The Dell 9400 / e1705 is a nice laptop - great combination of high res 1920x1200 17" display and a dual core 2 duo processor - the ideal desktop replacement. Except - There exists a serious design flaw with this laptop - the video card gets very hot causing it to eventually fail.

The symptoms (any of these):

• Flickering video
• Graphic corruption on your screen (lines, stripes, dots, squares, jumbled mess)
• Laptop won't turn on - on light flickers for a second and off again.

Cracked Solder Joints

It is most likely that your nVidia 7800/7900gs is failing due to the stress of heating up and cooling down.

This usually leads to cracked solder joints.

Shake 'n Bake

Shake 'n bake is a term I use for this method - shake the bits off and bake it!

Yes, that's right- we're going to bake the card in our kitchen oven at 200c for 10min.

This will melt the solder and repair the card.

Important Notes

• The GPU on the video card is connected to the heat sink and requires thorough cleaning and high quality thermal paste (or similar) - I have used Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste.
• To improve the cooling and life of this fix, you can purchase special 'copper shims" from eBay that aid with better cooling.
• Be sure not to let your oven rise above 200c and limit the exposure to 10min.
• If the first attempt is not successful, repeat. I have read that other people have required two or three roastings to fully repair their cards.

  I have done two and each only required one bake for 10min.

The two laptops I fixed have been working great ever since.. I'll post if they ever fail again.

Here's a video of my repair effort.