A widespread problem with Nvidia graphics chips forced a lot of laptops sold between 2008 and 2010 to become faulty - but according to Gizmodo, all you need to do it put them in the oven.
More than 50 separate laptop models contained the chips, which would run so hot they melted the soldering that connected them to the motherboard. The problem even caused screens to stop working altogether.
Writing for Gizmodo, Sean Buckley told of how he was plagued by the issue with his old Dell m1210, so he fixed it by baking it in the oven.
Ok, it wasn't that simple. He needed to carefully disassemble the computer and go through various awkward steps before he could try it out. But once he had salvaged the ancient motherboard, Sean preheated the oven to 320-350 degrees Fahrenheit (that's 160-177 degrees Celsius in English) and cooked the circuits for 2-4 minutes on each side.
Drumroll please.
It worked. The giant gaming laptop booted up eventually and Sean loaded Windows Vista, realised how awful it was and decided to install the Windows 10 Technical Preview. That's new age fun with a vintage feel.
Sean said: "Baking an old laptop is one of the weirdest things I've ever done with a piece of consumer electronics. It was worth it, but I wish it didn't have to be.
"If Dell had gone with a swappable graphics solution, I could have replaced the faulty GPU (or even upgraded it to a better one!) instead of trying to cook it back to life."
We can't recommend cooking your gadgets, but if you've successfully deep-fried an iPhone or sautéed some Android Wear we'd love to hear about it.
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