sorry i was also yelling the same thing to the house in general lol,

i forgot to say the point fo the xbox pillowcasing, is to block the air intake and flow ports on the xbox, the pillow case alone will surely help to over haet but it wont be quite enough, the trashbag or two plastic grocery bags all duct taped to the shape of the xbox, as long as its basically mostly blocking the air ports, i dont suggest duct taping the ports and then wrapping or wtaping th eports alone as the whole unit wrapped negates the heat sink design of the case.

also i wouldnt do this if youre covered under your warranty, even though someone i know knows someone, lol at micro soft that says the xbox techs do a similar process wut with custom bags with silly adhesive flaps and holes for cords, psssht, lol pillowcase and trash bag worked for me as far as i know we havent used that xbox in a coons age but it worked fine before we put it away.

but im sure this method violates the warranty.

just wanted to also state that the baking of a dead video card is in no way any kind of safe process you should look it up on google and watch some vids on you tube and follow all normal sane safety practices when using a oven in your parents kitchen, if you are a child who wants to try that method i HIGHLY suggest enlisting the aid of a parent.

as the only reason i ever tried any of these self help fixes was due to either a child or child/teen aged relative suggested it, it has nothing to do with ” but dad i saw the video on you tube if we bake this video card we can put it into our puter!” when i went to grab a soda one sunday morning. which of course i had to get involved as it included high heat / electronics / you tube videos / my kids roflmfao.

to be honest i was the skeptic until i read up on it a bit.

so rest assured freezing components is age old the early computers were kept in refrigerated rooms. and not that long ago they kept computer pens, whole floors of computers at air conditioned sweater wearing temps. and we all know about how keeping your pc cool make sit run more efficient, and how over clocking your systems components makes them draw more power more power means more heat so…..liquid cooling.

this freezing process sounds theoretically plausible. and ive watched enough macguyver and mythbusters to know, sometimes for the weirdest of reasons the simplest of fixes works better than the techs.

goes for cars too, other day cousin buys 4 x 4 jeep comes to show me, hes 19 loves his new/old jeep, but it would not start. good bat, good spark, fuel flows, its the starter i lol, he gets upset, i mean he actually kicks the tire hard, i tell him to take it easy, go grab my framing hammer out of my tool belt, i crawl under the jeep and i whack the starter 3 times twice around the small end and once hard on the middle of the case.

i crawl out and hes looking at me like they usually do like im a nut case Hal from malcom in the middle lol, anywyas i tell him to go start it and frive his pos jeep to the auto parts store and order a starter. and if it happens again i hand him my old framing hammer, (hehe it is xmas time after all great time for a new framing hammer in me stocking eh?)
i tell him to give the starter a whack next time 3 times and where, he STILL thinks im pulling his leg but, poof, started second try first try he was surprised and let the key go, second time off he went, he since hasent got the starter and just hits the case one time when it sticks lol.

anyways theres a pin in the starter, it gets stuck and dosent engage when youre turning the key so no juice to the ignition to spark the fires of the motor. unstick the pin and it all works, for how long who knows but if your stuck and you think its the starter check wire connections and whack that beast, you just never know.

same for this freeze thing and the over heat things, one thing is the siple fixes usually void the warranty lol.

the friend has since purchased a new laptop so i dont think any warranties are cared about or since it will cost a large fee to recover at a shop…. im thinking she just wants the pix. so the whole laptop for a hour? if i can remove the hard drive, just the drive right overnight?

but then run it from outside the laptop? that means purchase a external case for it? how much are those?

been over a decade of gaming and using pcs i have 3 pcs we dont use towers monitors emachines 80gb full of pix and music and movies just sit in the front closet they still work, we got laptops and two more custom pcs and *knocks on oak desk top* have not had a HD failure *cringes looks for lightning* yet, sure vid card failures, monitors going dark, speakers going bad, power supplies on the emachines went out on two of 3.

key boards dead ones from spills or rage lol, mouse that get just beat to heck round here, id say 20 key boards in 5 years easy, but i still have at least 5 maybe 6 that work fine. we got a franken pc from swap meet and pc recycle bin gems, works great. but i have never had or heard of freezing your HD, sur ei get it especially if some people had this hd work for a long time since the first or second freeze.

i understand it as the micro connections and the crappy solder used in the manufacturing process, well if you freeze metal it condenses the atoms, and if your HD ran hot such as laptops of external HDs with no fans, then you after repeated hot and cool to room temp cycles cause micro fractures in those connections.

when you freeze it it causes the atoms in the metal to contract, so the connections fractures shrink and in micro terms most likely you get a jump in electrical signals.

so when you start it frozen you get the good connection the metal warms and those mirco fractures then expand as the atoms spread out and poof you get errors and failures again, so im sure you after freezing run this thing til it goes out again, but you freeze it and heat it hot again and freeze it and years later it still works fine? im thinking the hot/freeze cycle WELDS the micro fractures.

now i have done the direct opposite, i have baked 3 different video cards, first time i followed this you tube video after reading about the process for a few hours, but in the video the silly person put the card upside down , transistors and chip side down, which when 400 degree heat is applied…yeah all those parts fall out of the board, dont know if it was a troll vid or if the person actually baked it or just demonstrated the process for the vid and fogot the p[ostion of the board but nvidia gtx 220 superclocked sure looks funny with all the doo dads sitting on the baking sheet lol.

what the baking does is it re welds the crappy solder, also we “pillowcased” one of our old rrod xboxes, lol put the xbox plugged in, into a pillow case,(use old pillowcase your wife will appreciate that nod) leave the power cord plugged into the xbox, wrap the case around the box and cord, get the duct tape and tape the thing shut, then put it into a trashbag, again sealing the thing shut, pushing as much air out as possible. well then you plug it in and let it sit for like 30 mins 45 mins tops. it will get massively hot on the circuit
board where the main cpu chip sits, again the crappy solder used in the last 15 years of manufacture causes these silly failures.

anyways after you unplug the xbox let it sit for like 5 to 7 mins to cool off and of course pull it outta that bag while its sitting. what you did was basically replicate the baking of the board the manufacturer did.

unwrap it after it cools and plug it in again , i fit worked it should run and look normal, if not youll see it shut off like it idd before, either way its htat last ditch try. the baking worked for me for the xbox, and another method in the oven for TWO video cards, one old 8800 nvidia, and another gtx 220 nvidia, im still using the 220 nvidia as im typing this. oct last year it crapped out.

so im a firm believer in hot/freeze fixes when it comes to micro electronics, the trick is CONDENSATION, the pillow case in the xbox example, or zip lock bags for a HD, wrapped in saran wrap and layered with towels or paper towels, if you went fairly thick you coulds put the wrapped up HD in a ice chest with either dry ice block or party ice block from the grocer, look up ice cream distributors in your local area for dry ice that’s what the ice cream trucks use mostly.

i guess im off to find a hd case for this lady’s laptop hd…sigh, maybe ill try a ice chest with the laptop in it? put two ice blocks in the chest, in a garbage bag, with a towel over that, then a clean bbq rack and a towel over that with a piece of card board over that. put the laptop on top in a sealed bag, and let it sit for a couple hours,

take it out and see if it helps float the arm, or cool the metal to boot up, if it doesnt bsod right off the bat, ill look into freeze the hd in the saran wrap and run it from the ice chest. ill be using dry ice btw three blocks should do i think for support lol. maybe fill in the spaces with crushed normal ice…hmmm

thanks for this thread everyone ill report back if this works and i hope my Wall of text makes sense i got kids all over the place lol couple of dogs its a mad house here trying to stop typing deal with lollipop in 3 yr olds hair, dog running into plant stand with poinsettia AGAIN!, then its nerf friendly fire or the oldest girl child of 11 screaming at her 9 yr old brother who thinks it is his duty to make her life miserable . rofl my life is a sit com folks sorry for making this so long but so many distractions and then reclaiming the direction i was going….lol gotta love it right?

good luck all and to all a happy holiday season which ever holiday you celebrate.

Suggestions? Does it sound like this is a problem that freezing would fix?

Also, Kevin said the following on 8/5/2007. His comment is the only instance I have found that freezing should be a last resort…is his statement true?:

“The problem with freezing is that it is a path of no return. If you freeze the drive and DON’T get what you want, most times the clean room can’t even help you now. So only use freezing as a last resort and when you KNOW the budget doesn’t allow a clean room.”