[XPS M1730] Possibility of a crapped out mobo?

Few problems lately... I did alot of diagnostics and methods and apparently it's happening somewhat random.

Symptons
Boot problems - Whenever I press the power button, with the AC and Battery and the X9000 OCed to 3.4GHz at startup, the 5 LEDs at the right corner light up. Then in less than 3 seconds, the rest of the indicators turned off except the power indicator - and then, it stalls there. Fortunately the Blu-Ray drive is working and "whirring" and can detract when I press the eject button.

And sometimes, with a little bit of luck, it boots up successfully (The LEDs, backlit keyboard lights, wing lights) by itself after pressing the power button -and waiting- for a few minutes.

And sometimes, it does a frequent freeze after startup. After loading to the desktop, it freezes - and I had to do a force shutdown. It'll be lucky if it doesn't. I did a Windows repair. Still the same.

What gives?

Things I did beforehand
This happens a few times already. I did the usual; I had to remove the battery, AC, and even the RAM sticks, hold the power button for 20 seconds to clear off any static residue in the capacitors - and randomly sometimes it boots, sometimes it doesn't.

I've also reset my OC speeds to 2.8GHz stock and tried running on battery. It still doesn't boot. Both on battery and on AC. LEDs comes on, then off.

I've even reseated the 2x4GB RAM sticks and ran memtest86, it was completely errorless. I even changed to a 2x2GB kit and it was the same.

Ran the inbuilt Dell hardware diagnostics test - all components were all up and running steadily.

Viruses? No. Updated, scanned, and rescanned with three different softwares - Clean.

It is still happening as of today.

Currently, as of writing this thread. I am using the M1730 right now and it is running stable. I don't dare to do a complete restart or a shutdown else it might happen all over again.

Gaming performance is excellent. Nothing wrong with the 8800Ms. My temps are like 64*C max while I game on 4 hours straight without coolers. And CPU is around in the 60s max @ 3.4GHz. Startup time is 32.56 seconds I tested just now.

Do note that this problem happens randomly (yes randomly) and most of the time majority whenever I start my M1730.

Conclusion and suspicion
I am suspecting of a bad motherboard from my experience. What'd you guys think it would be?

 

Warranty? If so, contact XPS Support ASAP as this is something you want them moving on right away.

 

Yep. I contacted them at the same time too.

BTW, something fresh from the gutter:




Great scott!!

I'm closing into the problem that my 8800M GTX SLIed card is the problem. But other hardware may also suffice. I'm not too sure if the video card is likely the culprit of my bootup problems. The operating temps are alright (72*C highest actual ever recorded) using DOX optimized 180.xx driver and I never had a problem with the GPU while gaming.

 

Yeah, definitely looks more like a GPU problem. If your GPU was defective, it doesn't need to have ultra-high temps to fail; if your HDD was defective, you wouldn't need abnormal operating conditions for it to fail. What did Dell say?

 

Oh hi, sorry for my late reply. I guess I didn't see this coming.

Well I called Dell, and all they ever did was to test my parts and run diagnostics and they said everything was fine. That's all they ever did. They didn't change anything. I knew I can't count on their crappy service. When I came back home the problem was still there. They're just simply repeating the things I did beforehand.

So I decided to take the matter on my own hands. I opened up the entire machine, removed all components, applied AS5 and reinserted them back; reinstalled the OS. And I evened changed to my T9300 CPU. And when it ran well, I changed back to the X9000. (My M1730 originally came with T8100)

Finally, I decided to remove the battery, press the power button for about 3 minutes, and left the M1730 without battery or AC overnight. The next day I used the AC without the battery for the whole day, then reinserted the battery the next.

I finally used different drivers from LV2G instead. I don't know what really happened, but the problem just stopped completely. Running fine till now.

Well I guess if you want the job done right, you do it yourself. :laugh: