Warning if you have a HP 6735s laptop, mainly sold from ebuyer 2009

whitelabel

There are a lot of them (41 reported cases so far from ebuyer alone) failing right now 2 years in and there is it seems, an inherent fault with the GBA which bonds the ATI branded graphics chip to the mother board, as a result of over heating.

from an expert technician

The problem lies directly with the BGA grid underneath the ATI GPU. The BGA grid is a series of solder balls that provides the interconnect between the GPU and the mainboard. Due to the removal of lead content from the solder these GPU's cannot now withstand the same conditions as previously and so the solder balls crack and fail causing the laptop to fail to operate

There is another similar fault with nvidia chips in lots of other makes and models but more details and how to claim etc can be found at https://www.nvidiadefect.com

Sales of Good act applies you have up to 6 years to make claim, and receive a replacement or as they have generally been doing a proportionate refund of approx 50%.

if you have the above model, back up all your data now (all ways a good thing to do any how) as if it gets sent off to e-buyer you will lose your data. If you get an independent report (£65 avail from the site - and of no affiliation to me) then you may be able to get your data backed up free at that time.

But if you have a drive caddy you can take the hard drive out and copy the data yourself elsewhere if it does die (as I have had to do)

I was going to have to write off the loss, but having found its a common fault ill be perusing ebuyer in full for it.



If you have a different laptop that has failed recently its worth checking if it had a nvidia ship, as there is a class action in the usa against HP
Nvidia set aside $2,000,000 to repay customers, but apparently gave Hp $15,000,000 in compensation but they also have the same chips in toshiba, sony, acer and other brands too

http://www.nvidiadefect.com/HP.pdf

whitelabel

Ebuyer have accepted there is a fault after "extensive testing" and agreed a proportionate refund