matt31415

Sure, I'll be glad to snap some pictures when I do the next one.

I had to look up flux the first time I heard it mentioned. let me back it up a bit (did I mention I'm long-winded?) The graphics issue these laptops have (D620, 630, lot of HP DV series notebooks, that all use the Nvidia graphics) is due to the extreme fluctuations in temperature....their cooling is relatively inadequate, so they get really really hot in use, then cool back down when the computer is off. This swinging back and forth in temperature, over time, causes the solder joints under the BGA graphics chip to get a little brittle...at the molecular level, the structure becomes something of a honeycomb structure, and can have micro-fractures...This leads to weird graphics issues that can range from certain items on the screen appearing to shimmer or wiggle, to horizontal, vertical lines, specs all over the place, or no video at all, depending on its severity. The way to fix this is to 'reflow" the solder, cause it to melt in-place and restore its original solid connection. This is where the oven comes in. You take out the board, strip all the plastic labels and such off of it, and partially screw several screws into the holes on the bottom of the board so that it is evenly supported on 'stands' with some room for air underneath. Pre-heat the oven to 390 deg. Fahrenheit, and put the motherboard on a cookie sheet and put into the oven. After ten minutes, turn the oven off and crack the door open just a tad, and let it slowly cool over 30-45 minutes. Then reassemble. It has worked on all three units I've tried so far. Enter flux. Turns out, I should have been using this the whole time. It's a liquid you put around the edges of the chip and let roll around beneath the chip, which conditions the solder so that after it reflows, it's more supple...or at least no longer brittle....it makes it more of a stronger, more permanent fix. The three I've done so far could go out again, but they would be less likely to do so if I had used flux. When I first read about this, I thought it sounded completely crazy, but figured, "they're dead anyhow, couldn't make it any worse" and sure enough, I'm three-for-three in fixing them! This could be the issue you're having, if, and only if, it has nvidia graphics. Since I support all the ones at work still, if you describe your symptoms in detail, I may be able to help point you in the right direction drawing from some of my experience.

Howdy, folks, Just wanted to pop in and say hi, and introduce myself. I work at a small literal arts college in northwest Iowa, in the IT department. Several factors came together to lead me to this site...the first of which was Nvidia's infamous notebook graphics problem...We've got a fleet of about 80 620's and 630's around here, and over the last year, as they've aged, we noticed more and more fo them coming in due to bad graphics. Since they're almost to retirement age (we already upgraded our D620 users last summer, and the D630s cycle out of use this summer) and they're out of warranty, when we got a bad D630 in, we've just been swapping the HDD into a working D620 and then stripping the system out for parts. I recently started reading about how you can reflow the BGA graphics chip and resurrect the dead, "Bad graphics" laptops by baking the motherboard in the oven. I've been able to get all three back to life that I've tried so far, and reassembled them back into working, spare units. Installed copper shims to reduce the heat on the chip (and it does so, to the tune of about 40 degrees cooler under constant full load)...didn't use flux on these three, but should have, and I have some on the way to help make the fix more permanent on future laptops I 'reflow' So how did all that lead me here? I'm the main computer technician for the campus, but my boss, the helpdesk manager, is the resident Mac expert. I've worked at this job for 15 monhts and pretty much learned nothing about macs, because I didn't have to. Now she's leaving in May, and I'm in training to take over her position. I needed to get up to speed on macs fairly quickly, but don't have the money to spend on real apple hardware, so I swung a deal to get a couple of these fixed latitudes from work for free, since they had been written off as dead and pulled out of inventory anyway. So now I'm the proud owner of a D620 and D630 laptop. The D630 is running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 with 3GB ram, and the D620 is running Lion 10.7.3 on 2GB Ram (the 620, in addition to needing reflowed, has a bad SODIMM slot, so 2GB is the max it can ever handle). Now I've got the two major apple platforms we see come through the department that I can monkey around with, with only very minor software cost outlay since i got the hardware for free. It seems to be running quite well at this point, so I'm thrilled with the setup, turning junk laptops into OSX machines. Fun stuff. Be well, folks, and thanks for the help you provided in getting set up on my first unit. Now that I have the method down, It's a piece of cake.

Just a follow-up, I'm typing this from a D620 running Lion! That may sound confusing since I started with a D620, but I have one of each. I have the D630 running SL 10.6.8, and this D620 running Lion 10.7.3 Once I worked out my bios issues it was smooth sailing. Turns out it really wanted a smaller thumbdrive than I was using. a 512MB drive worked great. The D620 is running the custom A10 firmware but the 630 is still using the restored A17 stock...I might try it out again if I'm feeling bold. Now i have one of each major platform I see around work, so I can start familiarizing myself with OS X...my boss, the mac guru around here is leaving in May and i'm stepping up to fill her position, but I currently know almost nothing about mac OS, so this should help, without me having to spend too much money.

Thanks, Syonagar, I started upon the same realization this morning when I tried it in another D630 and it booted. Yeah this one I flashed A17 on won't even finish POST when with any kind of USB drive in the port. I'll probably have to go into the office and get a floppy drive (and hopefully there's a floppy disk floating around somewhere!) and try to restore. Funny part, it seemed to go totally fine, no apparent problems whatsoever.

Hope this is an easy one, folks; I've got a D630 with the Nvidia NVS-135m graphics. Doing a Lion install; created the installer USB via the guide on the site; it went perfectly. pointed the MyHack utility to the extra folder for the D630/Nvidia combo and everything completed perfectly. I also updated the Bios to the A17 OSX modified one here, for D630/Nvidia. Also went fine. My hangup now, however, is that when I hit F12 to boot to USB, it hangs on "Preparing one-time boot menu" and never gets past that. So I went into the bios and moved USB device up to the top of the boot order, rebooted, still, hangs at the bios splash screen. the progress bar gets about 80% done and just hangs there. I've had it before where it will slow down quite a bit, but I gave it 20 minutes before giving up. It just seems like it won't boot with my 32GB drive. Question: is this 32GB drive causing the problem? it's an unusually large size for older hardware, I suppose... I will see if I can find an 8GB drive to try this all again on and report back, but in the meantime I wondered if anybody had any ideas or easy fixes. Thanks in advance for your responses! -Matt