So, I grab my lappy this morning and find that it’s locked up for no reason. Again. It’s almost certainly a hardware problem, as I’ve seen it lock up during OS installs too.
Then I go to reboot and I get four beeps, which apparently means “System Board is broken”. Rut roh. After a bit of googling, I find this blog post which details how to reflow the chipset (!!!) to fix cold solder joints.
So, after disassembling the thing completely according to the service manual, down to the System Board, I get some tinfoil, a heat gun and give it a try. After using the tinfoil to mask the other areas of the system board, I did the following:
- Let the gun warm up for a minute
- Point the gun at the chipset from about 30cm, swirling for about 2 minutes, whilst occasionally bringing the gun closer
- For 30 seconds,I held the gun about 5cm away from the chipset.
- For a minute, I held the gun at 30cm
- Then I turned the gun off and allowed it to cool for 20 minutes.
It’s now booting OK, and I’m running memtest86+ to see how it goes. I hope it works!