HP Laptop won't book Blink Code 1 advice needed

Hi. I need advice please. So, my mom has a HP g6-1a30us laptop. She calls me and says it won't boot up. I try to work with her on the phone to troubleshoot. Only pretty basic because I am not an I.T. pro. I question her to get the answers she is not telling me. Only thing that sounded like was pertinent ,was it has been getting hot. I tell her best to take it to a pro. I tell her to tell them it is getting hot and now won't boot. She takes to pro and they say they could find nothing wrong with it and to pick it up. They said they left it running for 2 days and checked the fan and had zero issues. She gets it home and no boot. Ask her again to try a different outlet. No boot. Ask her if any lights blinking or anything. She gives me 1 blink boot code. This points to CPU. I go to Major Geeks :heart. I see posting "HP Pavillion single blink code, won't boot jools1976 01-27-14 13:57 " Sounds dead on the same issue. Resolution for this person was to wrap in towel until gets hot. Runs ok until they turn it off. Do same again and they had no further problems. Look around on the web a little more. I see "reballing suggested. CPU replacement not always working." If the towel wrap works permanently that will be great but I have a feeling it will be a temporary work around and she lives too far for me to go over constantly and perform this workaround. My questions are: 1. How do I find a proper tech for this reballing? I don't have a lot of faith in Best Buy's Geeksquad because I have had too many computers and laptops brought to me that GeekSquad said was ready to be thrown away or unresolvable and I resolved the issues for the desperate souls. 2. Should I go through all the troubleshooting steps the poster jools1976 did? I also read something about a thermal paste may have thinned/melted but that feels too much for my experience level. I understand the gist but not confident to try this. Well I guess that's it for the questions. Can't think of anything else that would be helpful.

 

Replacing the heatsink compound may help, but in my opinion it sounds like a BGA (Ball grid array) has been damaged due to the shrinking and expanding of the motherboard as it gets hot and then cools down.

Unfortunately unless you have a reflow workstation, a failure like this would be considered "unrepairable", and it would make the most sense to replace the motherboard. You might be able to find someone who will do this sort of work, but the cost of labor may make repair prohibitive or more expensive than buying a replacement mobo.

As for replacing the heatsink compound, as hard as it may sound, it's quite easy and there's little risk of damage.

I couldn't tell you how to disassemble the trim for your mom's G6 pavilion laptop, but generally the removal of the heatsink and/fan assembly is as simple as removing four (or so) screws and carefully pulling the copper away from the motherboard. Following that, you'll want to peel off the thermal pads or clean off the grey/white thermal compound using isopropyl alcohol, and then apply fresh paste.

How you should apply the paste depends on whether the die is exposed or there is a heat spreader (generally mobile CPUs have the die exposed), but every person you ask will have their own personal preference. I generally stick with the 'rice grain' method.

iFixit has a good set of image based guides that can help: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Applying+Thermal+Paste/744

Concerning Geeksquad, I'd never take a PC to them. They care more about selling services than about finding/making solutions.