KaidKintell,

Thank you very much for your post!! Your procedure saved another laptop. I had been pullin' my hair out until I found this forum. Thanks again!

KaidKintell,

Thank you so much for your wonderfully clear and effective instructions (Repairing a Gateway 600 Heat Sink.zip)!! I have been having terrible problems with my Gateway laptop for several years and finally gave up and went out and bought a new desktop. Your procedure saved my laptop from becoming a doorstop. Since the fix (only took two hours to do) my laptop has not froze up once. You are great!

By the way, I'm sure Gateway also knows about this fix but they were absolutely no help at all. Totally useless. They wanted me to send it in to be fixed at my expense but it wasn't $3.00. I've owned three Gateway computers but I will never buy another one.

Thanks again KaidKintell!

Seems this is a pretty common problem. I pulled my system apart and reseated all components. The heatsink mounts are still solid and I added new silver thermal paste but still no luck. I'm guessing a fried processor. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

Even though I only had two of the four mounting posts broken away I still screwed down all four posts to the motherboard. Maybe you can try that. I hope it helps.

I wanted to add to this post even though it is quite old.

I had the exact same scenario with a Gateway 600ygr and after
disassembly following KaidKintell's EXCELLENT instructions, I found
all four posts to still be intact.

I added screws to the bottom of the MB anyway, and continued to
search for the answer to what else might cause the black screen on
boot.

In my case, it turned out to be one bad memory chip out of two that
were installed. I tested the *good* memory chip in both slots, and
the *bad* chip in both. With only the good memory chip used, the
computer would boot just fine.

I *really* thought I had a dead processor

Now, the next problem is that the heatsink fan kicks on at the start of
the boot process, then immediately kicks off and doesn't come back
on.

The temperature according to Everest, ran up to 58C, which scared
the daylights out of me, so I shut the laptop back down.

What is a standard temperature for the 600ygr
(nevermind this one... I found it to be 41 to 95° F (5 to 35° C))

Shouldn't the heatsink fan continue running?
(also this one is answered in the Gateway FAQ's as no... but you can change
the power settings in BIOS to Maximum Power Savings, instead of
Maximum Performance)

Should the other fan (upper right corner) be coming on, and when?
(I haven't noticed it come on as yet, but did pull it and test with an
external power supply to verify that it does work)

This guy speaks the truth. I followed his instructions and successfully fixed the problem, much thanks! The funny thing was that when I disassembled the laptop, the same exact post was broken on mine as was broken on his. It takes a little time, and you'll probably have to cut the screws down to the right length, but this fix works.

Thanks again!

I found this thread by using the terms 600YGR, heat, and sink. I suspect my own 600YGR's suffering from the same problem. I put it together from parts laying around for a while. I also read and followed the service manual to the letter, starting with taking out the battery, memory cover, mini-PCI cover, etc.

The Frankensteined laptop posted BIOS and seemed to work fine. I was ecstatic! It asked for a user password to access the SETUP portion. I used KILLCMOS on it (twice, actually, not sure why I did so a second time). I was still able to use it the laptop. I tried to run KNOPPIX 3.6 but had kernel panic. Then I successfully loaded BeatrIX and then ran MemTest. The machine did freeze about nine minutes into testing. I rebooted, ran it again, and after it completed one pass (after more than nine minutes), I shut it down. I believe the laptop was running for anywhere from thirty to sixty minutes.

I wanted to see if the battery would hold a charge. I let it sit and charged the battery. When the battery light turned green. I unplugged the AC adapter and powered it on.

I see the three lights blink on the keyboard panel. I hear the fan. There's no reaction on the LCD. I keep powering down and trying to power up. No change in behavior. I also found no reaction from pressing the Eject button on the DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive.

As soon as the epoxy cures on the LCD bezel, I'll perform the recommended procedure outlined by KaidKintell. Got the Arctic Silver ready, too.

Any thoughts going forward?

Thanks for the reply but after taking the thing apart my heat sink was not the same it was screwed from the bottom of the motherboard.

I found that the sleep button on the top was bad I removed it and the machine works like a charm.

Thanks again

May I ask how did you determine the sleep button was bad on the board? I'm also interested in finding out about what else you saw when you opened up the motherboard and the heat sink.

I'm having problems with my own 600YGR. I posted in this thread but it got displaced. I may bring it back here, because I'm still waiting for an explanation about its displacement.

I am sorry to be so late replying to you. As you said this is an old thread and I do not check it much. For some reason I just receved the email that you had posted this message yesterday?

Anyway about the fan. I have noticed that the fans in these computer run at strange times. they will almost always run for a few seconds at startup and then stop again untill some time later. The computer normaly becomes very hot before it does run again (arond 55-60F) then it will run for anywhere between 15sec and 2min and shut off again. The computer does not cool down much during this time but I guess it gets what it needs. Like most older laptops it was designed to draw air fron the back and push it out the bottem, not the best sence the small rubber "legs" on the bottem of my computer have long sence worn off. I try to keep the back of the computer elevated and all fan vent holes clear.

If your fans do not run again at all then I would like to know if you have noticed any other problems with the computer as it gets warm. Does is slow down or have errors? Do programs stop working or work incorrectly? Do you see video errors or random pixels? Anyway please reply if you can, I know it has been some time sence you posted and I hope I am not too late.