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Reminds me of a time that a friend of a friend had me attempt to reflow an old laptop with a $20 heat gun. HP DV6000 or a 9000, if anybody remembers those failure rates. He had two.

I'd worked in a warranty depot and had some experience with the tear down by then.

The reflow didn't work for us, but we did manage to make one of the two functional again.

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I once had an issue with my LG5 phone who entered in a boot-loop (also a common issue with LG4). I don't have a head gun, so I put it in the mainboard of the cell phone in oven for maybe 10 min at 150°C to reflow the soldering. At least I could reboot the cell phone and copy the important files. But after about an hour, it enter again the in boot loop and was broken for good.

I normally solder at 300C-350C, I can't imagine under 200 reflowing the solder, especially without contact. I have a cheap hot air rework station that I run at 400C-450C (or so it claims) and it is still quite difficult to get anything molten with it (except nearby plastic that I forgot to cover in kapton). Maybe the closed space has some advantages that make up for the lower temp.

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