Aaron I don't think it's like the DC plug where pins go through the motherboard for the LVC14A or wouldn't we solder under the board where the chip is? Correct me if I'm wrong, no expert at this.

Thanks for your post on this site even though I didn't manage to get mine working. Seems to work for some.
I feel your pain. 4 days of Hell trying to fix this, baggy eyes. Good/bad I don't know, fan starts for a bit now but pretty sure if that chip wasn't fried it probably is now. Man that's small when you don't really have the right tools. 35W Radio-Shack soldering pen from the 90's and a couple of magnifying stuff, including an old Radio-Shack 30-60-100x hand held lighted microscope. Tried tying a sewing needle to the pen with BDN5 copper, not enough heat at tip of needle, tried nail, a little better but just ended up using the pen.

Always had problems with the lights, Dell changed pretty much everything inside just before the class action and since then it worked fine except for the lights always blinking ( battery is original and pretty much dead ) but even on AC only wouldn't show power on light, still worked fine, they said they didn't know what it was but since it worked ok....

I should have sent it back after hearing about the settlement.

So how easy is it to fry that LVC14A chip?

update: With the battery in, the DC plugged in, memory installed, HD, video card, cpu installed, fan wire plugged in, no screen, just went back to see it and the fan now runs continually.

Always had problems with the DC, I have to turn the plug most of the time to get contact. I did re-solder it, still have to turn it. Anyways I manage to get the power going through. Now that I think of all this not sure my problem was the LVC14A chip but I didn't have access to a charged battery that would have narrowed down the search to DC jack or not. Did what I could with what I had, volt metered my adapter, continuity test on the DC jack to motherboard as per http://notebookpowerjacks.com/index.php?main_page=page_2, microscope on the DC jack, found one or two cracked, fixed even though continuity was ok. My lights would flash with the LVC14A symptom, AC on, no battery, both power and battery lights flash in combination around every 6 seconds. Haven't retried with battery out yet since the fan works.

Did all you people that fixed your 5150s had the fan working ok but just not booting?

Thanks.

Forgot to mention also tried memory cards in different combinations. Put A in B. Only A. Only B both cards.

Ah well.

After working on this for 6 days at 10 hrs a day ( yes I'm crazy ), I managed to get it started a couple of times.

If I was to do it again I would invest in better tools ( thinner and lower or variable soldering iron ) and mostly only quick heat, stop and recheck with hand held lighted microscope ( 60x is what I'm using ).

The lead on two (2) legs of the LVC14A just won't stick to the board. Yeah I probably screwed up the pads ( they be gone ). I just can't figure out where those 2 legs from the LVC14A trace to, actually even with the microscope I can't figure out most the legs of that chip.

If you're looking at the 5150 motherboard ( completely removed from your casing ) from the side you see Dimm A and Dimm B and turn the board to see the back connections of the DC jack to the left bottom corner. Made this little Paint thing for visualization http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/4337/lvc14a2legsnotsolderinght9.jpg

Where could one find the schematics for the 5150 motherboard to find out where each of the 14 legs of the LVC14A go to, to check for continuity or re solder the traces.

Thanks for any help.

I followed the directions and now I have a fixed 5150. Only took about 30 minutes total. Thanks!!

I've got a 5150 board that won't power on and the LEDs flash on and off. There's a component (32.768k) near LVC14A that makes a high pitched ticking noise every couple of seconds. Presumably it's breaking the current in the circuit?

http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r20/norm360/5150.jpg

Is this a usual sympton of LVC14A failure? I've tried reflowing the solder around the pins.

I heard a high pitched "ping" when the video cut out, but only once per incident, then it was done computing until reboot, and I could not find where it was coming from. The lights blinking may represent it is actually still running, but you have no video. In my case, reflowing the solder solved the problem, so I don't suppose the noise indicates 'failure' of the chip. Get a lighted microscope or 6" wide lens and have the closest look you can, this problem has been solved with a soldering iron, a number of times, I would guess that your attempt was not quite successful. It is hard to judge how much or little heat to use, I was surprised how little it took.

Dell Inspiron 5150 - about 5 years old (how did it last so long!).

It was mostly used on a desk, so did not get any pressure on the chip. Recently my daughter has been using it in her bedroom. I think she took it to bed with her and played on the internet whilst lying in bed. It has been getting worse for the last few days, cutting out after anyhing from 5 minutes to a couple of hours. I thought it was overheating, so took it apart and cleaned out the fan and grilles. Still the same problem. It got worse to the point where it would not boot. That's when I found this site.

I got my soldering iron out (quite a big old one). I thought that I would try the easy approach, not taking it apart. I took the battery out, the C cover off, pulled out the card, peeled back the plastic and exposed the chip. I cleaned the end of my soldering iron, added some flux to the contents and, using a magnifying glass, ran the iron along all of the connectors of the chip.

I booted it up, everything seems OK now.

Thanks a million for this site and for the instructions.

I have tried soldering just now.

I put everything back together and don't seem to still have the same problem.

I may try the soldering again, but i was wondering about this lil chip.

Is it supposed to be loose or anything? Are the pins supposed to look like they are attached and then I solder each of them or should they be loose and i'm tightening them?

I also have the same exact problem the difference is i have the nVidia for my video and haven't tried using different OS. I haven't tried reformating and reinstalling the OS(XP Pro) but i did try installing on a new Drive(swapped the orginal one) but the result is the same, it freezes when installing devices. Is there any fix on this?

Thanks for those who can help us on this one!

I'm thrilled to type this on my newly healed 5150. I've just completed the repair, so I want to say thanks and make a few points I was unsure about. I know I'm not the only who wants to keep their Dell going, even if it is 5 years old...

I did a complete tear-down of the laptop, using dell's instructions http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins5100/en/sm/index.htm

One hiccup I had in the tear-down was that the processor was glued to the heatsink with dried up thermal compound. I freed it by heating it up with a hairdryer and levering off a corner with a razor blade. So remember to buy new thermal compound before you start

There was no visible damage to any of the solder at 20x magnification.

This was my first time soldering. I used a temperature controlled iron at 500F. I filed down a 0.6mm pin-point tip, to be narrower and have an angled point to match the size and angle of the area I was melting, reduce the chance of the point slipping off to either side and melting two solder pools at once. I applied the iron right at the join, i.e where the "toe" of the leg meets the little pool of solder.

I did it by naked eye, because my magnifying glass was too small and distorting. It was only luck that I hit the solder right and didn't bridge any of them, so buy a good magnifying glass

I did three goes of hitting each pin of the bottom side of the IC for one second each. The bottom side being the side furthest from the screw on the C cover. I didn't touch any of the 7 on the top side

I guess the damaged pin was one of the 3 I would have been just able to access by only removing the C cover. There was a clear indentation from the C cover tab on the IC next to those 3 visible pins. I tore-down the laptop completely because I thought the pins I could see from the C cover opening looked fine. In reality I don't think it's possible to see the cracks in the solder without serious magnification

Job took me about 4 hours taking my time and doing practice runs with a cold iron. Was frustrating at times, but I got much more satisfaction out of seeing my trusty 5150 fire-up again than I ever would out of buying a new notebook

i have same blinking lights problem, and nothing works...so on your machine it was just this chip alone? ...maybe you have picture of this chip, so i can see that it's the right one....thank you?