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v 3240 as reported by the intel graphics app

and it appeared that the default drivers did work with it.. the problem was as the drivers were copied to the HDD, the files were corrupted

It recieved a spike above the voltage of the TVS for an *extended* amount of time (not sure the amount of time, but if the TVS is blown, it definately received a spike?? would a short on the other side drawing too much power blow the TVS? or would it only blow if the PSU provided a spike?)

anyhow, the fan spins a few turns and it powers off (the PSU is going into overcurrent protect mode I believe, and yes it occurs with known good PSU's also)

a diode check on the SMD caps?? please provide a little more info.. I should note I don't have a cap meter.. just working with my somewhat decent (only)multimeter... and I didn't know you could diode check a cap.. am I understanding you correctly?

Have you seen any of the videos about chipquik? http://www.chipquik.com/

I wish I would have read that about 2 weeks ago... I popcorned a xbox GPU trying to do a reflow... lol

I read that sometimes, you can use the stick of a q-tip to rub the popcorned top layer back down and it will actually relaminate, if the damage isn't too bad....(don't know how bad mine is yet...)

That article about the diode theory is GREAT.. I always wondered why metal would act as the ground... I didn't know that solid's couldn't hold a positive charge... they can only "carry" it because of the way that the bonds occur.. It's a hard read, but very very informative...

I'm not an EE, and i've been learning about electronics and circuits on my own(making damn good progress though!!), but in the past year I have learned how to build circuits, use CPU's(and the busses they use), print my own PCB's, and repair stuff that I didn't *EVER* think could be fixed. I love learning new stuff!!!

BTW thank you sooo much for the great thread we've been dragging out here ;-P I think we are a little off topic, but it is one of the best threads i've taken part in, in a long time

and as for the laptop, the battery held up at idle (maybe doing updates) for about an hour... I'm not concerned with it, and the owner isn't either, I think he is just more concerned about having a portable get-me-on-the net machine.. I offered to do the backlight for free as a "this is now personal" issue with the laptop.(i know, i'm going to regret that one lol).

I quoted him for a inverter, and it has taken a while for the parts(and the inverter didn't do it!!), and at this point I am aiming for a happy customer.

too bad that most people aren't as nice and don't care as much as I do... I would like to believe that some day it will pay off!

I would probably suspect the Marvel chip due to what I have read and seen... on all of my drives, the thermal insulation foam appears burnt around the chip.. even when the chip is in a different location, furthermore, I see evidence of excessive heat, on one side of the ram chip, and the plates and pins where the PCB connects to the drive housing.

Repair may be a poor choice of words.. Cleaning would be better. however, I had 4 ( a WD5000AAJS, WD7500AAKS, a WD500AAKS, and (not sure model, but same line 1.0TB in size)) that all suffered from the 5-click, then spindown problem
It turned out to be corroded contacts where the PCB connects to the drive housing.

and a PCB replacement is almost pointless, there is either an 8-pin rom(or other flash device) or onboard storage on the marvel chip that stores drive specific data that is used to read/write to the disk... A board swap will fix the bad circuit, but the onboard controller REQUIRES the data from the old chip to access the drive. In order to swap the PCB if that is the problem, you need to either swap the flash/proccessor chip or get a data recovery company to adapt the new rom to your old data...

^ if the PCB even helps... I got lucky with my 4 drives ;-P

after you check the contacts CHECK OUT THIS FORUM!!!! (http://forum.hddguru.com)
In my case (4x different WDxxxxAAxS drives) the PCB had bad contact points to the drive...

I gently cleaned the contact pins and pads with a dry dish sponge(and GENTLY with the tip of my leatherman utility knife), and then cleaned them up more with 99% isopropyl alcohol and q-tips, and made sure it was dry before i reassembled. I was very careful to align and center the mounting tabs, and screw holes before tightening the screws.

BIG PIX!!!!

@techdud, I will check the CCFL as far as I can with my multimeter, since I am going to attempt a backlight replacement on this machine. I may PM you(does dp have a PM function?), to ask more specifically what you mean about a few things, as for the version, you totally lost me. I will check the bios version, i don't know where to start to check the vidbios version, but please provide me with any directions, and I will check. I might be good at what I do, but I still have a lot to learn!!!

This may be resolved, when I do a reinstall in a day or two, with a good HDD in the system... I will probably find out tomorrow.  Oh, is there a vista/7 driver compatible with this chipset?? I have several Dells, that are not 7 compatible due to lack of display(or sound) drivers... If there is a vista/7 driver, how do I get vista/7 to pick it up, as device mgmr->update driver never finds any compatible drivers... even with xp I have noticed that some drivers, cannot be found in the same fashion, but when DP is slipstreamed, it will pick up the drivers...????  I wish I had enough time to sit here and figure this out, but I do a lot of reinstallls and don't have time to sit here and "play".

First thought was the DC in,so I used two different adapters ;-P
about 10 minutes after my last post, the HDD failed, and 10 minutes after that, a second LCD inverter failed....
after replacing both the HDD, and the another inverter, I am chalking it all up to old multiple failing components. and possibly dirty CDROM drive.

I suspect, that the install may have worked, had the HDD not began a catastrophic failure. HDD tested good before the install, then It appears, that the heads began impacting the disc about 30 minutes after beginning. With the new disc, I have had ABSOLUTELY no weird behavior, short of the LCD inverter going.

Almost scrapped the machine as a bad MOBO, but it became personal lol. It turns out that the HDD just had a really quick and almost unnoticed failure. It would have went unnoticed, had I not heard a PING come from the disc, and decided to test it again.

ahh the joys of "Vintage" hardware. lol

LOL, I run a PC repair shop, and I work with what brings me money... moneys tight, and my flat rate reinstall price brings me all sorts of xp, vista, and 7 compatible hardware.. I thought about memory and the dirty DVD eye. I didn't want to open it up and look for bad caps on a laptop :-(. (however I suspect, it is likely either fault dvd-firmware, fault video hard or bad caps, I did notice some other funky behaviors...., I will be running a stress test diagnostic shortly before returning to the customer)... thank you for the input, I am really leaning towards out of date firmware also. Upon completion of the install, the driverpack driver(with the one file from the dell release) was a newer version than the dell version, causing a BSOD. Upon starting and safe mode and "downgrading" the driver, everything appears to function properly.. so far..

On my first reinstall attempt I encountered two seperate corruption of file issues(after succesfully testing the hardrive twice with my notebook-usb adapter, and two seperate memtests of 7-passes each), along with some dvd-read errors after cleaning the drive.

grrr, I think I feel a no machines older than 5 years policy in the works

at any rate, I will do a stability test, and at that point I have done WAY more than I was obligated to do.