Any c90 owners in San Jose, CA? need assistance

Hey, are there any c90 owners in San Jose, CA or nearby that would like to help me try to trouble shoot my dead c90s? I'm having that somewhat common no post black screen problem where the computer just sits there dumb on boot but sometimes blinks some of the leds. What I'd really like to be able to try is to have another compatible video card to try in the laptop to determine if the graphics card is dead or if the motherboard is dead. I don't want to spend 150 bucks on a video card just to find out that the motherboard is actually the problem and then have to drop another 200 dollars on that.

Here is a list of things I've tried just so far:
-booting from AC adapter with no battery
-booting from battery no AC
-booting with both AC and battery
-Holding CMOS reset for 45sec with no battery or power
-Holding CMOS reset for 45sec with power
-Swapping the RAM and trying random RAM configurations
-Replaced the Power Extender Board with new original from ASUS estore (cause it was cheap and worth a shot)
-tried booting without VGA Card, Hard drive, CPU, RAM, WIFI Card, Modem, DVD Drive and just about every combination of those
-tried baking the video card @375 for 10 min

nothing so far seems to work and I am way out of my warranty period so my only options are to either buy a new graphics card and maybe get screwed and have to buy a mobo too, or try some really nice person's graphics card too see if mine is bad or not. My gut feeling was that the CMOS was either corrupt or dead but after reading a bunch of post on this website, it looked like for many people it was the video card that caused similar problems.

I will of course buy pizza or whatever else you would like to eat and even supply beer if needed. I feel like if I would have to buy a graphics card and a mobo, then maybe I should just save my money and buy a whole new faster laptop...

Oh and just in case this is useful information, I was using the 8600M GT with 512mb of GDDR2 memory.

Thanks!

 

Welcome to NBR

What you could initially try is to literally cook your GPU in the oven for about 8-10 minutes in an oven pre-heated to 200C. Make sure you have it propped up on foil before cooking so no electrical circuits touch the tray you put it on.

Essentially if it is the GPU this is very likely to fix it for you at least temporarily as it will melt the solder and re-solder itself. Over time the 8600M GT get cracks in the solder around certain chips due to heating up and cooling down and not being designed well by Nvidia to deal with this heating and cooling cycle.

Of course if I lived in san jose USA I wouldn't say no to a few beers haha

 

Thanks for the suggestion!

I did try cooking it once in a pyrex bowl @ 375 F for 10 min, but maybe I should bump up the temp a bit to 400 F get around 200C. I'll give it a shot again when I get off of work this evening.

 

Nice one. Don't forget to prop it up on balls of aluminium foil. The heat must get all the way around the card, evenly.

Hope it works. If not let us know

 

c90s is notorious for dead video cards after 1-2 years of use. I had similiar symptoms such as you, but decided to gamble and buy the 8600m gt ddr3. Fortunately, my instinct was right.

Y not buy the 8600m gt ddr3 ? ( maybe its cheap now. ) and even if that was not the problem, you get yourself a decent upgrade from the ddr2 version. ( or try the 9600m GT which a lot of c90s users had already proven to work... )

 

i was considering the 8600m DDR3 version, but I hear those fail more often than the DDR2 versions and isn't much faster. I wouldn't mind getting a 9600m GT if I could find a true "unlocked" one that isn't too pricey.

This all assumes though that the video card is the reason my computer won't boot at the moment. I am not sure if I can justify buying a video card for nearly 200 bucks and then maybe have to buy a mobo for another 200 dollars. One of my friends got a new asus model, can't remember the model, for 900 bucks at best buy and it's getting 9.5k on 3dmark 06. I might just save up for that computer since it might cost me 400 bucks to fix mine.

 

Use a heat gun on the GPU instead of baking it in an oven.

 

I don't have a heat gun at my apartment, but might be able to try at work later in the week. I did however try baking the card again but at a little higher temperature. Didn't work though, still no response on the computer.

Not sure if this tid bit of info is helpful, but after you turn the laptop on, the power button stops working but if you hold it long enough, the wifi light and hdd led's come on constant. You cannot shut the laptop off without yanking the battery.

I am still not convinced 100% the video card is at fault though. Having a know good card to try would be very handy. Trying to boot with and without the video card yield identical results. Does anyone know if booting without the video card would give a beep code warning like on most desktop motherboards?

 

Trust me, it's the video card.

 

You are probably right, I guess I will start shopping around for a card for a good price. I am thinking I might want to try the 9600m card with NightStalker's bios hack.