Dell :: XPS M1330/m1530 Xsystems Dying After 1.5 Years
Jun 13, 2009
I've heard some stories of XPS systems (m1330/m1530) imploding after 1.5 years... anyone have any firsthand/secondhand info on the percentage of these or have I just heard about a few random people who have been unfortunate enough to have had disasters?
I have the nVidia GPU in my m1330, if that makes any difference - I heard about those dying, but I was under the impression that problem popped up out of the box and not 1.5 years down the road?
It's my only computer, so I use it most of the day, but I don't game (mostly word processing, browsing, working etc) and I try to be gentle with it.
View 10 Replies
ADVERTISEMENT
Feb 17, 2009
I am dual booting Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit and Windows 7 b7000 32-bit. The laptop has the copper mod on 7/28/2008 with very good results. It lowered my idle for GPU by 11C and full load by 21C (very good in full load). But my two recent BSOD from Vista and Win7 make me think my GPU is dying, but it doesn't have the typical vertical line problems like other owners. Likewise, it's working perfectly fine after each BSOD (until the second one in Win7).
BSOD in Vista (see attached picture):
*** Hardware Malfunction
Call your hardware vendor for support
NMI: Parity Check/Memory Parity Error
*** The system has halted ***
No event viewer log or memory dump available. Notice the short black bars visible on the blue background. I don't know where those bars are coming from. There are a few white words were NOT static. Some text were shifting during the photograph.
BSOD in Win7 (no picture due to automatic restart):
See attachment of mock-up made in Vista desktop. It's nowhere near what I saw, but it has a similar short strokes of light on a black background. My background was a picture of GREEN grass blades.
The second BSOD occurred while watching YouTube on the same day as the one in Vista. Basically, the screen was fine then suddenly it turned black with short strokes of color showing through where the icons are. About one second later, the screen gets to the classic BSOD blue, but this blue is black instead with the same short strokes of color. And then the laptop restarts after the memory dump, and everything is normal again including the POST.
The GPU averaged around 60C while the CPU was about 50C using HWMonitor. I never had these weird looking BSOD, especially ones with artifacts. It's the artifacts that make me more suspicious. Log file from Windows 7 below:
Quote:
Source = BugCheck, Event ID = 1001
The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x00000124 (0x00000000, 0x857cc024, 0xf2000040, 0x00000800). A dump was saved in: X:WindowsMEMORY.DMP. Report Id: 021709-24913-01...........
View 10 Replies
View Related
Jun 19, 2009
I've had my m1530 for around 15 months or so... and while going old school and playing nfsu2, i got this!
Is the graphics card dying? Was it a driver issue?
Problem was solved when i restarted the computer....
View 10 Replies
View Related
Apr 4, 2009
I have two xp latpops, m1330 and m1530. I'm just wondering if It's possible to exchange the blu-ray drive between the two (from m1530 to m1330).
View 8 Replies
View Related
Sep 18, 2008
I was at the Dell shop in Hong Kong the other day and had a close look at the XPS M1530, and frankly I was quite dissapointed by the loose/faulty hinge, as in part of the rotation is very loose, if you know what I mean.
What worries me is that Dell uses the same or similar hinge design on other models (Studio series, Inspiron 13), so just out of interest, who here already suffer from hinge issues with their XPS M1330/1530?
View 10 Replies
View Related
Mar 10, 2009
Does anyone know if a battery from M1330 (6cells) can be used for a M1530 ?
I can find only M1330 batteries.
From what I saw here:
http://www.laptopbattery-usa.com/480...ery-p-145.html
Product Fits:
Dell XPS M1330
Dell XPS M1530
View 7 Replies
View Related
Jan 15, 2010
Does anyone know if a pinmod exists to force a 667MHz FSB CPU to run at 800MHz? The chipset supports both 667/800MHz FSB CPUs so I would think it's possible.
View 7 Replies
View Related
Apr 26, 2010
I have a vostro 1500 (T7300, 2GBx1 ram, nvidia 8600m GT gfx). It's about 2 years old and warranty just finished. OS is win xp sp3.
Recently I feel the computer becames really slow, especially after I opened BT downloader. I first thougth it is hdd problem, so I swapped the original seagate 160GB with a new WD 500GB, OS and all software cloned to the new drive using seagate's diskwizard. I didn't do a clean install because I have quite a few software that is troublesome to re-install and re-configure. The problem didn't get solved. I then checked the hard disk with seagate tool, no problem found. Did de-fragmentation, no improvement. checked the DMA mode and it's normal. I even opened up the laptop to clean the dust in vent and noticed a temparature drop when full loaded from 86C to 75C. But that doesn't solve the slowness problem.
So up to this point, I think maybe I have to do a fresh install. But before I do that, I hope someone can help me with other alternatives, to identify the problem or solve it.
the symptoms are like: slow startup, slow reaction to almost all actions, like opening browser, opening windows explorer and folders, opening applications. Once it is opened, performance is normal. I also tried copy large size and quantity of files from the hard drive to external hard drives and vice versa. For large size files, speed is normal, but for many small sized files, speed is terrible. It looks like disk buffer is not enabled or sth, but I don't know how to check that. After all, the new drive I just switched to shall be a good one because I used it on another laptop and it's fine.
View 7 Replies
View Related
Jan 10, 2010
I purchased a Dell Dimension 3100c in early 2006 at a very low price.
I know it is not a laptop but that goes without saying its still a computer.
the only issue I've ever had with the dimension was a corrupt hard drive, I contacted
Dell support and my issue was fixed within no time.
The machine still runs like the day it came out of the box and I still use it as my main workhorse, albeit with a RAM upgrade (512mb to 2GB)
I have to say, you can't really go wrong with Dell.
View 10 Replies
View Related
Feb 5, 2010
I have a question, isn't there a possibility to change the way how volume increases and decreases. If i press volume button once, then volume increases only 2 points, till 100.
View 3 Replies
View Related
May 3, 2010
I have 6 days to decide whether to extend the warranty on my Inspiron 9400. The laptop cost me £1200 ($1800) when I bought it. The extention will cost me me £109 / $166.
This will take my warranty from 3 to 5 years NBD onsite response. Anyone think this is a good idea? I am happy with the performance of my laptop.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Sep 29, 2008
I bought an Acer 5672 WLMI a little over 2 years ago. I thought the Acer offered good value for the money. The specs were Intel Core Duo processor T2300, 2GB RAm, X1400 ATI Video card, 120gb HDD, 15.4" screen, winXp Pro -cost of the system was $1800 + tax (Canadian dollars).
The 5672 always ran hot. It was almost hard to keep it on my lap it sometimes got so hot. I was not even gaming. I was just doing standard web browsing/word processing. The bottom of the latop got so hot that is basically disintegrated most of the Microsoft WinXP Certification sticker. I pulled the bottom cover off and there was nothing obstructing the CPU Fan. I also would intermittently get a green/blue? line about 3-4 inches wide down the middle of the screen. This green/blue line was intermittent. Generally, the screen problem and the heat problem became worse as the 5672 became older.
After 15 months the hard drive failed. I put in a new 160gb HDD. Acer never gave me the original winXP CD and the Win XP Certification Sticker had burned itself off. I reinstalled another copy of winXP Pro that I had. The laptop ran ok for a bit, but then the wireless starting acting up...I would get dropped wireless connections and sometimes it could not detect wireless signals that I knew were there. I stopped using the wireless completely.
After about 18 months the CPU fan started to make an intermittent noise. At approx 2 years, the CPU fan failed completely. I thought I could replace the CPU fan, but realized the CPU was an intergrated unit with cooling tubes and cooled the CPU chip in addition to some other chips on the motherboard. I checked the Acer web site and did not see this part listed (not many parts were listed). I checked on ebay saw a few posting for a new fan/cooling unit -cost was approx $170. I debated whether or not I wanted to spend $200 and time fixing a 2 year laptop...that always ran hot and had some potential screen issues.
For a few days I ran the latop with no CPU fan and used an external fan to try and keep everything cool. I had motherboard monitor and could see this was not working and temps were getting high. I was debating what to do, when the laptop just died. The screen displayed a bunch of funky colours and then it just died. I was able to power it up again, but a few minutes later it did the same thing (funky colours on the display and shutdown by itself). I tried rebooting and nothing..it was dead. I pulled the hard drive and checked that it was ok...............
View 10 Replies
View Related
Apr 8, 2010
Hey folks. I wrote a review for The Acer Guy back when I first bought my laptop (Aspire 6920-6621), but it's time for an update.
(Link to my original review [url]
Here's some basic specs:
Windows Vista Home Premium
Two 140gig HD's
1.83GhZ Dual Core Intel Processor
3gig RAM
And some dinky graphics chip.
Well, after two years, I have to say it has held up but not as well as I think it should have.
A few months after writing my first review, I had to send my Laptop to Acer. Admittedly, the customer support was fantastic. They took care of me.
HOWEVER, I'm not pleased with how my computer came back. It wasn't put back together, and I didn't want to send it back to them again.
Regardless, the build quality is a bit iffy. Not sure if other people have had this issue, but cracks are forming in several places. The first time I sent the computer back, it was because of cracks on the bezel. They replaced it, but after a few months the cracks came back. There is also a crack on the bottom cover.
Keyboard flex is there but not too severe.
When I was dusting my keyboard, the sharp end of the spacebar snapped off, so now a good few mm's are missing. I sanded it down and it looks fine, but still.
The express card placeholder doesn't stay in well, in fact, if you aren't careful, the thing will come out.
In terms of performance, it's still holding up. I've not had any problems with Vista, and I game as well as code. Steam has given me a few C++ errors, but meh.
Audio quality is acceptable. The left speaker is crackling and the "subwoofer" adds a nice effect, but overall it's disappointing. Should be better for all the hype.
Screen quality is actually pretty good, much better than most computers I've used. The only thing that I've used that compares is a Mac.
View 7 Replies
View Related
Jul 30, 2009
All I hear about macs is that they have no problems, they run flawlessly, they dont get slow, and basically "They just work".
I have no idea what this means though. I have never had a mac, never worked with a mac. I have always worked with PC for about 8 years now.
I am mainly a College student so most of my computer time is spent doing research and or presentations like power point and so on.
However my second main and boy do I mean MAIN focus is Gaming. I do a ton of gaming on my computer.
I never move my computers around but I use laptops mainly just incase I ever do need to. Most of the time this means lower settings on my games but its worth the portability.
My friends tell me Mac's do gaming now. I don't know how right they are about this at all.
Basically everyone I know that owns a Mac praises it as if it was the holy grail of computer technology.
Im not a mac hater but whats the big deal? Why does mac just work?
Is it true that Mac has no problems? or is it just an entirely different series of problems than PC?
View 10 Replies
View Related
Jan 27, 2009
2 years later and still no x64 vista audio driver for dv8130. I have looked all over the place for some kind of work around, I find lots of tips, and drivers for different models nothing WORKS. the closest I get it during the install it will say media device not found for driver. I dont even know what chipset the sound card is, for vista x32 it has a driver it just says conexant ac-link
View 7 Replies
View Related
Dec 7, 2008
Is my 8400M GS dying?
The other day I started to have intermittent 'display driver has stopped responding and has resumed' messages after the display blanks for a bit.
I checked my performance. In RTHDRIBL where I used to get high 40's to low 50's fps, I now get in the 20's, 30's, and 40's.
Then I checked some of the games (which I haven't played in a long while). Colin Mcrae Rally 5.0 and UT 2004 are so stuttery that they are unplayable.
I tried various driver versions thinking that the latest driver version from windows update was causing it, but have not had any success.
I also uninstalled Avast anti-virus and Rivatuner in case bad settings were the cause.
WEI score used to be 4.1/4.7, and is now 3.7/4.5
View 10 Replies
View Related
Feb 22, 2010
the screen went black, then returned to the desktop and reported an error with my graphics card’s driver (8600M GT with the latest driver from Nvidia 195.62 or something similar).
This process then repeated and I was confronted with the dreaded BSOD!!
So thinking something had corrupted with the driver, i booted into safe mode and began reinstalling the drivers again.
This all went fine, up until tonight when I was unwittingly enjoying some call of duty and this happened...
The screen juddered for about a second then froze on that image .....
View 4 Replies
View Related
Jul 22, 2007
I'm coming up on the end of my 1-year warranty, and quite a few things have started to fail on my beloved E1705, so I thought I'd make sure I know exactly what's up before I call Dell -- the last (and only) time I called them to get something (a keyboard) replaced, I was on the phone for hours. As I need quite a lot more replaced than a $50 keyboard, I'm a bit nervous.
First of all, I think my GPU's (256MB 7900GS) failing.
(I'll replace these if they're way too big -- native resolution, and I 'unno if notebookforums has a thumbnail system)
From what I've been able to gather, that would be the vRAM going bad? Points on the screen connecting to other random points and stretching the texture to get there. Also, on top of that, I get a lot of snow in loading screens, and stuck pixels (usually red) when the GPU's warmed up -- usually ~50-65C (under load). I've also noticed a performance decline, getting about half the FPS in most situations I did compared to when the PC was new (and yes, it's still clean, the HDD is pretty much empty, defragmented, drivers up to date).
Also, the main problem, is I often get the NMI Parity Error: Hardware Malfunction when playing games. It used to be 2-3 times a day when the problem first presented itself, now it's within 5-10 minutes of starting a game, rendering them unplayable. I think this'd also be the GPU?
M'kay, so on top of that, I think there's something going on with my sound port. One day my speakers just stopped working. I thought I'd messed up the drivers or software or something, but headphones worked fine. I came across an old post about the motherboard on this notebook, and it was mentioned that if one applied pressure to the headphone jack (which the headphones were unplugged), the speakers would begin to work. Sure enough, that's the case -- press on the headphone jack and audio comes through the internal speakers. So that means the port's starting to come loose? It seems like I would need to get the entire motherboard replaced?
View 11 Replies
View Related
Oct 30, 2007
I was wrapping up another late evening of gaming when my game froze and artifacts and red-blue-green pixels took over the screen. I was anew by this, it had never happened before, so I tried to alt+ctrl+del my way out of it and then my machine blue screened and died. I rebooted it and got the Windows boot menu offering safe mode /w networking w/ command prompt and start windows normally, etc. Except there was one ungodly thing different here, everything was misspelled. It offered me 'Start gindogs normally' among other nonsense. When I tried to boot this gindogs thing it wouldn't go past the Windows XP boot-loader and would just give me vertical lines of random colors before blacking out on me.
I tried to reboot a few more times to see if anything new would happen and I noted a few new things. The Dell logo on the boot-screen is covered with white dots and horizontal white lines.
could it be a GPU failure, or a Intel-shat-itself failure?
View 15 Replies
View Related
Nov 12, 2008
Just this morning I was using my notebook (E1505) for my homework. Than I went to class, plugged it in and the light on the adaptor didnt come on.
I tried different outlets and the same thing.
I unwravelled my cord, and the problem seemed to go away, (for now)
I guess i need to replace my power adaptor.
How long do you think it will take to get a new one?
I have the highest warranty thing Dell offers
View 10 Replies
View Related
Dec 5, 2009
Well it looks like my old TX51B is on the end of it's way.
Until last week it was on stock XP.
My wife experienced, that lately the computer often stuck (like 10x per day, can't move cursor,
no response at all) and it's needed to turn it off by holding the power button. Also it restarted randomly.
View 6 Replies
View Related
Sep 17, 2009
My M4400 6-Cell battery goes for about 45min on full charge. Ive had my laptop for a year now. Is this normal that it dies so quickly?...
I started noticing this a week or two ago and now on startup I even get a notification saying "your battery life is decreasing, now is a good time to buy a replacement battery"...
I dont remember how long my Inspiron 8200 laptops battery lasted but it feels like this one gave in really quickly. I do use my laptop a lot. Its on most of the day....
View 10 Replies
View Related
Jan 10, 2010
One day as I'm turning on the computer (2008 imac) somebody (not going to say who) decides to just turn the computer off just about 3-4 seconds after I clicked the power button. When I booted up the computer again many things were wrong.
1. The computer runs extremely slow, both in my windows and mac partitions, I've pretty much concluded that this is hard drive problem since it takes forever to load applications and they run slow if and when they do finally load up.
2. Boot time is much greater, takes several minutes to fully boot up either of the partitions.
So I basically try to figure out what was wrong. I perform disk repair and verify disk operations from the disk utility, and the problem persists. I reinstall the mac OS (Leopard) with the archiving option. The problems still persist. It gets to a point where I can no longer even boot into the mac partition and if I try it keeps restarting itself.
One time a no smoking sign came up without the cigarette (if that makes sense). The windows partition continues to run even slower. Sometimes I can't even log in to my account on the windows side and the computer freezes up. Eventually I ended wiping the mac partition completely and doing a fresh install of Leopard. It fixed the problem somewhat but I feel the mac isn't running as fast it was before and there are other problems. If I update to 10.5.8 the update fails with an error saying something about airport scripts.....
View 8 Replies
View Related
Jun 1, 2009
Is anyone aware of any issue with the touchpad on this model? For about a year now, on occassion the mouse pointer will just completely freak out (I do't know ho better to describe it). All control of the pointer is lost, it moves really fast, and shus down and resizes windows seemingly randomly. I can stop the behavior by CONTROL-ALT-DELETE, but it's a real problem. Lately it is getting worse.... And the mouse pointer has started to just freeze completely.
It is not a driver issue. I've tried changing drivers to no avail. I even completely rebuilt my machine from a clean build a month or so ago. The problem remains.
The computer is a couple years old now, but I don't put lot of junk on it so it still runs fast. And the light casing is great. I really don't want tohave to buy a new machine.
View 7 Replies
View Related
Feb 14, 2009
My computer is couple week old HP HDX18t. When the logon for windows Vista ultimate 64 pops up, part of the screen goes black. From the left hand side of my screen black streaks come about half way across the screen. Its almost as if my computer were turned on its left side and someone drew a line graph that was filled in black beneath the line. (best way I can describe it) It only lasts a second, then goes away. I don't seem to have any other graphics problems.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Sep 6, 2009
I've had my Inspiron 1420 for about a year and a half now, with virtually no problems except when dealing with Windows Vista. But, about a month ago, I was playing a very graphics intensive game and all of a sudden my screen froze, colors inverted, and it started to flash and pixelate at me. I turned my computer off, then back on, and this started happening:
I turned my computer off again and blew out all the dust I could, then let it cool down. When I started back up everything was fine again. But about a week later, it did the same thing, but for longer.
About an hour later it was fine again. A couple weeks went by and nothing like that happened again, up until about three days ago. I was playing my game again and then it started to pixelate, but I could still play. The screen would scramble, but it was almost like it would refresh every 10 seconds or so and the screen would be fine. That night, I was (again) playing my game and my screen scrambled, froze, and went to your basic blue screen.
I rebooted and everything was fine, but the next day I turned on my computer and it did the segemented screen again and when I tried to fix it, another blue screen came up saying "Hardware Malfunction, call you hardware vendor for support .....
View 3 Replies
View Related
Sep 18, 2009
where I can buy a high capacity battery for my laptop 5315 .
View 5 Replies
View Related
Feb 8, 2013
I've owned a ThinkPad T430 for about one year now. Originally I was fairly impressed with the battery life (around 4.5 hours) but now after owning it for a year I am very unimpressed with it's short 3 hour life now.
Â
I have read that batteries should be expected to do this, although I have friends with a MacBook Pro which has lost maybe 20% of it's charge over three years not one year like my ThinkPad!
My specs are listed below:
Â
OS: Windows 8 (upgraded from 7)
Ram: 8GB (4*2 DIMM - came with 4GB and I upgrade it with 4 more)
CPU: i5-3210M 2.5GHZ
Hard Drive: Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSD (upgraded from the 320GB 7200RPM HDD before...if I have got those specs right)
Â
I recently installed the new SSD and expected to see my battery life shoot up again (hopefully at least half an hour) but I really haven't noticed any such improvement.
Â
I use the battery frequently for school and run the battery down to about 20% maybe twice a week on school weeks?
Â
Is this kind of deterioration to be expected and should I simply purchase a new battery if I need that extra 1.5 hours?
Â
According to the Windows 8 battery report the original full charge capacity was: 49,286 mWh, now it is: 39,780 mWh.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Oct 12, 2009
Lately my laptop would freeze and I could see faint white lines only at the top of my screen. (lines do not go all the way down) This has happened twice in a day. Ctrl Alt Del doesn't work so I have to power down the system and it runs normal after that.
I'm really afraid its the dreaded vertical lines issues. I had my mobo + GPU replaced a year ago, still under CC warranty but its such a pain.
View 10 Replies
View Related
Jan 16, 2009
I am wondering if anyone know whether dell fixed the video card and heating issues (like many in this forum mentioned) yet?
I am very interested in this machine but I don't want to risk buying something that would burn out later. I am also interested in the new studio XPS 13 as well though I would love to know how it handles heat and the video card (i hate burned-out video cards..
View 10 Replies
View Related
