P6860FX - 8800mGTS Dead

[rnr80]

Hey guys -

So on my trusted 6860FX, the 8800M card just died, quite a shame. I've run it for about 21/2 - 3 years now. A quick search reveals that this is a fairly common issue with this model.

I've the following questions -
A. Would a thorough cleaning and reapplying the thermal pastes have any chance of bringing it back to life - the logical side of my brain says NO but still do not want to give up hope.
B. In case it doesn't can I still use the laptop for purposes other than gaming, say browsing and occasionally watching movies? I do notice that the laptop gets warmer nowadays.
C. This annoys me the most - I can no longer put the laptop to Sleep/Hibernate. Those options are disabled in the start menu - is this related to the defunct graphics card, I thought so. Is there a workaround for re-enabling sleep on the laptop?

Thanks for all your inputs.

[Bartlett]

All I can say is, bake it! 8-10 minutes in the oven at 385F will hopefully remelt the solder and remedy those hairline cracks that could be causing the card to die a premature death.

Holy crap, it worked! Dead video card resurrected! - [H]ard|Forum

[TANWare]

Baking is only a temporary fix. Each baking will last shorter before the next...

[Hammerfest]

I remember using a heat-gun at my last contract tech job, fixed so many HP DV models its no funny...

I really wish I had a reball station... no baking required, and so far, my dv9k I had (now my niece's) reballed, still runs like a champ

[rnr80]

Thanks for all your inputs, I'm no expert on the internal workings of the laptop and will try to open it up later in the week.
In the event that this does not work, i.e. does not fix the GPU can I still use my laptop for browsing etc. without doing more damage to it and in the interim is there a fix to the laptop not going to sleep/hibernate.

As always, thank you.