a 400(?) pin socket. The intermittency seems to be on the daughter board. If I train a hair dryer on the daughter board, the system invariably behaves itself the next few minutes. I cannot see any obvious broken tracks (its a multi layered PCB), or dry solder joints.
I had heard of a technique involving putting the PCB in an oven to solve these kinds of intermittent problems.
My question is, does anyone have any expereince with this? How much temperature should the oven be running? How long does the PCB go in? Is it a good idea to wrap the PCB in an aluminium foil to trap the heat, while in the oven?
Or is it likely to damage the board even further, perhaps even melting the plastic on board and dislocating the smd components?
Any advice here would be highly appreciated!
Thanks and Regards,
Anand Dhuru