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techrecoveryfor a large part of yesterday and this morning I have been trying to fix two XBox 360s - one with RROD and one with a hit and miss problem with the DVD reader (also known as the open tray problem) . I spent yesterday working on the open tray problem (this is my XBox, so it took precedence) with little to no success (it seems to work more often that it used to, but still fails to read fairly regularly).
The point of this post, however, is this morning's attempt to fix the RROD, which ties in to my attempt to fix a laptop with bad video output a few months ago. What I discovered then was that many people had managed to fix problem graphics cards by removing all plastic and heat sinks and then baking them in the oven on 385 F for about 8-10 minutes. Once cooled and reassembled, the issues were gone, apparently due to the reflow soldering effect.
Now, I was obviously severely skeptical of this working, but figured my laptop was completely useless as it was, so what was the harm? To my eternal surprise, it worked! All I did was completely remove anything from the MB that might melt at that temp (stickers, odd bits of light plastic etc), placed it on a baking sheet, suspended by four balls of aluminum foil, and baked as instructed. Admittedly, it didn't stay functional for long (though I think this may be due to my not having put new thermal paste on the chips as I didn't have any to hand), but just the fact that it worked at all seemed something akin to the chicken sacrifice trick so often joked about.
I performed the same trick with the Xbox MB this morning, with the same result - it is now working fine (though of course I don't know how long it might last).
So now my question - what weird and near miraculous fixes have *you* done in the past that you felt sure would never work, but did?
As an aside, if anyone has any ideas on how to fix an intermittent problem with a BenQ Xbox drive (looks like it's having problems focusing the laser, based on what I've seen), apart from the POT fix that I've already tried, feel free to let me know! :)
The point of this post, however, is this morning's attempt to fix the RROD, which ties in to my attempt to fix a laptop with bad video output a few months ago. What I discovered then was that many people had managed to fix problem graphics cards by removing all plastic and heat sinks and then baking them in the oven on 385 F for about 8-10 minutes. Once cooled and reassembled, the issues were gone, apparently due to the reflow soldering effect.
Now, I was obviously severely skeptical of this working, but figured my laptop was completely useless as it was, so what was the harm? To my eternal surprise, it worked! All I did was completely remove anything from the MB that might melt at that temp (stickers, odd bits of light plastic etc), placed it on a baking sheet, suspended by four balls of aluminum foil, and baked as instructed. Admittedly, it didn't stay functional for long (though I think this may be due to my not having put new thermal paste on the chips as I didn't have any to hand), but just the fact that it worked at all seemed something akin to the chicken sacrifice trick so often joked about.
I performed the same trick with the Xbox MB this morning, with the same result - it is now working fine (though of course I don't know how long it might last).
So now my question - what weird and near miraculous fixes have *you* done in the past that you felt sure would never work, but did?
As an aside, if anyone has any ideas on how to fix an intermittent problem with a BenQ Xbox drive (looks like it's having problems focusing the laser, based on what I've seen), apart from the POT fix that I've already tried, feel free to let me know! :)
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Date: 2011-03-20 05:59 pm (UTC)the word? "ka-ta-nah" my ex's version was "sledge-ha-mmer"
;)
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Date: 2011-03-20 06:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 09:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-21 09:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-21 01:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-21 03:50 am (UTC)sneaky. That'll be a nice upgrade to the Model II.
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Date: 2011-03-20 06:06 pm (UTC)* Fujitsu used a controller chip from Cirrus Logic on their MPG series drives that has an "intermittant thermal defect", which effectivly killed fujitsu's rep amongst computer shops for a couple years, and caused the company to shop making 3.5" consumer grade IDE hard drives entirely- they went entirely to notebook and SATA drives. (reference)
** A non-fujitsu drive, obviously- IIRC, the replacement drive was a WD or seagate.
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Date: 2011-03-20 06:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-21 06:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-01 10:35 pm (UTC)Cisco had configured and shipped the router mere hours after an analysis of the errors it was spitting out. The router arrived straight from San Jose on the first Continental flight at 3am, CMR. The Cisco techs were unfortunately delayed by a lack of seats on that flight and arrived two hours later on an Alaska flight.
An early morning visit was paid to Home Depot at approximately 6am, the critical item they needed? 2x4 framing studs, cut to 20 inches each.
The old unit was carefully unscrewed, unmounted and slid out onto a stack of 2x4s, the new unit was mounted in the rack where the old one used to be, powered on, configured and cut over.
Yeah, I guess it pays to get a service contract on your million dollar router.
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Date: 2011-03-20 06:07 pm (UTC)percussive maintenance FTW.
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Date: 2011-03-20 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-21 01:19 am (UTC)Nice money spinner for apple, too.
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Date: 2011-03-27 04:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 07:51 pm (UTC)So one of them came over and whined to me that the computer wasn't drawing what it was supposed to. No kidding; it was all snow. I gave the CRT a good solid whump on the top and it went back to normal - oddly enough, the PHM-in-training wasn't impressed.
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Date: 2011-03-20 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 08:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 06:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 08:05 pm (UTC)http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/usenet/history.9603
Unless,
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Date: 2011-03-20 08:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 08:17 pm (UTC)On the slightly different theme of "why hasn't this system crashed", I once managed to uninstall the driver for the primary IDE controller. Amazingly the system (Windows 2000) kept running, and I managed to do a normal shutdown of it. I even had an IE window open that still worked despite the C: drive having completely vanished.
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Date: 2011-03-20 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-21 01:15 am (UTC)I seem to recall doing that to an XP box as well, although it pretty much branched to fishkill the instant I went to do anything with it except shut it down.
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Date: 2011-03-20 09:43 pm (UTC)I have actually waved a chicken over a dead mainframe, and have it come back to life... although I thought I was just kidding. [and technically it was rubber.] It was worth it for the look on the head of comp.sci's face though.
But the weirdest was 'jump starting' a windows box that repeatedly failed to POST, by scuffing my feet on the nylon carpet tiles and zapping it with static. I dunno what or why it worked, but it did it every time.
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Date: 2011-03-20 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 11:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 11:21 pm (UTC)http://www.notebookforums.com/post3088611.html - post 13 on the page has detailed instructions
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Date: 2011-03-21 01:37 am (UTC)I used this particular fix to solve many of my EPROM problems from there on out. It's the reason I have a butter knife in my tool kit, since anyone can tell you a chip puller is horrible at removing EPROM.
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Date: 2011-03-21 04:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-21 06:50 pm (UTC)Throwing 2x broken Amiga 500 out the window (second floor), go pick the parts up and assemble one working unit. Also, finding that most viruses with the Amiga 500's comes from bad earth connection, priceless.
Opening a apparently dead 486 unit inside a computer room directly below a room filled with all the buildings HVAC systems and whatnot making anything and anyone in the computer room very static. One loud bang and pretty long zzzzap later, machine boots up, promises to never cause trouble again.
Virgin ISA slot on old mainboard. Vaseline and sledgehammer does the trick, soundcard works.
Sparkling new mainboard on old computer says (in rescue part of xp) that the drives are empty (was 2x 40GB drives filled with most of my life). Panic. Send mainboard back to shop after confirming that drives was as packed as they should be on another computer. Get message back "try doing the same with floppy connected". It works? Wtf? (yes, that was msi, why do you ask?)
not sure how prevalent this fix is..
Date: 2011-03-25 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-26 06:57 am (UTC)Freezer trick works once in awhile.
My favorite so far is when I "Fonzzed" a system at work. A second tech had been working on a system that was booting fine and then stopped POSTing without notice. He got annoyed and went to lunch. I took a long hard look at it and when he returned I dropped the appropriate "EHHHHHHHHHH!" and dropped my open palm on the system case roughly at which time it POSTed. Moral of the story, check to see if the reset button is stuck in the down position.