"Lord Garth" wrote in message
...

"Jim Thompson" wrote in
message ...
On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 20:29:17 -0500, "Lord Garth"
wrote:


"Jim Thompson" wrote in
message ...
I'm getting a crash that almost always is instigated while surfing a
graphically busy page (using Firefox), though other programs have
(rarely) caused it to fail.

It manifests itself as frozen raggedy looking video, OR a full POR
like you pressed the reset button.

What do you think... bad power supply or bad memory?

Thanks!


Sounds like my laptop last year...The cooling fan was not blowing and
the thermal pads were ineffective due to age. I rewired the fan to
switched 5V and removed the thermal pad from both the CPU and the
GPU, replacing these with thermal grease.


Hmmmm! That's worth checking. I've had another PC with a fan that
ran "on occasion" ;-)


I used my finger nail to scratch off the greatest portion of the thermal
pads.
Then I mounted the brush on my Dremel to get the last bits. I blew the
debris
out then wiped the ICs with acetone before applying the thermal grease.

All the thermal pads I've encountered on CPUs so far dissolved fairly easily
with cellulose thinners - which leaves the surfaces absolutely pristine
ready for silver loaded heat transfer paste., any kind of wire brush or
abrasive is probably a very bad idea!