Dell XPS M1530 won't boot

Following up on Dell XPS problem starting issue.

Hi all, for your information, there has been a Nvidia GPU Litigation. What this mean is that many laptops using Nvidia GPU sold between Sept. 2007 to Aug. 2010 are affected by the GPU defect. The materials that made up the GPU components can't sustain high temperature and result in melting causing video failures. If you are experiencing issue turning on your notebook, this might be the cause. You might be elgible for a claim within the deadline (March 2011). For more information please check out the website below.

nvidiasettlement.com

Hope this help some of you guys out!

hair dryer powa !

I exactly had the same black screen problem with my M1530 (gpu: Nvidia 8600M GT 256mb). The symptoms were very similiar and I had the same error code with Fn+Power.

After reading all the thread and because my 1 year warranty has expired, I tried to apply to nvidiasettlement.com. However my M1530 was not eligible...

I finally tried to use a hair dryer to heat up the GPU approximatly 40-50 seconds and it miraculously worked !!! thank you for the tip guys !

To find were the gpu is I used this thread : insidemylaptop.com/clean-replace-cooling-fan-dell-xps-m1530-laptop. Also the following video (even if it is not the right Dell model) inspired me youtube.com/watch?v=NJlgPbELL0E.

Before the heat manipulation, I also removed the hard drive in order to avoid any disk damage.

Thanks you again !! I will post a message if anything goes wrong in the following months but at least it works for now

PS: Remember that you do it at your own risk !

Easy fix

After reading up on this and experiencing many other products with Nvidia chips that I have run into I became curious and opened up my M1530 fan/CPU/RAM panel and held my finger against the heat-pipe and heat-sink above the Nvidia chip and watched to see if it would heat up while the XPS was on at the black screen, not only was it heating up but the fan was kicking on once it got almost unbearable to touch, this indicated that the bios was still functioning properly.

I turned the unit off and unscrewed the heat-sink just above the Nvidia Chip and lifted it about 3mm off of the chip, turned the computer on and left it like that for about 3-5min while doing other stuff, then I forcibly pressed down on the chip and re-screwed the heat-sink to the mobo, then I turned the computer off and then back on again, voila ! hope this helps others without heat-guns or hairdryers.

saiber77 you are awesome

Function and power button: got the 1 flashing, 2 solid leds.

Tried: dell support (said motherboard replacement)
Holding power button for 30 seconds.
Nothing.

Unscrewed heatsink from video. 2 screws. Applied a little upward pressure to lift the heatsink. Maybe about the force you would use with a canopener to puncture a can. And the heatsink snapped up leaving the GPU. Left the unit sit with the power on. The fan kicked in a few minutes. Then after about 10 minutes I saw some video flash on the display. Shut the unit off. Rescrewed the heatsink and back running.

Any explanation. The heat fixes connections? Unlatches the GPU?

What happens is these Nvidia GPU's used on a variety of laptops run very hot and are known as a "Faulty" range of GPU's, between consumers not dusting out their laptops enough and placing them on surfaces with very little airflow (IE bed, cushion, lap) they get superheated which causes the micro-solder joints to melt and a result is 1 or more of those pins lose their connection with the motherboard.

The end-result is no video and black screen with a confused bios and the equivalent of a very expensive doorstop. What you just did on my advice was the same thing as an "X-clamp" fix for an Xbox-360 which is to overheat the chip on purpose in order to "reflow" the solder, the pressure re-seats the pins to a connected state and results in a fixed GPU.

Be sure to dust out the fan/heatsink very well and get yourself a tube of Arctic Silver heatsink paste from Radio Shack, make sure it is a Silver-Oxide compound as the stuff from the manufacturer of the laptops is mostly polymer based and is a poor excuse for heat-transfer paste.

First use q-tips and rubbing alcohol (at least 91% strength) and clean the contacts on both the gpu/cpu and the heatsink contacts, then apply a very small amount of heatsink paste to the Die on the GPU and CPU, using a business card or something similar flatten it out so a very consistent layer is across the die, then rescrew the heatsink and go from there. (in my case i had to do the reflow trick again because i had not waited long enough the first time and seating/re-seating the heatsinks after cleaning and pasting caused the connection to fail again, but even with heat compound on it lifting the sink caused it to overheat enough to press it down again and re-create the fix)

Have fun using your newly revived computer.

Saiber77

Thanks a million. Today I purchased an active cooling pad and the laptop ran for hours without getting as hot as it used to. I shut it down before running an errand and tried to start it up 30 minutes later and same problem as last night. Sounds like I may have to wait longer for the reflow like you mentioned. I will try your additional recommendations about paste.

Thanks for the advice in this thread - I too took the heat sink off and blasted the nvidia chip with a hot air gun (for paint stripping) and the computer booted successfully afterwards. This has saved me hundreds of pounds - thank you

So this fix I discovered with letting the chip overheat did not last long, like scullyak it eventually began doing the same thing, unfortunately the method of letting the chip overheat like an X-Box 360 which is termed the "X-clamp fix" is not applicable to laptop motherboards lol.

I acquired a heat gun and disassembled the laptop, used a cardboard piece with a square cut out and wrapped it with tinfoil, this focused the heat gun right on the contacts to the chip.

I began with 450 degrees Fahrenheit to warm up the components, then advanced to 650, then 850 while keeping movement with the gun so as not to focus on one spot for too long until the solder joints took on a yellow cast.

This seems to have resolved the issue for now, although the chips do seem to be running rather hot, not sure if the temp sensor was damaged during the process but nothing a laptop cooling pad wont remedy.

This fix is pretty universal for a variety of Nvidia affected motherboards and can be found on Youtube for visual instruction.

Hi I am also having this problem with this model. I am disappointed with this laptop because I have had one problem or another since i bought it. It is no longer under warranty but I would like to send a complaint to Dell. However, I have looked on their website and I am not sure who to send the complaint to. Does anyone have an email or postal address?

thanks

Don't waste your breath, unless you would like to begin a class action suit against them as they do not value the opinions of customers who do not have a valid warranty and would prefer to sweep your concerns under the proverbial carpet as it were, the only way they would do anything just for the people that purchase their equipment is if they were to descend upon them en-masse and in a public domain like in the media.

You would do better to purchase away from the average consumer trash like Dell, HP, Toshiba, etc... ( I would suggest ASUS for gaming or ACER for budget) and when choosing a laptop with accelerated graphics choose accordingly, if you are an extreme gamer go for one with a replaceable graphics chip whether or not it is Nvidia or ATI, if graphics are not a concern then go for the low-end Intel Accelerated onboard graphics as they are unlikely to overheat as long as the fans and heatsinks are kept clear of dust and debris and they are not used on fluffy surfaces such as beds, couches, cushions or laps.

As for your current Laptop issue if you are unable to perform the task yourself there are a variety of reputable services on the web and on Ebay that would be willing to perform the fix for a negligible fee and will even waive any charge if the fix is unable to be performed,

Hi Saiber77

I would still like to put a complaint in writing since i think it is a bit of a con to have a laptop for such a short time and i cannot even get into it. Do you know who to address my complaint to in the UK?

I have tried most of the solutions on this board except for heating the Nvidia card.

First off http://support.euro.dell.com/suppor..._care/en/complaints_procedure?c=uk&l=en&s=gen is the complaint dept for Europe, always use Google as it is your friend, all I typed in was "Dell Consumer Complaint Dept" the first result i clicked on was Dell Europe. You also could go to Ripoffreport website and post your complaints there so it is in the public domain.

I am also having the blank screen issue...When I click the power button the fans are blowing up for 3 seconds and then stopped immediately. I went to the local service center and have asked them to do reflow. But they are not agreeing to do this. They are telling, If there is any problem with GPU then it won't affect the fans. It should run normally. Problem might be in other palces.

Please suggest what I have to do now.

Perhaps you are confusing them with the focus on the fans, most laptops do initialize their fans at boot anyway, have you tried to boot the laptop with an external monitor attached to determine if your problem is related to a screen or LCD inverter?

A good way for you to find out if you need a reflow or not is to try the method i posted earlier in this thread regarding the low heat reflow by prying up on the heatsink and letting the computer run for about 10 min without a heat sink on the GPU, just read my earlier post and follow it to the letter, it seems to work for at least the first boot following this method and just goes back to the black screen after a reboot or shutdown and startup, if it does work then you can back up your claims with the local shop about it needing a reflow.

Be sure to ask them if they have ever done this before because if it were me I'd rather do a first attempt myself rather than letting some unknown shop pop their cherry on this, I did it for the first time and it was easy, just look up methods on youtube and choose the one that is right for you, good luck and remember if you mess it up you only made a doorstop into a doorstop... no harm no foul.

Thanks for your info. Saiber.

Today I went to that shop again and I have asked them to do your "easy fix".

He removed the heat sink and switched on the laptop. Nothing is displayed in the screen as well as in external monitor.

He said, he found some short circuit in mother board. Thatswhy all these methods are not working and processor is also not running.

But I have noticed my laptop is generating some heat immediately after switched on. I don't know he is lying or not.

How can I verify my processor is running or not?

I have installed Windows 7 ultimate in my laptop and Instead of Shutdown I clicked Sleep. After that my lappy never booted on.

I never had a more heat issue with my laptop. GPU temperature always will be less than 75 degree celsius.

Please help me what could be the issue.

Update:
They said, Found the issues with two ICs. That need to be changed. It would cost around $100. Please suggest.

Dell installed a new motherboard. Screen is still blank. Dell has told me to re-install the operating system since they dont know what is wrong and they are refusing any further help since the laptop is out of warranty. However, today i am working off the laptop since i managed to start it by booting from the CD. However, this sometimes works and other times it doesnt. Where do i go from here?

Same problem as everyone else

Hey everyone,

I noticed everyone is having the same issue as I am. Fixing a Dell XPS M1530 laptop that won't boot. I've been to over 40 different sites looking for answers and I've tried everything I can think of that would possibly cause this issue:

Swapped RAM with known good RAM of exact same type
Swapped CPU with known good CPU of exact same type
Reflowed the GPU with a hot air gun (same method that I used to fix xbox 360's)
Found the Hall Effect sensor that tells BIOS the screen is closed, unhooked that and hooked it back up after trying to boot (this fixed a Toshiba laptop that did this exact same thing)

Only thing I noticed that changed was with the known good CPU I got a dull white screen and the most random flashing diagnostic codes with Fn+Power. System would stay on except for the cpu fan. Also didn't like no RAM, but seemed to like having RAM installed, it didn't throw an error code on boot, like it did without.

Old CPU: CPU fan turns on but only for a few seconds, HDD spins up, dvd drive turns on for a second or two, and then shuts off completely. lights come on with either CPU.

Any ideas would be appreciated, btw this is out of warranty by quite awhile.

Hi after trying so many things, I re-installed the operating system and it is now working. I would use this as a last resort since it takes ages to update the operating system files. Unfortunately there was no pattern to the behaviour of my laptop - sometimes it worked other times it didnt and I was going to throw the towel in and buy a new laptop.

Dell XPS m1530 has Parenthesis in the bios while booting

When my dell used to boot corectly the word DELL would apear first with an all black background and all was fine. A couple times the screen would flash black and say the video display driver has failed. I updated the driver and this did not fix it. sometimes the screen would stay black and I would have to restart. The computer now has little dots all around the word DELL upon bootup. Once I see those dots I know it will not fully boot up. Now after the DELL comes up with the dots around it there are Parenthesis in the biops bootup. I put my harddrive into another dell xps m1530 and it booted fine. The computer will also not boot to disc. Any help?

Hello, another frustrated XPS MT1530 owner here, having the exact same issues. I just thought I'd share my experience.

I have owned this laptop for at least 4-5 years, I remember having some 'sleep mode' issues a couple of times over the years (maybe once every 10 months or so) but at the time it started working again after a forced reboot done by continuing to press the PWR button once it's on.

However, last week it started to always boot into sleep mode, regardless of whether I shut the computer down or put it to sleep. I believe it is more of a software issue than a hardware issue (except for the faulty nVidia chips mentioned earlier in this thread), as it is widely known that Vista is a buggy OS and the symptoms seemed to indicate a trouble getting out of sleep mode, not a hardware malfunctioning.

In the past week I have been able to bring it back to life and out of sleep mode 2-3 times, by just randomly trying all the methods suggested, but now it has been blocked for good.



Overall, I tried:
1) Pressing the power ON button for 5-10 secs so that the computer switches on and then off immediately.
[NO success]

2) Remove power cable, battery, keep the power button pressed for 10-20 seconds, then just boot it normally while keeping all devices but the power cable detached.
[YES success, only once though so it could be random]

3) Forcefully inserting a live Linux Ubuntu cd as soon as I pressed the power button, this awoke the computer and windows loaded normally
[YES success, but even after booting my cd drive messed up and stopped working and didn't eject the cd anymore, I had to open all the laptop to get to the disc drive and pull it out with some pincers, but that just messed the cd drive and broke it for good. So this method worked until I broke the cd drive]

4) Inserted a bootable system rescue usb stick
[YES success, but only once. So it could also have been caused by me randomly going through numbers 1) and 2) ]

5) I have also tried disabling sleep mode and hibernation from the Control Panel advanced Power Management Settings, a waste of time
[NO success]

Finally, I reached the end of the road and fixed it for good
6) FN+Power Button trick mentioned here worked! But to me, the screen stayed pitch black even after doing this, so after doing a forced reboot it just magically loaded windows.
HOWEVER, to solve it for good I got rid of Windows Vista (and its hibernation issues) as soon as I was able to log in and back up my files, and installed XUBUNTU (it is a lightweight version of Linux Ubuntu made specifically for older laptops, all drives worked straight out of the box with my XPS MT1530)
Xubuntu also seems to use less memory and the vent seems to be high on tranquillizers, check out also Puppy Linux and Damn Small linux distro.

So I suggest to back up all your data if you're lucky enough to be able to log in, and as soon as you've logged in reboot and install Linux. I don't think it is worth it to pay anything more than $300 for repairing this laptop, as it is getting old, and it could be just the start of computer repairs that can easily over time add up to the cost of a brand new laptop.