ftop bug when i open my M17X R3

Hi guys, I can't seem to identify the origin/fix of this bug ..

Every morning when i wake up, i open my m17x .. all the blue leds goes on and the screen stay totally black.. no bios info.. no activities for as long as i don't try to push the on/off alien button again.

usually i need to open / close / open / close / open with the button to actually see the laptop booting.. this morning, i was affraid it would never open.. " push on / push off " about 15 times and the 15th i finally see my bios and boot. I am affraid it will stop completely pretty soon.

I bought it last year around xmas so i still got 2 months warrenty i guess..

What do you guys think it could be ? and how to fix this situation... already tried to update the bios.. i was on A09 and now A12.. the bug was on both bios it fixed nothing in that regard.

please help me.. any input are welcome

DocBurN

 

Hi, that sounds bad . All I can think of is if you disassemble/reassemble hoping it is a loose or poor connection. Probably a good idea to get onto dell asap. I would think they will replace the MB or the switch panel, but let them take you through a diag

Good luck!

 

i am guessing they go "through a diag" by phone.. then judge if a tech is needed.. as long as i don't have to ship my laptop and wait many weeks..

alien autopsy say " its all good bro!" every tests were successfully

i'll call Dell asap!

 

Yes they will and you should get a tech arranged. BUT, they do have a 'return to base' option if they cannot diagnose the problem and it could be multiple parts. This is where you are hoping for a 'nice' tech. I've had them send multiple parts for the tech to try but it's not always the case.

Good luck with the call!

 

By the way i have never dissassemble it. I was about to repaste my cpu and gpu with mx4 but in the present situation.. Laptop temp is my last worry

 

For sure

It's not that difficult to take apart, a little fiddly but there are plenty of vids around to help. For a laptop it's a breeze. When you get it all working I would start with the GPU. It's nice to be able to have the whole assembly in front of you, and unless you're OC'ing the CPU, that should be fine for a few years. What vid card do you have?

 

I have the dreaded 580m .. Updating my bios and video card bios and driver plus pushing dust with an air can i saved 8 deg celcious and was able to avoid throttling at max 75 deg on hwmonitor. Also ordered an u3 cooling pad and bought compound..

Beside all that.. Im stuck with this bug grrr

 

I could also add that once it is open.. I can game for 12 hr straight without any sign of weirdness..

 

Ahh, something I have a lot of experience with! Went through all the throttling thread including a conference call with dell when I had that card in my R3. Just make sure you are using a Vbios with matched P0/P1 clocks.

Finally dell replaced it with the R4 in my sig . The U3 is very popular but as I use mine on my lap the targus is better for me.

That is an excellent sign that you've got a good one!

 

I have to admit you lost me there.. but i took the link from HERE and the vbios from HERE ( GTX580M_Vbios_A01.iso ) without asking myself if it was ok or not,..

since i was having the bug before updating everything.. its probably not the reason i get this no-activity-when-opening-the-laptop problem but.. i did see something weird when updating the vbios .. and decided to take a picture in case i made a mistake..

There is a warning that something does not match.. but i was clueless and went with the update anyway


I was not sure if i needed/should get a modified vbios while reading " [Guide] 580m GTX throtting fix. No need to modify system Bios. "

 

That is a normal message when updating the vbios so no worry.

What I was getting at is that the 580 has two levels of throttling. P1 drops to around 420 base clock and 0.8v and happens when there is too much power draw on the card. It happend often for me and matching the P1 clock with P0 (primary clock/voltage) stops this happening due to a game triggering it. Drawback is that if it is triggered constantly your temp may creep up over time till you reach the overheat throttle at around 78C. Upshot - you need a moded vbios to stop the power throttle and I believe I used one from the thread you mentioned. Just don't go for an over-volt one.

 

oh ok i see what you mean..

and let say someone from DELL come check my laptop for the opening-bug .. should i remove the modded vbios ?

 

No problem with the vbios you already used as that was dell recommended. I'd wait until after dell fix the machine before adding a modded one - although I have no idea if they could even know unless you tell them

 

Thank you very much for the info .. Very appreciated. Im just affraid to loose my alien for weeks if they come an cant fix it.

 

You're very welcome. Fingers crossed for you - BTW, what country are you in? There are variances in warranty resolution between some countries I have dealt with

 

Montreal, Canada.. bought from DELL.ca .. my profil tells me i got 52 days left.. suppose to have a valid warranty until december 14

 

You should have no problems with them. I found dell US and Dell CA both provide a top level of service (but since you are French speaking you may contact Morocco support, and if like the Indian based support we get in the UK, there is a disconnect in culture).

 

Called DELL yesterday.. what a waste of time. And nothing worst than an intermittent problem for me and them.

1) He had me remove the battery and power cable and hold the on/off button down for 1 minute "to empty the electrical charge" on the motherboard or something like that.
2) Accused my secondary storage hard drive (that worked fine for a year) to be the cause of a laptop that don't want to open/boot.. and asked me to remove it otherwise there would be no troubleshooting.
3) Ran dos diagnostics and obviously .. everything was successful
4) the laptop started fine 1 time and that was the end of the "help" i had. Its intermittent, off course its possible it boot fine 1 freaking time..

I'll see over the next week if it happen again, most probably, unless you can explain me what is so magic about the STEP #1 with the "hold 1 min on/off switch with no power".

sux to loose trust in your beast! im never sure its gonna boot and its a MAIN feature on a gaming laptop.. i got an mmo addiction to feed!

 

have you tried sleep or hibernate to see if it still happens? Not a fix in any way but just some more background on the problem.

What they had you do is a bios reset. Sometimes works for machines that will not turn on at all but since yours is intermittent I doubt it did anything. You're almost certainly going to end up with a return to depot but you will just have to keep calling saying 'it happened again!' if it does.

Fingers crossed

Edit: Oh yeah, the HD removal is just them making sure the machine is 'stock' as far as the listed config. On the plus side some manufactures would just refuse to help at all if you had changed hardware...

 

If you are talking about resuming from sleep, then this is almost always caused by a funky display driver. For me, my R3 (with 460 GTX) seems to not like the current NV drivers. I am on 290.53 at the moment. I know that isn't a solution for most due to gaming reasons, but it does play nice with the system. What you could try is take the INF from 290.53 and mod the following line:

DriverVer = 12/17/2011, 8.17.12.9053

Replace bold text with the text (in notepad or another text editor) from the driver you want to use and then save the file. Then, copy the file into the appropriate directory for the driver you want to install.

FWIW, I am still on BIOS A09. The current release just doesn't play nice with my 1.5TB RAID. I encounter intermittent RAID = FAILED and the system has to be CTRL+ALT+DEL multiple times until the BIOS sees that the RAID is valid. Pfft. Oh well, I'm fine with it since my R3 is more of a 'surf the net system only' at this point. Not gaming much these days. lol