I need a shed of light with my M1530

I tried to post this on the m1530 owner's lounge but no one replied.

My dad bought his m1530 last 2009 (forgot the month) but thats not the issue here.

I now have a dead Dell xps m1530 and I really dont know whats wrong with it.

Here is what happens when I turn it on:
I press the power button and I hear the fan firing up. Then the fan stops working and the screen does not display anything. It's not even lighting up. The power is still on but no booting up what so ever.

Here is what I definitely know. The HDD is still working because my brother has a similar laptop. I tried it transferring my HDD to his laptop and it works. I also know that the LCD monitor is not busted because there were times that the laptop came back to life again and I could use it but after I shut it down, it died again. Recently I tried to change the ram and see if it would help but it didn't.

Can anybody share their thoughts about this?

 

I would try:

- Test your AC adapter with a multimeter
- Use a known good Dell 90 watt AC adapter
- Try to pipe out display to an external monitor
- Reseat RAM/use known good RAM

If it still doesn't work, sounds like you are the victim of the Nvidia fiasco
(if yours has the Nvidia chip) or have a bad video card (soldered onto the motherboard). Are you still in warranty?

 

My brother has a working M1530 so I tried transferring his adapter and RAM into my dad's laptop. It still a no go. Trying to display it on an external monitor is useless since the system wont even boot up. Even the dell welcome logo wont show up. It might be the video card as you say. No its not in warranty anymore. Do I have a way to determine if its the video card?

 

- Is the little power light on?
- does it stay on?
- if not, how long does it stay on?
- Is there any disk activity?

 

I'd be almost certain it's the GPU here, especially since you're getting nothing on the internal or external display. If you wait long enough can you hear it get into Windows?

 

Sorry for the Laaaate reply. Been busy with work.

The little power lite stays on for a very long time. I have to press and hold the power button again to turn the laptop off. And there is no disk activity. I can push the touch sensitive buttons on top of the key board but the only light up and do nothing.

No, the system does not boot to windows no matter how long I wait. There is no HDD activity.

 

No disc activity could be a bad HDD, motherboard or LED. But if you have the Nvidia M1530, you likely have a bad motherboard. Unfortunately there is no fix for the problem, despite all the copper mods on this forum. The GPU IS the problem, and no matter how many boards you replace it will keep on failing.

 

Unfortunately for me I can say that the HDD is not bad and the LED is not busted. So that leaves the Motherboard and the GPU. Ow well. My new HP dv6z is coming.