Dell XPS M1730 Owner's Lounge, Take 2

So the dell tech is coming today to install the video cards. It sounds like he has little to no knowledge of the 1730 - so are there any good sites that have "how-to" instructions for:

- opening the case
- replacing the video cards

I want to be as prepared as possible (and might even take it apart myself before he gets here). Thanks!

 

The guide in my sig will get you all the way down to the video cards, its a task though, so be prepared

 

It's not that bad and the guide is great. Just remember there are several screws right under the keyboard marked P that need to be removed that are not shown in the guide. Also keep in my mind once all the screws are removed the top cover should come right off with no issues. If it doesn't pop right off you missed a screw.

Key thing is take your time and watch what you're doing. Mark what comes off of where and it's cake.

 

You are right, I must have left that pic/step out, thanks man. Fixed!

 

Yes, make sure the 7 palm rest screws has to be removed first before you can remove the palm rest to access the GPU.

You can also take download the DCSE instruction manual from Batboy's wiki, very detailed as well:
http://dcse.dell.com/ifr/Portables/XPS_M1730.zip

Woot, my 500th post!!!

 

To be honest replacing parts and doing repairs on this laptop are not hard at all. There are tons of guides on the net to help.

The best thing I can tell anyone getting ready to work on one of these is make sure you have a properly sized magnet screwdriver and never, ever, ever, pull hard to seperate or disconnect anything.

 

Its a life saver

Congratz

 

Apologies for not clearing that up. The mbr corruption. I managed to get it last week while on the phone to tech support and they told me that fix

 

^^that will automatically fix it if you don't have media direct installed and accidentally hit the house button and get a corrupted MBR?

sorry for asking again but i'm trying to figure out what's what on my new m1730. i sifted through a lot of the "m1730 owner's lounge thread part I" but didn't make it all the way through. from what i know, media direct 3.5 does not work correctly with all of the different configurations of the m1730 and it was never fixed. also, i read that media direct 4.0 was released but is not officially supported by dell on the m1730...although i think a lot of people are using it and it works.

when i did a fresh install of vista 64 i ended up deciding against leaving media direct off entirely due to the corrupted MBR issue. so i have it, but when i go into it and hit exit nothing happens and i have to do a hard shutdown pressing the power button for 5 seconds.

 

THE BEAST IS BACK!!!

The tech came and was actually pretty knowledgeable (amazing). In less than an hour he replaced the GPU's and the PPU. Yay!

 

Great news!

 

Zath, I'd like to emphasis that you should test your GPU as best you can. Look for it being too warm, and also ensure it's stable. As I'm sure you're aware, I had to get three GPU replacements because the first two were already faulty =-P Just make sure you test it a bit mate, so nothing goes wrong

 

for you guys who have win7
if you want the lcd to work , you will need to run the setup in vista compatibility mode, it works flawlessly
i deleted win7 though , too much problems ....

 

Problems with Windows 7 It works without any issues for me. I haven't had one piece of incompatible hardware, or one software issue =-/

 

@Eambo:

Do you use Steam? Left 4 Dead or TF2? If so, how did you set/configure that whacked Win7 Mic controls? I remember when I had Win7 installed, all was fine with the exception of my in-game voice comm for L4D and TF2. Everyone commented on horrible my mic was. I had installed the Sigmatel driver for Vista 64.

Other than this issue and a minor issue with my frustration over the fact I couldn't use a classic start menu (I can't stand that WinXP fisher price start menu look) Win 7 was stable and ok on the beast.

 

I don't use the mic much unfortunately, so I'm not sure. Last I checked the mic on the M1730 wasn't the best anywho...even on Vista =-/


But no I never tried it unfortunately.

 

Yeah, I intend to. So far, temps seemed pretty stable - at 65 to 70C. I had the tech wait while I loaded up Sins of a Solar Empire and started a large battle. There was no tearing or other rendering issues. Since I had to go to work an hour later, I didn't get a chance to do any long-term testing. That'll likely be tonight or tomorrow

 

Batboy - there should be two drivers listed for audio on dell's website. One's the sigmatel and then the other one's audigy HD audio. Try that and see if it works. That's how it was for the Inspiron anyways.

Sorry to hear your mic's not working. You do the test in the options before broadcasting over the server, right? Are people complaining about static? Might have to reinstall drivers over again, and mute everything in windows except mic and speakers 1 and 2. Sometimes there's feedback there. Then, once those master controls for the volume are set, check WMP and make sure volume is up there, and then finally check the steam/in-game mic settings and test mic from there. I always use mic-gain.

 

Thanks Hank - but I deep sixed Win 7 weeks ago. I had it installed on my second HDD just for testing purposes.

Sigmatel is the only driver really - the Audigy you mentioned is just Creative's feeble attempt @ using software to enhance the stock sigmatel chip. I had the Sound Blaster Audigy back on the M1710 and also had it with the 1730 - never could hear a difference so I dumped it.

What REALLY needs to happen is Dell needs to UPDATE the Sigmatel/IDT driver for the 1730. Hacking/modding the INFs of the current driver for other systems just will not cut it. This can only be done by Dell. I've tried.


---

So did anyone get around to trying out my modded INF for the 186.18 Vista/Win7 driver? Original post is here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4985641&postcount=634

Just looking for some confirmation it worked for anyone else...

 

+1 on the updating the drivers.

 

I just used the guide by RIP to disassemble my friends m1730 to apply arctic silver 5 to his GPU . We thought that this would lower his temps but now the GPU temps are at 92c. I also noticed that the idle temps on GPU went down to 58C instead of 74C. Under load the temps go to 92C, I made sure to clean up the thermal paste that was on the gpu previously before i applied the arctic silver 5. I also checked to make sure all the fans were running after i put the M1730 together. Should I just take off the arctic silver 5 and apply ceramic paste instead? Thanks in advance.

 

There is 200 hours of burn-in period for AS5, for it to reach maximum efficiency. Give it a few days, it should even get 2-5 degrees cooler.

An alternative explaination may be that you applied too much.

http://www.arcticsilver.com/ins_route_step2intelas5.html

 

possible relapse

turned the beast on after getting home from work. closed the lid (I have it set to turn off the lcd when the lid is closed). made dinner. came back to find that it was rebooting. upon login, i was told vista recovered from an unknown error. wonderful.

 

check the event log. which driver are you using? could be a driver issue. if you are using a dell driver, call them back and tell them its crashing due to the GPU.

 

You will get used to those warnings.

 

where exactly do i look for the error log?

batboy, I'm still on those drivers you linked me - 185.81 beta I believe...

 

I'd advise going up to 185.85, very stable. Also if you right click computer -> Manage, you can get to the error log reports. You'll be looking for 'Critical' level errors. If it's Kernel Error that just means the power was cut from the computer for some reason.

 

Zath, if you are running Vista, give the 186.18 a try - ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4985641&postcount=634). I created a modded INF for 32 and 64bit. I've had no issues with gaming or anything else (so far... lol).

 

I gave up when i couldn't get easy cd-da extractor working and when i could not get my numark DJ controller-audio interface to work propperly ...
I think i will use vista for another year untill win7 is released and matured a bit (idem for the drivers and soft from third party)
although i think win7 looks pretty damn good

 

ok where exactly is it in? Reliaiblity and Performance?

Also, I was on 185.85 when this whole thing started. I'm seriously thinking it was one of two things.

1. Upgrading to Service Pack 2.

2. nHancer trying to make my cards do something they can't do.

I'm going to start by uninstalling nHancer - it's not a mission-critical program. I will also try installing a different set of drivers. If I still get the issues, I'm going to uninstall Service Pack 2. If it still continues, I'm calling Dell again.

 

I might have found the error. I have nothing listed under critical, so I guess that's a good thing.

The file is "nvlddmkm" and EventID is 14.
It also states that the description can't be found - that the component isn't on the computer anymore or the installation is corrupted.

Looking in the details tab, it's pointing to a device as 000000096..

 

Well at least now you know where to look if it happens again. There's no need to worry if it's just once, this kind of thing is to be expected.

 

ok I found \Device\000000096.

It's the IPBusEnum Root Enumerator.

Any thoughts?

 

For those asking about MD, I had massive problems with it. It corrupted my MBR, made reinstalling the OS impossible following the MD 3.5 notes. I won't get into all the details but in the end I called up dell and pestered them and they finally sent me out MD4 after many months of an endless nightmare.

MD4 has no hidden partition, but there is no "quick boot" lite OS just for media. If you press the MD button it will start into vista and then when you log in, load MD.

While this limits functionality it prevents you from bombing your OS installation by accidently depressing the MD button.

I have the MD 4 disk as well as the MD 4 update. The MD 4 update fixes blu-ray issues that MD 4 has. Perhaps next month I'm going to grab that Bluray drive at geeks and see how that goes.

 

Try turning off SLI. You may need to boot into safe mode to do this. I had errors like this on my M1730 when I tried to enable SLI. It worked fine with SLI was off. The problem with SLI also presented itself in Windows 7 and Linux. I figured it was a hardware problem with the GPUs, called Dell and they sent someone to replace the card. Worked fine after that.

 

Sli was off unfortunately.

I have uninstalled nhancer and installed batboy's drivers. I have also enabled SLi. No problems so far after 2+ hours!

 

Does anyone know whether this bag fits the beast?

On another note do you guys know of any MESSENGER bag that fits the xps m1730?

Thanks in advance guys.

 

New notes/add-ons and latest benchmark for RAID 0.

Once you modify the RAID to convert to RAID0 reboot. Then in windows open the Intel Matrix Storage Console. Select the RAID Volume and choose Modify Volume. This time choose the Radio Button at the bottom that reads "Utilize 100% of available array space". Reboot and then you can resize your partition to include the rest of the unallocated space. I had to use Acronis Disk Director Suite because I still have MD3.5 installed and it has a partition that needed to be moved to the end of the drive before I could resize the C-Drive space.


HD Tune Pro: Intel Raid 0 Volume Benchmark

Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 91.6 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 193.9 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 151.5 MB/sec
Access Time : 17.1 ms
Burst Rate : 882.8 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 9.4%

 

BigJay Tee, time to change you signature to RAID0.

 

if i'm trying to upgrade from media direct 3.5 to 4 will i need a full OS reinstall? can i just pop the MD4 disc in?

i'm going to chat with dell and see if i can get the disc.

 

I've been using an older Eddie Bauer bag. TBH, a backpack is the best way to transport the beast. It's just too heavy for a messenger bag...

 

Yep, I agree. I used a targus messenger bag for my old xps gen 2 and I ended up not using it after a week or two. Backpack is the way to go, and better for your shoulder/back. You'll be constantly changing sides if you use a messenger bag and wish you spent the money on a backpack of sorts instead. If you're really careful, you can just wing it with a cheapo non padded backpack like I've been doing with all my laptops. Only if you're careful.

 

Thanks for reminding me.

 

Works like a charm. No issues or stuttering whatsoever. Its THE bluray drive to get.

 

So it happened again. Turned on the laptop, ran playstation media server, started watching an episode of ST:TNG on my tv, walked away to have dinner, and 20 minutes in, the episode halts and I check my laptop to find that the LCD and gaming LCD are both off, the hdd indicator light is flashing but very rarely, and the system is unresponsive. CTRL + alt + del and the system rebooted. Checked the error log:

- <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
- <System>
<Provider Name="EventLog" />
<EventID Qualifiers="32768">6008</EventID>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2009-06-23T23:34:10.000Z" />
<EventRecordID>71563</EventRecordID>
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>mrrose2003-PC</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
- <EventData>
<Data>6:31:48 PM</Data>
<Data>6/23/2009</Data>
<Data />
<Data />
<Data>1720</Data>
<Data />
<Data />
<Binary>D90706000200170012001F0030009F01D90706000200170017001F0030009F01600900003C000000010000006009000000000000B00400000100000000000000</Binary>
</EventData>
</Event>


Very helpful, eh?

 

I don't know if I'm getting a BSOD because the lid's closed and the monitor's off. This happened last night, too. When I left the lid on, I didn't have any problems. I'm going to try leaving the lid up again. This is frustrating as all hell.

 

Zath, tell Dell. They'll diagnose the error messages and replace whatever - assuming you have warranty.

 

Do you have a memory.dmp file in the windows folder dated around that time? If so have you tried to run Microsoft WinDBG (you may need to download it first). If you need help setting it up and running WinDBG I can assist.

 

yes, I do have a memory.dmp file. I'll see if I can download and run windbg

 

Which OS are you running?