LaptopVideo2Go

Now works with the most recent Forceware versions.

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This evening I was happily posting here when all of a sudden my trusty old laptop just turned off in mid post.
Pressing the power button meant LED's would come on for a second or 2 then turn off.

After pulling more and more devices out of the i9400 it finally came the turn of the video card and this allowed the machine to boot (well flashing LED's)
Some may remember a long time ago my original go7900GS died due to over heating (corrupt screen)
This time it looks to have died completely, I now have 2 door stops.

I'll be out of action for a wee bit.
I need to decide what to do, get another video card or splash out on a new Notebook, video cards are not cheap to get and the i9400 is getting on in years now.
But in the meantime my Wife's Dell D820 is borrowed (when I'm allowed )

Any suggestions are welcomed.

[UPDATE]
Some kind folk pointed me to the 'Put the Video Card in the Oven for 10min' and may fix it.
Guess what, it has
Well it boots to flashing lights, I still need to reattach the heatpipe which fell off during the bake (good thing)
So can't confirm 100% working yet till I put the whole thing back together again.

I'm not sure who the deserves the Kudos for this procedure (as links point all the place) but it's an awesome fix that saves forking out a lot of $$ on a replacement.

I'll do some piccies of the procedure.
The pressure is now off the new Notebook the i9400 lives again

The 10min Bake works !!!!!!
I'm in Win7 posting this now now that laptop is mostly assembled again.

If you have a dud NVIDIA (some ATI boards have melted) you have nothing to loose after all.

Preheat Oven to 200degC for about 1/2 hour (I used fan forced)
Place 4 balls of Tin Foil (baking foil etc) on an oven tray.
Place the video card with Heatsink (big aluminum one for the i9400) down, so the main circuit side is facing up.
Place the card with a ball of foil under each corner (or the oven tray will suck all the heat from the Video card)
Place the oven tray in the middle of the oven.
Close the door for 8-10min (don't over cook it) you can always try it again if it didn't work first time if too short a time was used.

Once 10min is up open oven door and let the Card cool down for at least another 10min.
Now take the video card of tray and place somewhere to cool down.
A successful bake should mean the heatpipe of the i9400 cards should fall off (soldered)
Now you can find some Heat transfer Glue and get ready to glue the Heatpipe back on
Wait until the Video card is cool and glue the Heatpipe back on (USE a proper heatsink glue !!)
Place the video card back in the machine and assemble it to a point where you can check if it's working
If it didn't work you could try it again or give up and go to Ebay/NewEggg

The above should work for Notebook cards and PCIe based cards.

The above procedure is at your OWN RISK.
Do your homework before beginning and have everything ready before even attempting it.
It will void any warrenties
You can easily break more stuff by fixing this
If it does go wrong you have been warned
If works you have saved your self many $$

But most important enjoy, it's quite cool to play with this stuff and having it work

Anybody know who deserves Kudos for the initial bake ?
Glad to give credit where credit is due.

Found this over at GeekSmack

Might make for some interesting reading while we wait for October 22nd

The FAQ can be found here

Just got this in NVIDIA email:

Prior to Computex show in Taiwan earlier this month, NVIDIA and Lenovo advanced mobile computing by introducing the world's first NVIDIA® ION™-based laptop. Lenovo designed the IdeaPad S12 as a thin, lightweight, low-power laptop with a 12-inch screen and improved application. The Lenovo IdeaPad S12 has the graphics horsepower to support high definition media and many PC games which will not run on most low-cost small PCs. NVIDIA ION enables these capabilities with the industry's best graphics performance for low-power CPUs. With Lenovo IdeaPad S12 and NVIDIA ION, watch 1080p high definition video with smooth and quick playback, or hookup an external monitor via an HDMI connection and watch on the big screen.

More Info

Just spotted these over at Dell.
These are for the Alienware Laptop M17x
Dell calls them 'Performance Drivers', they do include the Performance Driver setup (pdsetup.exe) but this is included with quite a few drivers now, so nothing new.

Not often Dell has BETA drivers as these are.

Driver Information

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• Released By: NVIDIA
• Driver Version: 186.12
• Operating System: Windows Win7 64bit
• Driver Date: 2009-06-04 (YYYY-MM-DD)
• Driver Size: 65.95MB (MD5: 576ed06785e978fc7bd4b6cbed4d98cc)
• Release Notes/Change Log (PDF):
• MS WHQL Certificate:
• Setup Files Included:
• Multilanguage Support:

Languages (12)

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Information Files (1 files supporting 45 models)

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Forceware 186.12 Win 7/Vista x64

Just found these over at Fujitsu-Siemens.
Offcially for the Geforce GTX 240M

Driver Information

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• Released By: NVIDIA
• Driver Version: 186.21
• Operating System: Windows Win7 64bit
• Driver Date: 2009-06-16 (YYYY-MM-DD)
• Driver Size: 66.23MB (MD5: ae715bc3f9769001c4b7421b9dbfd9b0)
• Release Notes/Change Log (PDF):
• MS WHQL Certificate:
• Setup Files Included:
• Multilanguage Support:

Languages (28)

---

Information Files (1 files supporting 9 models)

---

Windows 7 and Vista x64

First a big thanks to our friends at Station-drivers and also to Galdere for pointing these out.

Latest and greatest Touchpad drivers from Synaptics, but still well over a month old.
Lots of changes since v12 (see driver post)

Synaptics v13.0.4.0

Windows XP finally get the new format treatment.
190.15 is the first to get this treatment.

Added and changed some GPU's that NVIDIA decided to change names.

Renamed Geforce GTX 180M to 280M
Renamed Geforce GTX 170M to 260M
Added Geforce GT 220M
Renamed Geforce 9600 S to 9500GS
Rebamed Geforce 9650 S to 9550GS

Unofficial patch from EVGA to enable sli in various games.
The patch is for driver 186.18. Works with XP, Vista and Win7.



Download - LV2G's Server.
More Info

Seen this over at WindowsteamBlog


For the whole article head on over here

Our good friends at Station-drivers found these.
Latest Broadcom WLAN drivers.

Broadcom v5.10.91.8

Just found these over at Alienware.
Mobile set, lots of GPU's supported.

Driver Information

---

• Released By: NVIDIA
• Driver Version: 185.86
• Operating System: Windows Vista 64bit
• Driver Date: 2009-05-01 (YYYY-MM-DD)
• Driver Size: 62.53MB (MD5: f89846b16044806b7ccd3b8234e4f8a7)
• Release Notes/Change Log (PDF):
• MS WHQL Certificate:
• Setup Files Included:
• Multilanguage Support:

Languages (28)

---

Information Files (1 files supporting 40 models)

---

Vista x32

Vista x64



NVIDIA Audio drivers also included with these

RealTek have released another update to their audio codec, seems to be fortnightly these last few months.

RealTek R2.27

Found this driver in Windows 7 Build 7232.
I only downloaded x64 version so only that version is uploaded here.
Some with build 7232 32bit version can attach the driver here if they would like to share it with us.
Not as new as 8.0.0.144 uploaded yesterday.

Atheros v2.0.0.73

Modded INF also made over here