Dell XPS m2010 won't boot

Dell's technician finally came to my house last week with the motherboard they CLAIMED had to be the problem...however, swapped the motherboard in front of my eyes and still sammmeee problem. Now customer service wants to send yet ANOTHER motherboard this time claiming that it HAD to be D.O.A. But i told them firmly that i DO NOT WANT to take any chances with it, so i asked and asked for them to please send the video card and a new processor. They were way reluctant to send the CPU saying it rarely go deads. But i convinced them to send it anyway, because this was my work computer and need it to be fixed asap. The customer service tech as said they would send the plastic tops that go on the side of the CD drive. Now...I am awaiting yet another tech call, hopefully the same one to finally, hopefully, fix the problem. I am very convinced it is either the videocard, or processor....not really buying the whole D.O.A motherboard excuse...I will update after the tech comes this week.

Hey this is unrelated
But when the tech comes can you ask him about the 595B generator for laptops?
There's a huge thread on this, and it may help others, if he\she has any advice

You know what I've noticed from searching and searching this problem?

Every person that has tried to replace the motherboard never had their problem fixed until they switched out the video card.

So there are two possible solutions:
1. Motherboard & video card combo swap
2. Video card only swap

For some reason, everyone does the mother board swap first to find out it didn't fix it, until they did the video card swap. But no one has ever done the video card swap ONLY, and not touch the mother board.

I will order the video card tomorrow, and we'll see if all it took was a video card swap to solve the problem.


Just to make sure we are all talking about the same problem:
Symtoms:
- Powers on, but does not boot.
- Blank screen.
- Power LED stays on.
- HDD LED blinks at the beginning and stops.
- Bluetooth LED blinks every few seconds.
- Keyboard LEDs flash once after powering on.
- CD/DVD tray won't open, but spins for a second after powering on.

I have a friend who is a Dell Slave and I tried it for a VERY short time and unless you buy the most expensive Service Contract all your parts are refurbished. Look on the box next time it should say if it is not a "new" part. Explains why so many mobos they deem "D.O.A." makes one think who is refurbing these parts.

Well I was a Dell technician (on laptops) for 6 years, and it is true that generally refurbished parts were used (yep stacks of DOAs)
But there were also many occasions when the part was new (due to out of stock, or because new was required: Casing; Ram; Screen etc etc)

True but mostly refurbs except in rare occasions. Dell has started placing a orange refurbished stickers on the boxes so it is easy to tell.

Well it's confirmed that this is not an excuse
Hey, ask him\her if it's a new motherboard (for the sake of debating on this orange sticker issue)

haha geez...if this what i'm hearing about refurbished parts is true...wow...and to think im paying alot of money on the freakin warrenty...but oh well....what can we do lol

so...tech called me today...(same one thank goodness) and scheduled an appointment tomorrow morning bright and early at 7am. I will have him swap the video card first...keeping in mind I have the plausible "D.O.A" motherboard still in there haha. If that wont work, then I'll ask him to change the motherboard with the old video card, then if nothing, both brand new video card and the "NEW-ISH" motherboard. That way all the angles are covered. After all...im paying for this nonsense.

p.s...i still love my M2010..its my beautiful beast

and i will also look at the box, to see if it is infact refurb,
and im not sure what a "595B generator" is, and i doubt the tech will haha,
but hey, ill give it a try.

Anymore random requests?? lol Just make sure you get them in by 6:45am PST tomm haha,
and i'll update as soon as he leaves.

is filming a Dell tech illegal? :haha:

haha prob not..just awkward I would think lol...I will take some pictures

Just tell them you are making a documentary of a day in a Dell Field Techs life.:haha:

Peace

OK! Sooooo... the tech finally left for the second time. First thing he did was swap out the video card and processor because he ALSO didnt think the motherboard was D.O.A. So he did that...and wah la...system booted up . Ok...so now, it is like 85% most likely the video card that causes this big problem every m2010 owner (most everyone) seems to have. I say 85% because keep in mind that I have the first replaced motherboard in their...so it could be a combo of the two motherboard and video card...or simply the videocard. I say its the videocard alone because, when the first MB swap took place, the symtoms where still the same...but I dunno, could be both. Im ruling out the processor being the cause cause, It just doesnt seem like it.

As for the orange sticker...sadly....is indeed true. I should have took some pictures of it.

I asked him what he thought about the refurb replacements and he also thought that, that isn't good.

Ok, and as for the generator thing, he had no idea lol.


So, in conclusion...85% sure it is the video card...15% sure it is the video card and motherboard swap combo.

Anymore questions?? I'll post pictures in a couple of days...I'm tired of this problem...i need to rest haha.

Glad to hear you had success. Didn't expect the Tech to know about the PW Gen, Most if not all of those techs are 3rd party contractors at least here they are. They get paid per call regardless how long it takes to repair. My guess, same as yours, was bad Video card all along.

Peace.

Thanks, ferrari, for the update!

My video card should be coming any day now. And hopefully the videocard "only" problem will be 100% true.

Hey RIMTUCK, I too am waiting for your new card. I've read all the post here and basically having the same problems with a friends XPS M2010. I've never seen this laptop startup before, so i don't know if it's suppose to beep, (so far it hasn't) or what. The media lights run through a sequence back and force once and the power and bluetooth stay lit. That's it. Now, with the process of elimination i think i've narrowed it down to either the motherboard or video card.
Everything seems to be working, the fans spin, the HDD spins, the battery is charging, keyboard is charging and everything is wonderfull except the DVD lid won't open. Now when i plug the video card in, the fans don't spin. You can feel the gpu and cpu heatsinks warming up but thats it. No post beeps and the screen is blank?
So please give us an update, when your video card is installed.
Thanks and good luck.

I have the same symptoms as you... fans spinning without the card, but it doesn't with the card in. DVD lid won't open.

I had to reorder, and hopefully should be here by couple more days.

I will definitely keep this thread updated with my findings.

I can't believe this. I ordered the card (used, can't find new), on ebay for $199, and the seller shipped it in an envelope!!


I put it in anyways, because technically, it should still boot up (if it was the problem).
Same damn problem! But I do not know if it's because this card is bad also just like the rest of the M2010 owners since it's used.

Gonna have to resolve this with the seller, and find another card.

Dell sells the card on their website, but it's refurbished and costs $320!!

I checked the picture of the card you ordered, that's pretty sad. But yah, you think it still would of booted up if that was the problem or like you say, the card didn't work to start with. I've also read somewhere, that people have gone through 2 or 3 cards over a period of time with their XPS M2010. So, is it a flaw in design of the video card or the motherboard or both. Which is to bad because it's a nice desktop replacement and i'm sure it cost a pretty penny.

It was the video card!!!

After being a week without my XPS M2010, I had to register on this website to thank everyone for their posts and invaluable information. I was experiencing the same problems previously mentioned with my laptop. One day the screen just froze, and I was forced to do a manual shutdown. After doing so, the laptop failed to boot and nothing displayed on the screen. I had purchased this laptop on eBay at a good discount about 18 months ago, and apparently the seller had never actually made his payments to Dell for it, so Dell refused to offer me technical support. I have a bit of experience with working with computers, but I had never taken a laptop apart before. I was in serious bind, however, because I used this machine as the main computer for my office and Dell was not cooperating even though the warranty on the laptop itself had not yet expired.

Well, based on the recent post by ferrari26, I bought a refurbished video card on eBay and decided to tempt fate. I followed the very detailed instructions on Dell's support website to disassemble the machine and fortunately replacing the video card didn’t prove to be too difficult. The worst part was breaking the cheap plastic tabs holding left side cosmetic cover to the top cover, but this was a small tradeoff to being able to use my machine again. My first moment of joy was learning that the hard drives in this machine use SATA data and power connections. Fortunately, I was able to remove the hard drives and recover the data by connecting them onto another desktop.

Unlike the other posts on this thread, I never had to replace the motherboard to get the machine working again. After reading the other horror stories about Dell’s refurbished parts, I guess I got lucky that this video card worked on the first try.

I apologize for the long post, but I wanted to share my experience with everyone. Although it is a beautiful machine, it appears that the M2010 has a design flaw. I was never a fan of ATI video cards anyway, but this experience just further solidifies their lousy reputation. Best of luck to everyone! Thank you once again for your posts.

Hi Yall - new to this tech support site but I found it very useful. Thank you all for your post and follow up. Here's my 2 cents on the same M2010 problem. I took the one year service agreement when I purchased it from Dell and I'm glad I did. I also signed up for another year since my first encounter with this problem. I have swapped out not one, not two but three videos cards because of this problem. I'm not techie at all but is suspect part of the video problem is with upgrading to service pack 3 and maybe not using or using Explorer over Firefox as your browser in conjuction with service pack 3. I know it sounds weird but I suspect this is how it happens to me each time. I upgrade to Service Pack-3 and switch over to Firefox and within a few months I start getting the blue screen error regarding the infinite loop and shortly after that it happens all over again. Dell support keeps wanting to send me a new motherboard and sometimes they do and it still doesn't fix it. So now I tell them it's the Videocard. Just as a final note. You might want to check to see if they have a new BIOS for this model and ATI card. That's it, I hope helps a little.

Update.... not a good one though.


I've got the replacement video card from the seller that had sent a crushed one during shipment.

As we know, these video cards AND motherboards aren't sold brand new anywhere, so this is another "used/refurbished" video card. They say it's refurbished, but seriously... how can you refurbish a used video card???

Anyways, I popped this card in, and nothing again.

Now I have one more plan, but with two options:
- Refurb motherboard and use old video card. Works = problem with motherboard only
- Refurb motherboard and use refurbished card. Works = problem with motherboard AND video card

If nothing works = Who knows.... motherboard is refurb too.

This is a lot of $$$ to trial and error, and would suck even more if there is no positive outcome out of all this. I'm ashamed of Dell for not having a recall.


The video card seller "claims" it's refurbished, but I have a feeling they just pull it from dead m2010 laptops, and assumed that the motherboards were the problem, and assumes the video cards are good.