Duff M1330, GPU cooked itself, tried repairing, out of warranty, know any good sources for replacement motherboards?

Hello, I'm another person suffering from a duff m1330. I was using it last week for some light web browsing and the screen just randomly froze and faded to white (there were some colourful vertical stripes also). I know that this is something todo with the GPU because it happened before.. luckily i was within warranty and an engineer came out and swapped the motherboard.. but that was like 2 years ago and i am not in warranty anymore.

When i try to power it on, i just get a blank screen, there arn't any booting noises. I've tried running the powerbutton+'d' key LCD test and that works alright, so I know it isn't the display.

I have also tried removing the battery, holding the power button for 30seconds then restarting. This worked last week and the system booted up and i assumed everything was ok but then it failed again a day later. strange.

I performed the copper-mod ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=268081) yesterday in the hopes that that might help something .. but i'm guessing the GPU has already been cooked by this stage, if thats what it is.

Anyway, my next thing to try is replacing the motherboard. Does anyone know a good place to source one? Or have any other suggestions of what might fix it?

Are there any newer motherboards that would fit in the M1330 case? cos i'm thinking if im replacing the mobo anyway, might aswell get a better one and a faster processor.

Thanks in advance guys!

 

Bake it:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=437683

Will fix it for a while...

 

Dell extended the warranty on the defective models by 12 months from when your original warranty expired. Give them a call and see if you qualify, even if you dont. During this time also get a quote for a new boards.

Your other alternative is to buy a M1330 board with the Intel x3100 IGP from ebay or other online parts shops.

 

Haha baking it! that's something i hadnt thought of.. sounds like fun. Nothing like oven-baked chips eh ?

When you say 'will fix it for a while', why is the fix only temporary? is it something like, the soldering is weakened and more likely to re-melt itself when the GPU gets hot?

 

Ayee i heard about them extending the warranty by a year. sadly the warranty expired in december 08, so even with the year extension that they offered, i'm still too late!

Are dell likely to reject helping me because i've tinkered with the insides? (installed copper mod).

I'll check out that Intel x3100 IGP business, cheers!

 

I don't expect it to re-melt. But it might just crack again.
For some people it works well and they have no problems for months. But other people have to bake again after 1 week.

I would take the copper out and put the heatpad back, then they shouldn't complain.