[Bloodmyst]

Sup guys,

For those who have read my blogs..... I think I have finally fixed my graphics card.

Yes, I baked it in the oven!

No more artifacts when booting up. So straight away this is a win for me, although I still don't know if it will crash out when playing SC2. I'll be sure to report back tomorrow night once I've played SC2 all day. But for now I need to take this baby out as I didn't apply any thermal paste to the GPU (I don't want to fry it again, lol).

I'm actually very suprised this has worked and am over the moon to have this extra IT trick up my sleeve. The only other odd fix I know of is recovering data on faulty hard drives, just put it in a seal bag and chuck it in the freezer for a 1/2 an hour and you should be able to recover your data

Does anyone else here know of any odd fixes such as these when it comes to PC hardware?

[ToRPandarine]

wait wait wait...you did WHAT?

Please keep us updated though :P

[Rageboredguy]

What has to be going through the persons mind who came up with that?! "hmmm it aint workin... i know!!! i'll bake it!"

especially when its a heat problem?

Quick Comments

ToRDjvillian:

[TCPLemminks]

What.

speaking of recovering data from faulty hard drives, My hard drive from my macbook pro just died and I only just got a new one from apple, however I have some important data in my old hard drive that I'd like. Any idea who I can go about doing this? (I have the faulty hard drive btw).

Quick Comments

ToRDjvillian:

Bake it

[Cordance]

What the baking does is help with bad solider joints I wouldnt advise it for anyone unless they have no other solution. After baking the user should start saving for a new card (unless they already have the new one and baking as a desperate attempt to get more life out of the old one) as the old one will crap itself again at some point.

Baking is a make or break solution dont be doing it because I have some issues do it because I need this to work or its time to buy a new card.

Quick Comments

	VB_WhiplashJC:	Yep
	inFeZa:	pretty much this.

[Paroxysm]

Originally Posted by TCPLemminks

What.

speaking of recovering data from faulty hard drives, My hard drive from my macbook pro just died and I only just got a new one from apple, however I have some important data in my old hard drive that I'd like. Any idea who I can go about doing this? (I have the faulty hard drive btw).

EDIT: Random reply to the wrong thread, sorry

[VB_WhiplashJC]

Is your old HDD functional Lemminks or was it the cause of the crash? If it's functional then you should be able to plug it in (unless there's some weird mac shit going on).

If it's not then hand over your wallet and bend over.

[TCPLemminks]

Originally Posted by VB_WhiplashJC

Is your old HDD functional Lemminks or was it the cause of the crash? If it's functional then you should be able to plug it in (unless there's some weird mac shit going on).

If it's not then hand over your wallet and bend over.

......sigh......

The person at the Genius bar (Mac repair center) said that they could recover it but they couldn't do it there and that I had to find someone else to do it. Yeah it was the cause of the crash.

[TCPKiaSu]

YOU ******* BAKED YOU GFX!? what gave u that idea!? I'm very curious... then again curiosity killed the cat.... how'd it kill the cat? maybe got baked

Quick Comments

mGGDrGooSe:

Gold

[TCPLemminks]

Originally Posted by Cordance

After baking the user should start saving for a new card.

...Maybe he should have a bake sale...

Quick Comments

	TCPKiaSu:	well played GG
	Rageboredguy:

[VB_WhiplashJC]

Bugger. You could be looking at a few grand ($AU) worst case. They have you by the balls.

On the plus side, in future you'll remember to make backups.

[Maynarde]

When I got the red ring of death on my Xbox 360, I used to leave it on wrapped in several towels which overheated everything and somehow the firmware tells everything to reset.

Then you turn it off, and turn it back on when it gets cool, take off the towels and viola; green rings; xbox works. It would red ring more and more often as the months drew on though, so eventually got it fix but I thought it was a pretty wierd trick.

Quick Comments

HuT:

Did this too!

[TCPLemminks]

Originally Posted by VB_WhiplashJC

Bugger. You could be looking at a few grand ($AU) worst case. They have you by the balls.

On the plus side, in future you'll remember to make backups.

Wait a few grand to recover data!? Holy shit **** that I'll just dl it again.

[Daboo]

Well, if you get a half baked card....bake it again to make it full!


But I really thought you were getting a new one and decided to just thrash and have some fun while you were at it.

[dippa]

Speaking of weird fixes and hard drives:

Got that annoying clicking sound on your hard drive?

Then you're fucked. It's about to die.

Get a couple of zip-lock or air-lock freezer bags and wrap that shit up. Stick the bugger in the freezer for 12+ hours then pull it out.

This trick gets you about two hours, which should be enough to transfer all of your critical files to a drive that isn't dying.

http://lifehacker.com/5515337/save-a...-freezer-redux

[Gibber]

Ok... I have heard of baking your VGA card before.... I beleive the reason that it works is because it will fuse anything that has been shorted previously by overheating and such.

Its a temp fix though, it wont work for more than a few weeks from what i hear.

[Bloodmyst]

OK, what a complete screw around my computer has been this week........

So, this is what has happened. I woke up in the morning thinking, yep the oven bake trick worked. Guess what, I get all the artifact crap back once I load up SC2. Sooooo it was back to the drawing board for me.

I was almost out of options, I have 2 x 8800GT's that were "apparently" fried because they were both showing artifacts on the screen when I tried each one out. However I still thought;

"This is bulls&%t, no way could I have fried 2 x GFX cards in 1 week."

I thought, well I've already cleaned out my computer with some compressed air (whatever the crap is called, you can buy it from dickie smiths). So I said stuff it, I'm buying a cheapie GFX card to see if it really actually is the card. Lucky for me the PC parts outlet store here gave me a 2nd hand one for free as I said I just needed it for testing. So.... got home... put the baby in and STILL I see artifacts all over the screen resulting in a BSOD trying to tell me it's my GFX card.

This was actually the turning point, straight away I thought;

1. Bad memory
2. Bad CPU
3. Bad Motherboard

So first of all, ran memtest86+ and everything was fine. So my memory was OK. After this I ran the CPU peripheral test and BAM! BSOD resulting in the SAME error.

My CPU was overheating since the heatsink hasn't been cleaned in 4 years. To be quiet honest, I didn't think it would need a clean since it wasn't that bad. But what I did do, was I didn't only just take off the CPU heatsink and give it a proper clean.... but I also reapplied new Thermal Paste.

Ran the CPU test again..... and no artifacts or BSOD after 2 hours of testing.

So finally, after spending what feels like ages on my computer to fix it. All I had to do was just clean out the heatsink and reapply some thermal paste. I'm 95% sure it's fixed Right now I'm pretty happy with my fingers crossed I'm not going to see another crash.

P.S - Moral of the story is don't always listen to what the computer tells you. Computers wouldn't even know how to wipe their own ass if they had an arm...... lol!

Quick Comments

ToRDjvillian:

no more baking?

[inFeZa]

Originally Posted by Maynarde

When I got the red ring of death on my Xbox 360, I used to leave it on wrapped in several towels which overheated everything and somehow the firmware tells everything to reset.

Then you turn it off, and turn it back on when it gets cool, take off the towels and viola; green rings; xbox works. It would red ring more and more often as the months drew on though, so eventually got it fix but I thought it was a pretty wierd trick.

tip is to not buy an xbox.

Quick Comments

	Baldie:
	ToRDjvillian:	agreed

[IcedTea]

So.. it was the cpu, huh? Its always the thing, you least expect. Ive been getting BSOD's lately, aswell. Computer tells me its my Ram, ran tests on it.

Works fine. I should probably chuck the ram sticks in the microwave, see if it helps. xDD

[Cordance]

Would not advise microwaving any part of a computer metallic and micro wave mix really well if your looking for fireworks, not so good if your looking for repair. Although if you have a perfectly spherical object of metal it does not flash at all ... science holds interesting facts.

[OSPixel]

what i do. is i get my computer. take it down to the store. pay them a little bit of cash. and they give it back to me good as new! if not. i just buy a new one. haha