replcaing motherboard. is this possible?

long story short, have a older vaio s series lappy (s-170p), pentium M 2.0ghz, 1gb ram, 50gb hd. bout a 14 months ago, something went crazy and the final diagnosis was that there is something wrong with the video card (mobility radeon 7900) and the computer will not run properly (crashing, rebooting, blue screen of death, etc) unless the video card was disabled. it got replaced.

anyways, i want to bring it back to life to hook up to a tv to play streaming video from a taiwanese website so i can watch local programming--nothing fancy. i recently found out that sony had a bios update which "Addresses an issue with occasional graphic corruption" but flashing the bios didn't fix my problem. i had the lappy running for about 30min on the new bios with my fingers crossed...and then the screen went to "safe mode" type resolution with an error message saying "video card driver failed" or something like that. i'm going to try different drivers and/or 3rd party drivers to see if it makes a difference, but i think in the end i may just replace the mobo.

questions:
1. how hard is this? i'm comfortable working with electronics and not worried about ripping my computer apart. it's not working right now anyways.
2. i found a few "guaranteed working" mother boards on ebay, but can't seem to find new one's online. is it worth to buy a brand new motherboard?
3. what are my other options? is spending $300 worth it to fix the laptop? $500? $700?

thanks guys!

 

If the mobo goes, you're generally better off buying a new PC. It's a sign your current one is digging it's grave with the intention of soon jumping in...

 

is there anyway to test if it's a motherboard problem or something else? i just installed the newest driver from ati w/ catalyst 7.3. about 15min after boot up, the screen did the flicker thing like it did before, which usually meant it's go to the low resolution mode (video card disabled). however, this time, the new driver/software recovered from the error. a message popped up saying "the gpu has been restarted due to failing to respond to the driver." at least i don't have to restart now evevery time now.

 

Agreed. If the mobo goes you will probably just want to buy a whole new laptop.

 

i bought a replacement when i found out the motherboard needed a replacement 14 months ago. the reason why i want to fix this one is because i want something small to fit into my home theater rack and use only to stream video to my TV. let's say if i can get it repaired for $300, i don't think there's anything out there that can fit my needs for that price.

how can i find out the model number of the motherboard in that old sony? can i assume if i put in a newer model motherboard in there everything should work (e.g. from a vaio s-460 which i found online for a couple hundred bucks)?

btw, i just found out that all the motherboards from s1xx and s2xx have this problem and sony extended the warranties for an extra year. wish i knew about this 14months ago. i could have got it fixed for free.

 

its not really hard to take laptop apart, but you gotta be careful and know the order of steps to take it apart. May help alot if you can find some site or someone have already taken it apart before.

But motherboard is most complicated since you're gonna need to take almost everything apart(except the screen) to reach the motherboard.