Intermittency in a notebook PCB
 

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

"Anand" wrote in message
oups.com...

I had heard of a technique involving putting the PCB in an oven to
solve these kinds of intermittent problems.

Last resort surely. I know Dell is crap for warranty, but have you asked
them?

N

The notebook is over 4 years old. I dont think Dell would honour the
warranty. Even more so as it is pretty obvious that I have dismantled
the notebook a number of times.

Regards,

Anand