Dell XPS M1530 crash on booting up

[Kalenden]

Hi, I've got a XPS M1530, Vista SP1, and I have recently experienced some problems.

This morning, the screen would remain black while the laptop made the usual start up sounds and then did nothing. The power button remained lit.
After some googling, I had found a solution: heating the gpu. (I found the info in a thread on this forum.


So I opened up my laptop, but I was not able to remove the heat sink ( a screw that just wouldn't open) so I determined, through pictures, where the gpu was and heated the area of the heat sink under which the gpu lies with a hair dryer. I did this till the area above the gpu was too hot to touch.

Afterwards, I started my laptop up and I didn't have the black screen, it just booted up as usual. However, before I got past the dell screen it crashed. I assumed it was overheating but after waiting some time, I booted up again and got past the dell screen and had a boot up screen asking me to do a diagnostic and recovery thingie because there might be a software or hardware failure.

It proceeded to do this but after some time during the test, it crashed again. After booting it immediately back up, it crashed before I got past the Dell screen. After waiting a long time, I tried again and this time it got further through the diagnostic test but eventually crashed again.
Now, when I try , the load bar on the dell screen goes extremely slowly and the laptop crashes before it gets past that stage (it crashes slowly if I didn't try to start it before, rapidly if I just experienced a crash).

Sorry for the long post, but does anybody have an idea what I can do about this?

 

[Mark56]

heated the area of the heat sink under which the gpu lies with a hair dryer. I did this till the area above the gpu was too hot to touch.

Where did you get the advise to do this You should have come here first for some honest advise.

Heat is not a good thing for any electronic device. What you have done may have finished off a processor that was already half baked. I doubt if there is a way to recover from this other than replacing the GPU.

When you quote the GPU are you sure you are not confusing this with CPU. As far as I can see from your sytems manual, on the Dell site, the gahics card has no heat sink so you probably cooked your CPU. The heat sink is there for just one reason, to get rid of heat.

 

[Kalenden]

Thank you for your reply.

I got it from this forum, where mutliple people found that it worked. I can't post links, but the thread is named Dell XPS M1530 won't boot.

I'm fairly sure I'm talking about the GPU, since it is apparently commonly that the 8600GT GPU is defective and that is what causes this problem.

I'm also fairly sure that I targetted the GPU, and so the CPU shouldn't have been overheated. I followed a guide from Inside My Laptop to get to the GPU/Video chip but I couldn't unscrew the heat sink so I heated it while it was underneath it.

The advice I got on another board, where I posted the same topic, stated that probably my motherboard is defective. This is probable because I had trouble unscrewing a particular screw and might've damaged it that way. It could've been the heating, but since other people experienced no problems with that, I'm more inclined toward the other option.

 

[Mark56]

If the processor you cooked did not have a fan over it then that was most probably the GPU.

Even if I saw a forum full of people saying that cooking a processor made it work better I would still say "somebody is having a laugh". If heat was good for a processor they would not be fitted with a heat sink and fan, think about it

Anyway, I cannot be certain without seeing the PC but I would feel fairly confident in saying that your graphics card will need to be replaced. Problem is you may have also damaged some other components near to it. If you ever read anything like that again come to a forum and check it out first.

 

[Kalenden]

Doubt they were having a laugh, since they sounded very sincere. Check the thread out, it is on the same page. Normally I would check stuff like that on a forum, but since the specific information was on this very forum in a 3 page thread I didn't feel the need

While your logic does sound reasonable, I wasn't cooking/melting it. The GPU failure was due to some materials used which causes it to become defective (or some such I'm not really sure) and it doesn't sound to unbelievable that heating it would work.

Also, heating the GPU, did fix the immediate problem, namely the black screen. My laptop had image again so I'm still more inclined to the "accidentally damaged motherboard theory".

However, since it is most likely a hardware failure, GPU or mobo, I can't unfortunately fix it, so I'm sending it in. Thanks for the replies however.

 

[Mark56]

You will see in that thread that the very person that first suggests the hairdryer fix, two posts later says that he got Dell to replace his mobo.

I would be amazed if anyone has used that fix and got anything more then a short period of functionality before the processor failed.

You will have seen post 41 which states that Nvidia had a run of graphic processors that could not sustain high temperatures and many failed which were replaced free of charge.

If a processor fails it is often due to prolonged and repeated overheating because of a faulty cooling system. Intentionally overheating a processor is not going to catch on as a repair technique.

I accept that this heating technique could resume some graphics capabilities but it does not fix the problem.

Anyway, hope your repairs don't cost tooooo much and your PC is up and running again very soon.

 

[Kalenden]

Thank you. I'll take your heating advice to heart, I only did it because I didn't have any warranty anymore and didn't have anything to lose.
Worst case scenario, if the repairs are too expensive, I'm going to get a new laptop. This one is getting semi old anyway (256 graphic card is too little these days ).Especially since any repairs will include the same defective GPU (although the laptop worked fine for 3 years with it. But that will remain to be seen.

 

[Aksh123]

XPS M1530 boot problem

I have the XPS M1530 (3 years now).Recently got Windows 7 professional on it.
Changed from 6 to 9 cell battery. Have 3 GB RAM installed. After changing the Battery it looked like as if the CHARGER and Hard Disk got really heat up.

And after 1 month of battery replacement, the lappy wont boot. The fan would work but no boot up just as others have mentioned. for 2 days it happened that however i may press the power button it wont boot.

So , I took off the back panel and took out the lower RAM of 2 GB and placed it on place of upper RAM of 1 GB. Didn't put 1 GB RAM at all and pressed the power button. it started working and working till now. I placed the 1 GB RAM back again and it also worked. But I am working with the 2 GB RAM only now as use of 3GB on XPS M1530 doesn't looks to give any extra advantage.

So, My advice, just try to replace RAM and change the SLOTs if required. Use only 1 SLOT and PREY.

 

[Mike Myers]

I had exactly the same problems.

There is a ton of information in this forum that explains how to fix the problem. I tried it a few days ago, and one hour, using a heat gun, the problem seems to have been fixed. Here's the new link I entered earlier today, with the link to the older discussion with a complete explanation of exactly what to do:

https://www.techspot.com/community/topics/dell-xps-m1530-boot-up-problem-solved.191004/

Briefly, you remove the fan assembly, and deliberately let the NVIDIA chip overheat by running the laptop with the NVIDIA chip exposed. The screen will come back to life. You then carefully heat up the NVIDIA chip with a 600 degree heat gun, heating it for about a minute. You need the solder connections for the NVIDIA chip to "melt" together again. Put the whole thing back together again with the heat transfer compound on the CPU and NVIDIA chips, and everything works like new.

What I assume from the earlier write-ups is that if you don't get the GPU hot enough to "melt" the solder connections so the broken one is re-connected, any fixes you might get are temporary. And yes, the partial boot-ups and everything else I also got. I don't think a hair dryer is the right tool to do this - we used a 600 degree heat gun, which was very accurate about "what" it was heating up.

It has now been almost four days, and I've done all the Windows updates, and other things. The laptop is still working perfectly. It's a 2008 laptop - lasted for four years before it broke. Maybe it will last for another four. Technically, yes, it is "fixed", but I don't yet know if I trust it.....