> is it the memory/c(g)pu connections on the gfx board or really the main board? difficult to say with any degree of certainty. given that it was triggered both by heat and by pressing on the keyboard above the card, i'd say it was the ball grid array underneath one or more of the 5 large chips. (cpu and 4x memory chip) as a crack or some other structural problem would not have been remedied by heating so it must have been the solder, and then i'd estimate that the other components on the card are too small to be affected by any flexing produced by pressing down on the keyboard. it's certainly the a problem with the solder on the gfx board somewhere. (i've done nothing to the cables or the rest of the laptop at any rate... well, other than losing a handful of screws ;) > where did you read about trying this anyway? i found a thread on a notebook forum via google. http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?s=b072c74b768ad79defd36d42726057e9&t=48948 i posted a reply towards the end of it recently detailing roughly what i did to fix it. there seem to be some unscrupulous people who have cottoned on to this easy fix and are trying to relieve people of their broken satellites for pittance by claiming they are very hard to fix and require expensive rework stations and lots of experience. sigh. sadly i didn't have the foresight to take pictures of the various steps but i can explain what i did. i removed the card, removed the copper shield, removed the 2 small black foam supports and placed it on a heat proof surface. i made some small supports out of rolled up tin foil to support the card. (i didn't want the components currently on the bottom to move around if the heat passed through the board and melted the solder underneath) it's probably not necessary and you can improvise here. just try to ensure that the card isn't resting on a potentially mobile component. i switched on the gun on high heat and held it 12 inches above the card and slowly (over 40 seconds to a minute) lowered the gun closer to the card until it was about an inch away from one of the chips. (i was holding the gun so all measurements are approximate) you should be able to see other components nearby melt as when the solder becomes fluid, if also becomes shinier / smoother) i recall reading that i should continue to heat for another 30 seconds or so then stop. this is firstly because BGA is shielded from direct heat by the silicone (it's underneath the chip and in fact you can't see whether you've actually melted it or not at any point during the proceedure) and so need to be heated longer and secondly because the that gun can heat to around 500 degrees C and this is close to the max heat tolerance of the silcone (or so i'd read, i doubt that this is the case now). i tried that for all the chips on one side. then let it cool naturally for 10-15 minutes, turned it over and did the same to the other side. it didn't work. i tried again. it still didn't work. on the final attempt i dispensed with nervously heating the chips for fixed periods of time and really gave the whole board a good going over to the extent that the serial number curled up and melted and the plastic washers underneath the black foam circles burnt away to nothing. and it all worked fine and does to this day. i suspect that the silicone is not as susceptible to heat damage as i'd thought and the same probably goes for the other components. however, i could have just been lucky. so you attempt this procedure at your own risk. (i have no qualifications pertaining to electronics repair whatsoever but i'm instinctively good at it and think nothing at all of dismantling expensive equipment ;) it's unfortunate that i can't give you any precise heating times but i'd lost all patience after assembling and disassembling that damn laptop time and time again and wasn't paying much attention to the time. if you have any more questions then please ask. cheers, pete.