How to fix Lenovo R61 graphics card? With FIRE! ;-)

Last night my Lenovo R61 seemed to be dead. It doesn’t want to boot up and the only thing I saw was this screen with some black/white lines:

R61 broken graphics card

I started googling this problem and it looks like this issue is quite common for this type. But then in the middle of the night I found the solution that I hadn’t believed it could work. But as the notebook still wasn’t running, I said to myself that there is nothing to lose.

Here is the magic. It’s sufficient to heat nvidia chip by a flame for about 15sec.

First of all, it’s necessary to disassemble notebook and detach heatpipe:

Lenovo R61 dissasembled

R61 dissasembled

After that you need to cover the rest of notebook except nvidia chip:

R61 nvidia fix

And as last step use any torch to heat chip to 700C for about 15s:

R61 fix tool - torch

And that’s it. Now assemble notebook back (if it is possible :-)) and run it:

R61 assembled and back online

Here are two videos from youtube: