Dell :: Strange Discoloration Of Aluminum On XPS Laptop
Sep 16, 2008
I have noticed this for awhile now, but I have been able to ignore it previously due to the problem being discrete and im not a very picky person. But as time went on this has gone far worse than i thought. As you can see in the 3 images i have attached below there is severe discoloration of the aluminum palm rests/base pieces of my xps laptop in the form of an imprint of a human hand.
The print on the left is the worst and the prints to the right of the touch pad are a little bit better. I have only owned this laptop for roughly 8 month and i dont even use the laptop that much everyday.
I really dont feel like calling dell support again cause i just called them to replace my faulty screen 2 weeks ago and i really dont know how a Dell technician can come to my house and fix this unless he replace the whole base.
I've had my M1530 for almost 11 months now and I noticed this discoloration on the palm rest but more importantly are the temps. The CPU is hitting 97 degrees Celsius and the GPU is hitting at 94 degrees Celsius. I first noticed this after several hours of video conversions then I ran ORTHOS to replicate the results. Should I ask for a technician to replace the mainboard or heatsinK? I've tried to raise the issue with the GPU running at this temp before but to no avail. However, this is the first time the CPU has hit such high temps.
Does anyone else have this kind of discoloration under the exhaust fan? Is it because of the unusually high temps my laptop is showing while gaming? (It throttles on most games)
I have my computer from about 6 months. And battery was not very good - It jumps from wear level to wear level. For example if today wear level is 5 %, after 2 weeks It somehow can jump to 12 %. Anyway I agreed to live with it. But from two days after I fully charges my computer, and after run the computer without adapter - the battery stars from 93%. It must starts discharging from 100% - how it comes....
Am I need to contact Dell and require replacement?
i recently buyed a dell 1520, i'm very pleased of this laptop, my first laptop, but i'm worryed about one issue
from time to time, like 20-40 seconds, the hard drive (wd 160gb) makes a strange clonk/clink sound like it would park his heads and power off then power back on, and in that time, my games freeze for 0.5 sec or so, just a very fast freeze, and i have no ideea if this is good and normal or not, but from my previous experiece, it does not sound very healthy
i tryed with bypass/quiet/performace settings in bios at hdd management and it's no difference, and ofc the power saving is disabled both on hdd and on display so i'm getting to think the hdd has some problems, what you think?
the thing is that i have no errors on smart, i have no boot problems, i have no errors, just the annoying sound and the very small freezes
So my trusty Dell M6400 somehow crashed, hard, last night. I wasn't even there when it happened, but when I came back to my desk the system had rebooted, and was sitting at a BIOS prompt saying that no bootable device could be found, with the RAID controller indicating the status of my RAID1 array as "Rebuild". However,
when I went into the RAID controller setup, did nothing, and exited the setup, the system rebooted just fine (so maybe that "boot device not found" message was simply a way for the controller to prevent the system from simply rebooting, so someone is forced to actually look at what happened).
However, after rebooting the system indeed spent some thirty minutes rebuilding my RAID1 array. What makes this so particularly mysterious is that this system has never misbehaved in any way, plus there are no messages in any of the event logs indicating what might have happened. The Windows logs contain absolutely nothing, except for two errors caused by the sudden reboot itself
Situation : I finish surfing web and I wanna give it a little break. I close the lid.
I have set it to goto sleep when lid closed (if any1 suggested this). I come back open up but the laptop didnt go to sleep, HDD activity is minimal but I can hear it spinning.
Also the screen is still bright but black, I can still change the brightness though with the Fn+upArrow or Fn+downArrow. In order to return to functional state I have to HARDreset.
I've got the model with the 4670 graphics & other than a few Vista gripes & this little problem I'm very happy with it.
The 'strange sounds' are similar to explorer mouse clicks & occur randomly, even if doing nothing & with sound themes turned off. I couldn't capture the sound from the line out (there was just a little crackle), but here's a recording from the built in mic: [url] What makes it impossible to ignore is that things wont respond as usual when the sound occurs. Eg. If you're navigating a menu it'll not display until the sound has gone.
Aiming to hit two birds with one stone I installed XP x64. Unsurprisingly there were no strange sounds after installation as I haven't yet got a sound card driver installed. The weird thing is that the very instant I installed the ATI graphics driver it started with the exact same sounds... Even tho Windows doesn't yet recognise the sound card.
My dell mx1210 has been giving me these strange vertical lines on my screen with different characters on the text as well whenever I boot up.
I suspect a graphic card driver issue b/c it usually happens only after I install the Geforce go 7400 drivers. I had already tried the latest drivers but those didn’t help either.
Every now and then, even if I had uninstalled the drivers it still shows upon start up or I get blank screens later when on desktop. Is anyone familiar with this type of problem on their laptop? Unfortunately, I don’t think the graphic card is irreplaceable on this particular notebook.
My dell Inspiron E1705 has been giving me these strange horizontal / angular lines and dots on my screen with different characters on the text as well whenever I boot up.
Have installed latest nvidia drivers too. I actually reformatted the system and installed all the drivers. For a week system worked fine and then started showing the display abnormality.
Again re-installed the OS after re-formatting. When the display gets impacted even portion of the screen appears in different color. This is not limited to any one part of the screen .....
I have problem with my DELL VOSTRO 3553. It makes strange sounds from time to time - (sounds like that - [URL] .... ). Whats going on, and how to solve the problem?
I have a new M3800 Precision Workstation that is making a really annoying sound when it is plugged into power and when the SSD is being accessed, mostly when it is being accessed randomly such as search, VM running, or just random file access test from benchmarking software. The pitch of the scratchy sound varies with screen brightness.
I've made a video of it here [View:youtu.be/jbEkRDrPTdA:550:0]
I had a weird issue with my new Z Series today. I wasn't home at that time and my girlfriend was using the computer to watch some videos online.
From what she told me the screen suddenly went black and she heard a constant noise coming from the laptop (probably the fan).
She called me and I confirmed that: - the power was still on (green light) - no SDD activity was present - she unplugged the power cord but the graphics setting remained on speed (auto on) - the laptop did not react to the keyboard - Ctrl+Alt+Del didn't do anything
I bought a 4810 about a week ago & so far I'm pretty happy with it, but one things bothers me & I'm not sure if it's normal or not.
After the laptop's been on for awhile (maybe 30 minutes+) it will make a strange snapping or clicking noise (definitely not the hard drive.) It seems to come from the screen area although I'm not positive on that. It's pretty rare that it happens, but lately I've noticed it happening when the laptop powers off.
Having some very strange Win7 RC install problems on my Timeline 3810T.
First - If the SATA was in AHCI mode in the BIOS, I would get a BSOD every time the partitioning was complete and copying files begun. When this was switched to IDE mode, installation went off without a hitch. This is with the machine's stock 320GB hard drive.
Second - I've received a Corsair P256 SSD drive, based on a new "very compatible" Samsung controller. After installing this SSD, the BSOD occurs no matter which mode I'm in (IDE or AHCI). I cannot seem to find a way around this. I've tried loading all different version of AHCI drivers from Intel for the ICH9M-E, but no go.
There are 3 known revisions of the heatsink. The first and second shown here while the third being another copper one but with smaller heat plates.
I know technically copper should be better since it is a better conductor than aluminum.
I have the aluminum revision but was thinking of buying a copper one off ebay. However before doing so I found a thread which noted some differences I didn't notice.
I have 130W(model DA130PE1-00) dell orginal PSU and dell e6540.
When i plug in PSU into my notebook, then i turn it on, and after windows loads, it starting to make strange noise. after it warm up to 30 deegres of celsius, it stops making it
I have noticed that loudness of the noise is inversly proportional to load and temperature. When PSU is cold and notebook is idling - it makes the strange noise. When PSU cold and noteboot is under moderate load - it stops making it. When PSU is warm (about 30 deegres of celsius) and is idling - i need to PSU at front of my ear.
The noise seems to coming from AC connector's side (Where PSU have connector for AC cable). PSU doesn't make this noise when i put it off from notebook.
Why PSU does make such noise? Why it is inversly proportional to temperature and load ? This is dangerous to me and my notebook ?
Exactly it looks like:
1. I turn on my notebook under AC, the PSU is making "click sound" till it become warmer.
2. After that there is buzzing sound, that is not as loud as clicking (i have to put ear at front of my PSU), and the buzzing sound is inversly proportional to load of the PSU.
About a year ago my Ferrari 3400 kicked the bucket, but it turned out that it was the RAM that had gone bad, I replaced the stick and it worked beautifully again.
Around that time I also bought another 1 gig stick to get it up to the 2 gig mark.
Both sticks are Ultra PC3200 400Mhz Sticks.
This evening while working on a website my computer froze up completely. I rebooted and similar to the last time it died, it wouldn't post.
So I tried pulling out the RAM, trying 1 stick at a time, one slot at a time, reversing the sticks etc.
Once the screen actually lit up and there was a flashing cursor. But the next time I tried there was nothing.
Following this I tried a spare 256mb sodimm I had kicking around, this time it posted fine and seemed to be good, but following the post screen hung at a black screen. I reset and it once again refused to post.
So I tried swapping in all the sticks again with different combos, finally once more the spare stick managed to get it to post but with the same result.
I'm completely baffled now. This thing's well beyond the warranty period now, my gig sticks I think are both still covered, but I'm really doubting that the RAM is really the issue. Could it be a processor issue?
My DELL n5110 (core i7) randomly makes a strange Single Beep, then a clicking sound which i think comes from it's bottom left corner, this happens while i'am normally operating it, with no error what so ever, and it continues work, nothing appears on the screen, no system notifications, nothing at all, just Single Beep, then a Clicking sound that comes from it's bottom left corner and lasts less than a second, that's it, it's not bothering me, but what is it !!!?
I ask this because it's semi-common on enthusiast cars with weak points: Would anyone be interested in making a custom, aluminum bottom panel for the XPS 16 with air holes and screw holes pre-drilled?
I imagine it would maintain/add rigidity while providing greater heat dissipation (especially with an aluminum cooler underneath) and provide greater air flow around the hot under-touchpad side.
I ask because I imagine this would be a fairly simple thing to create, since it's a single sheet of aluminum with hole drilled at precise areas, vs. some of the more exotic individually-made parts I've seen.
after a few months of heavy usage i noticed the aluminum band was beginning to pit.
i use my computer for web design so i am on it hours on end. the pitting began as a few dots, and i tried to use the computer with my external keyboard to prevent more damage
A few weeks ago I spilled green tea (no milk or sugar) on the desk around my Acer Aspire 5920 laptop. The tea went into the back left quarter of the machine, mainly through the ventilation holes and the ports on the left side. I removed the battery, drained the liquid, and let the machine dry out thoroughly. Since then the machine has worked fine. However, it occasionally makes strange noises, especially on start up. It's a fizzing/popping noise, in short bursts, like static. It sounds as if it's coming from the loudspeaker.
does anyone know the machine well enough to diagnose the fault? Only the components in the back left quarter of the machine got wet. Could there still be water in there? Is the noise a sign of a serious problem? What can I do to fix it? As I said, the spill happened several weeks ago, and, apart from the noise, the machine works fine.
I resumed computer from hibernation and found that digital persona, finger print identification isn't working... I cannot go past the login screen - I put in password and continue to vista. But here everything is slowed down, I check system resources and find that 95% of the ram is used, paging file on disk is totally used. Even cpu is maxed out and i cannot do anything! culprit seems to be digital persona... anyone how to proceed, how to diagnose the problem?
"how to upgrade the HDD" thread, so now I'll make a guide on how to upgrade RAM in the Aluminum MB and MBP's. Upgrading of the RAM is a bit more difficult, therefore it might be more helpful. You will be needing a Phillips 000 screwdriver, PC-8500 DDR3 1066MHz RAM, up to 4GB. I have yet to upgrade this yet, just waiting on the RAM from Newegg. So here is a step-by-step guide on how to replace you RAM in your Uni-body MB and MBP.
Step 1: You are going to turn your computer completely off to replace RAM.
Step 2: Make sure you have data backed up, just to be on the safe side. You don't want a bad ram module to lose some of your data. Some people don't do a backup before a ram upgrade, but I do.
Step 3: You are then going to flip the notebook over. Be sure to have a cloth or towel on the surface you're laying to notebook on, to prevent any scratches.
Step 4: No you are going to flip up the tab, just as you would do in changing the battery or HDD. After the tab has been flipped up, take the back battery cover off. The battery and HDD will be exposed at this point. Take the battery out.
Step 5: Now you are going to unscrew the 8 screws around the frame of the computer. There will be 4 short screws, 1 medium length screw, and 3 longer screws. Make sure you have a cup or dish of some-sort, so you don't loose your screws or get them mixed up...........
