Help with some basic rebuilding steps for laptop.

[Bajanine]

I have a Gateway ygr600 that quit on me no beeps, no hard drive activity, and no monitor acitvity. Did a little googling and found what I believe is my problem. Apparently, this model is know for the solder joint 'lugs', that hold the heat sink in position relative to the cpu, breaking free. So, I opened her up and sure enough, 3 of the 4 were broke free.

I have a couple of other questions which will make it obvious that I am not a pc builder. Between my ATI chip and the heat sink there appears to be a yellow sticky two face tape. Do I need to replace this with new tape? If so what is it called?

Also shouldn't I include some kind of paste between my CPU and the heat sink?

Thanks in advance,

Bajanine.

/edited for typo's

[Waldo2k2]

the yellow tape is heatsink tape (hs compound in tape form)
scrape all of it off and clean with rubbing alcohol
do the same for the processor heatsink
replace both with decent heatsink compound (I don't recommend you using arctic silver if you don't have much experience, the silver IS conductive and can cause problems if you smear it where it shouldn't go :-) )

[Bajanine]

Thanks Waldo for the information. I had never heard of heat sink tape before!

[Bajanine]

I just got done resoldering the lugs back onto the heat sink and when I boot the machine I still don't get any activity except for the fan. Anyone have an idea of what I should check?

[Waldo2k2]

internal power supply, good luck replacing it though...

[Bajanine]

Thanks again for the input Waldo, I think I see what you mean the power supply is underneath the cardbus. What a pain in the ass, I can't even figure out how remove it!

I am considering sending my laptop to www.absoluteraleigh.com/. Anyone here ever hear of them? They give free quotes and their pricing seems fair.

I would rather accidentally break my laptop trying to fix it then send it Gateway! I think Gateway would rather sell a new one than fix older ones.

[Waldo2k2]

hmm, if they're local to you I'd say go for it, unless you can find someone else nearby. I hope that you didn't do that work on it while it was under warranty though...cause if you did then there's no way gateway would do it for free, because free is the only way I'd send it to them.

[Bajanine]

No it's past warranty it is almost 4 years old now. Sounds like an excuse to buy a new one!