T42p Hard drive crash (+wifi card dead +GPU issue)

[livevil]

Hi everybody,

I think this is it... After long years of service, my T42p is at the end of its life.

I recently had trouble with the power jack, that I could correct by changing it.

More recently I went through the "computer shuts down when I move it" problem, with the GPU identified as being the cause. I have since been dealing with it, trying not to bump it, but with frequent and unavoidable reboots...

Meanwhile the wifi card chose to die (probably a suicide, since it was very close to the gpu ; I already ordered a spare one one week ago) and most recently (i.e. 4 hours ago) windows xp couldn't load my profile anymore. The check disk results are not good, with thousands of damaged clusters.

- I'm thinking of changing the hard drive, reballing the gpu (not by myself !) and giving it to my (very) young daughter. Do you think the computer is worth the cost of a reballing and a new hard drive ? (I'm in France and need to send it to UK for reballing)

- Is there a capacity limit for the parallel ATA hard drives on the T42p ? (I think there was a list of compatible drives somewhere, but I can't find it anymore)

Thank you in advance for your advices.

PS: "Funny" thing is I just received my new laptop today

[pianowizard]

Do you think the computer is worth the cost of a reballing and a new hard drive ? (I'm in France and need to send it to UK for reballing)

Not worth it. Reballing is not a permanent fix, and the GPU problem will return eventually. Sell this T42p for parts locally, and get a cheap new laptop for your daughter. I am not familiar with the French market but in the U.S., most brands have budget laptops that are under $400 even for new ones, and sale prices sometimes dip below $300 -- I came across a $280 eMachines just last week. All of these cheap laptops will be much faster than your T42p and should also last longer.

[livevil]

In fact I don't want to buy another laptop. Since a reballing would be cheaper than a new laptop, I was thinking of spending a few bucks for curing it before its "retirement" (it breaks my heart to "throw it away", even for parts).

[RealBlackStuff]

A prefessional reballing will rejuvenate your motherboard to the state of new again.
Nick (Reflow Repairs in the UK) knows what he's doing.
And the max. size of available 2.5" PATA drives is 320GB.

[livevil]

Thanks for the answer.

I was thinking : how to be sure that the southbridge is not affected ?

My computer (used to) restarts normally when applying a little pressure on the GPU, so I concluded it was the faulty one.

[RealBlackStuff]

Read the Reflow Repair website stuff from my signature.
It describes the various symptoms.

[livevil]

Thanks.

I also re-read this post and it seems to confirm it's only the GPU.