Motherboard seems damaged, please advise

[relax]

I have intermittend freezes/lockups on my A31P (2653-L3G) since last friday. Usually it happens within windows a few minutes after login or on shutting down. I have done numerous tests and think the motherboard is faulthy. Since I upgraded quite a lot (cpu, wireless network, ram, harddrive and dvd burner) I wonder if I should buy a new (or revised) motherboard or buy a new laptop (the same or not). Can someone please advise on what my best options are?

Many thanks in advance.


These changes/tests all ended up with a locked/freezing pc sooner or later

- Memory has been succesfully tested with memtest86.
- I swapped / removed one and reseated both the memory sticks.
- I tried another harddrive, but installing Windows hangs in the middle of the process.
- I removed the wireless, network and modem cards.
- I downgraded to my original 1.8Ghz cpu
- Freezes occur without actual overheating (50 degrees cpu max) and sometimes even without the keyboard being used

Edit: also performed a complete test with ibm pc doctor (don't know the exact name any more but it's located on the hidden recovery partition): found no problems.
Edit: in the beginning almost every freeze showed the harddisk led being lit constantly, making me wonder if the harddrive connector is bad. It still responded to brightness settings of the lcd using Fn-combinations. Later on I had one or two freezes where the light did not show on.

[kulcousy]

my a31 does the same thing. There is a discussion somewhere about the video chip losing it's soldering. Sometimes I can only reboot by holding the laptop in one hand from the front which puts pressure above the video chip. Some have resoldered the chip. I don't have the link for this discussion.

[relax]

Thank you for your reply. After looking at some of threads dealing with resoldering the GPU, I noticed two things:

1. GomJabbar mentions that it is not easy to resolder the GPU due to BGA's
2. Another thread about putting pressure on the GPU of a T42 talks about BSOD's, but I don't have those.

Besides the solder: I think it could still be micro cracks in the motherboard and then I'm still screwed.

Have you tried resoldering the GPU or putting pressure on it by using post-it notes? Did you solve your problem in any other way?

Best regards.

Edit: another thread saying it might be caused by flexing of the motherboard, instead of heat.

Edit 2: a success-story of willpower101 who reflowed the BGA video chip.

[kulcousy]

I use an external monitor and wireless keyboard and mouse. So it doesn't get moved. Sometimes a touch is all it takes. The hdd light is often on, as you mentioned when it freezes. It may run for a day or 2 before freezing. So, I'm not in a great hurry.
The comments in your links about board flexing makes me wonder if I'm making things work with my torque technique for starting. Thanks for the links.

John

[ElHupeke]

I got my defective A31 for free. The thinkpad freezed suddenly and was random. I also own a defective R40 and I switched the processor. Now I'm using it for a long time and certainly it was the CPU that was defective.

Maybe you can switch CPU's to check it is the same problem.

Kind regards,

Huub de Groot