M1330 Display Issue (Vertical Lines on Reboot & Crash & Vertical Lines)

The laptops come in colors - has no effect on choice of GPU.
You probably have an nVidia GPU if you are seeing those sorts of lines - happened to me! Exactly the same thing - sometimes it would "freeze" other times it would shutdown.

If you are still under warranty, don't wait to contact them. They will tell you to upgrade the BIOS as a first step[1]. Then they will ask you to hook up an external monitor to the laptop to make sure that the laptop's display isn't faulty.
It took me over an hour to convince them that the GPU was bad - understandably the first level tech that you get will be working from a script.

It's not hard to determine the GPU - download and install "HWMonitor" from cpuid.com. It will tell you the chipset and your temperature data.

Finally, if the laptop isn't under warranty - I don't know what to tell you. Sell it on eBay for parts? Check eBay for replacement motherboard. To be clear, the ONLY fix is to replace the motherboard. There is no other option.

[1] - I did this when I they asked me to, but I was hesitant to do so as the laptop wasn't running for too long before it would fail. You can search the Dell XPS forum for posts where the BIOS update failed (and was directed by Dell tech support). It's a judgment call for you; if the laptop will run for 5 or 10 minutes before failing you can probably get the BIOS update done. Not that it will have any effect on the problem you are having. If you don't feel comfortable with doing this step, I would suggest lying to them just to placate the first step in their checklist script. Just say, yep, I just upgraded it and it's still failing. Wait about 5 -10 minutes for this final line.

 

How odd, I also had 2 "OPU073" mobos and my latest is an "OK984J" too...! But logic dictates that "OK9" is older than "OPU" and A00 certainly older than A01 & A04 (my two OPU mobos).

My guess is that we both got very old mobos that have been refurbished from Dell's Asian factories... . An assumption that doesn't really thrill me as electronic components have a relatively short half-life...

As for GPU, mine also has the "631" but my prior two mobos had "630" revision codes so we might assume that the 631 is the newest of the 8400M GS...

 

Dell is extending the warranty for another year (just like HP did...) for those having problems with the nVidia GPUs.

http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/...ate-limited-warranty-enhancement-details.aspx


.

 

Wow I was about to say what BruZZi just did. |No one is currently out of GPU warranty. Admiteddly you'd be quite hard pressed if you don't have a nice long warranty.

 

Hi Traveller, Wow, thread is still alive.

Sad to report the replacement motherboard has failed due to the same reason as the first one. Almost 6 months to the week.

We'll see if this one fails in another 6 months.

I still have 2 more years of complete care left (+ whatever extra warranty Dell gives for this graphics issue). So no worries besides the annoyance of 1-2 days downtime.

I still like to maintain that Dell has to fix the HSF issue that I highlighted way back in the first few pages of this thread. I suppose they would prefer to keep replacing motherboards......

 

My GPU has failed yet again.. so there is still no way of guaranteeing a fault free computer other than asking them to replace it with a GMA card? Dammit, it has failed me a lot.. Ive had the screen replaced, the hard drive twice, the motherboard 3 times with this one, and finally my battery died suddenly just DAYS after the 1 year warranty expired.

Is there any way to get them to replace my battery if it's been over a year since i bought it? I think its bull(poop) that my 2-year complete care doesnt cover batteries.

 

It sounds like the heat generated by the GPU also affects the longevity of the other components in the system.

Apple is having problems with some of the newer 9xxx nVidia chips too so it doesn't look like the problems are solved yet. At this point, you take a machine risk if you get an nVidia discrete solution. My M1330 with X3100 has had no problems with heat so I don't think that it's the CPU or any other component. I do have computers (expensive ones) with nVidia 8600 chips and I expect that they will fail prematurely in the future. We really need more competition in the graphics area.

 

My first replacement just failed as well. I've got the 3 year warranty, but I sure hope this is resolved before then (or I get to replace it with something better).

 

Hey JC, welcome back... unfortunately
FWIW, it's not the only problem you can have with the mobo - my second mobo's power rail(s) died. But you should consider the Cu Mod. although some suggest that the problem is due to a series of nVidia 8400s being "bad", I still don't want mine running past 100C at full load. Thanks to the Cu mod, full load's at 74C, a much more reasonable figure

 

Thanks for the "warm" welcome, if you don't mind the pun.

All these seem heat related.

I don't think I would be doing any mods to it seeing that it has a good portion of its warranty intact.... but even then, I have just been deploying our new fleet of Lat 6400 at work. I'm not that impressed with the 14.1 E6400 but if I can get a deal on the E4300, I might jump....considering I'm getting corporate discounts.

It looks like i will have to trade some of the XPS' low weight, HDMI and slim profile for the E4300's more robust build, backlit k/b, eSATA and express charge capability for those airport stopovers. The new 90W latitude powerbrick is also 1/2 the size of previous 90W so that even things out a bit.

 

More Competition? The 'competition' is not what is needed. What is needed is an understanding that you can't cheat physics and the heat must be removed reliably. As heat builds up in the chip it needs to be removed. It can be done reliably...often it is done cheaply and inefficiently. Dells solution with the inefficient (but very cheap) purple pad, needs to be re-engineered - extend the thickness of the heat pipe and use a high grade thermal transfer compound. With everybody wanting paperthin PCs, executing googleflops, with powersources that last months, the expectations are unrealistic, and mfg play the odds against physics and operating envelopes for the sake of claiming 1/2 lb lighter, 2.2 ghz over 2.0 ghz, and 15 billion texture fill rate vs 50 billion texture fill rates, all sides of the design space is pushed. What do you expect?
And to the person who claimed Macbooks are better...check again. They have the same heat problems and related failures, in addition to their a/c-usb power adapters going up in flames, as well as the cases cracking on the macbooks.....nobodys perfect...

 

:laugh:

You know what, the rep that worked on my 1330 (twice...) recommended the E4300 from a technician's point of view, citing that there is plenty of room to work in, no bumpy keyboards, etc. (& which also suggests better air flow). So if you do get a deal... go for it.

 

> More Competition? The 'competition' is not what is needed. What is
> needed is an understanding that you can't cheat physics and the
> heat must be removed reliably.

The nVidia graphics failures have a more or less known problem.

Their graphics solutions put out a lot of heat which causes problems in other components. Intel and AMD have been in a race to improve performance/watt and they've been very successful with Intel having the greater success. What we need is competition to get the benefits from the CPU race into GPUs. Intel, of course, has big process advantages compared to nVidia and I'd love to see that used to build graphics processors.

> As heat builds up in the chip it needs to be removed. It can be done
> reliably...often it is done cheaply and inefficiently. Dells solution with the
> inefficient (but very cheap) purple pad, needs to be re-engineered -
> extend the thickness of the heat pipe and use a high grade thermal
> transfer compound.

It would be better if the heat wasn't there in the first place.

> With everybody wanting paperthin PCs, executing googleflops, with
> powersources that last months, the expectations are unrealistic, and mfg
> play the odds against physics and operating envelopes for the sake of
> claiming 1/2 lb lighter, 2.2 ghz over 2.0 ghz, and 15 billion texture fill rate
> vs 50 billion texture fill rates, all sides of the design space is pushed. What
> do you expect?

The average notebook requires very little processing power WRT graphics.

At the moment, I'm running a Dell Inspiron 8500 on my desk with a 64 MB nVidia card and a 2.0 Ghz Pentium 4. It's purpose is to display a big number of realtime stock charts as it has a wonderful display. We stopped using the system a while ago because it had heat issues. I cleaned it out and it's sitting on four spools with a USB fan underneath and it's running cool.

> And to the person who claimed Macbooks are better...check again.
> They have the same heat problems and related failures, in addition to
> their a/c-usb power adapters going up in flames, as well as the cases
> cracking on the macbooks.....nobodys perfect...

The previous generation MacBooks are fine. They use Intel Integrated Graphics. The previous generation MacBook Pros have problems. They use the nVidia 8600 which have the bump problems. They are now supposedly fixed but it will probably take a year to find out. I have a 17 inch MacBook Pro. It doesn't have heat problems but there's a lot more room for airflow compared to the 15 inch model. I was running it with a fan to be safe but
stopped using the fan as the temps aren't a problem.

The current generation MacBook Pros have nVidia graphics chip issues. Apple
said that they would be fixed in January. I'm unsure about the current
generation MacBooks on heat issues. I suspect that they have heat issues
as they use the 9400 but I haven't actually played with new gen MacBooks
myself.

I have three MacBook Pros that see a lot of heavy use. The only problems
that we've had are on two 15 inch MacBook Pros related to the nVidia
problem. One had a fried graphics card and the other gets hot while doing
gaming. External fans do a pretty good job in getting the temps down on
the MBPs with nVidia 8600s.

We've seen no case issues or power supply issues on the MBPs. I personally love the magnetic connector.

 

The GPU on my replacement motherboard came with a white circle (paint?) on the top right hand corner.

Does anyone else have this? What does it mean?

 

Sorry, just a few words of clarification....

 

> well, kind sorta...Why do you think multicores have evolved? .Heat
> was a major driver. Clocking a CPU over 3ghz, even at lower core
> voltages generated A LOT OF HEAT

The amount of power per core has dropped pretty sharply in the last
four years due to process. We take that for granted today with Intel
processors.

> it is the nature of semiconductor physics, even using the best process
> at 45nm features. Duplicating CPUs (two dies, physically separated,
> running at 1/2 the clock speed do not generate quite as much heat as 1
> cpu. The heat generation is exponential. There heat also is dissipated
> by a larger carrier area. There are many variables that contribute to
> the heat generated in a semiconductor device such as a 'cpu'..one can
> reduce the heat somewhat, but not drastically.

Owning the design and the process gives AMD (at least in the past) and
Intel the ability to tune the process for the design. Something that
nVidia could sorely use given their performance for the last two years.

I hang out with hardware people on another forum and they do a decent
job keeping me up-to-date on hardware architecture matters. Multicore
is a somewhat useful approach but far more in software tools are
needed to improve individual process peformance.

Perhaps you should take a look at Intel's Larrabee architecture to see
an example of the coming competition in the graphics area from Intel.

> well, process improvements will only get one part way there.

They've done a lot for Intel processors. They can throw far more
transistors and therefore have the ability to improve IPC with
microarchitectural improvements like micro-ops fusion and the
additional vector instruction sets added over the years.

> The point is that GPUs are constantly clocking out video data at high
> rates and generally do use more average energy over a finite time
> period. The CPUs 'rest' when not running office apps,etc. Saying that
> it will be better if the heat wasn't there in the first place is like
> saying it would be better if a fire didn't give off as much heat. Its
> the nature of semiconductor devices, the process used, the clock rate,
> the architecture of the device, etc that demands the current draw, and
> hence the heat. There is no magic bullet to take the heat generated to
> zero.

Strawman.

> I disagree...depends what is running and in general, the GPU is ALWAYS
> clocking out video data, where as the CPU can idle (or almost idle)
> some of the time.

http://www.linuxelectrons.com/news/hardware/intel-maintains-lead-graphics-adapter-market-share

"JPR estimates that a record 22.7 million mobile graphics devices
shipped in Q3'06, 17.4 million of which were integrated chipsets for
notebooks. Mobile IGCs claimed a share of 76.8% in the mobile graphics
market, up from 75.4% in the prior quarter and up from 72.3% in the
same period a year ago. Intel led the mobile graphics market with a
51% share (down from 54%), ATI dropped to a 24% share, and Nvidia
jumped with a 8% market share gain to 19% for the quarter.

"In the discrete mobile segment, ATI saw shipments decline dramatically
on a quarterly basis while Nvidia saw shipments increase
sequentially. Nvidia grew discrete mobile segment share from 37% in
Q1'06 to 53% in Q3'06. ATI's segment share fell from 63% in Q2'06 to
47% in Q3'06.

"JPR estimates that approximately 53 million desktop graphics devices
shipped in Q3'06, 31.7 million or 59.5% of which were integrated
parts. Overall, Intel held at 35% of the desktop graphics market, ATI
dropped to 22%, and Nvidia grew to 25% market share. In the discrete
desktop segment, Nvidia also grew, to 57% share, and ATI claimed 43%
share during the period."

---------

This was from 2006. I'd guess that integrated graphics has an even
higher share today given the drive to cheaper and cheaper systems
and falling system ASPs.

> a difference of opinion here as well...I purchased a MacBook about
> 8 months ago...just before the new version was released. I have had
> heat related issues that has lead to a cpu failure.

How do you know it was the graphics processor? I have a Dell XPS M1330
with Intel X3100 Graphics. I read reports all the time of users with
the same system having motherboards replaced and high running
temperatures. Those reporting the problems have nVidia Discrete
Graphics options. Those of us with Intel X3100 don't have heat
problems.

> My a/c adapter did get hot enough to melt/damage the plastic. After
> that, I did receive a notice from apple about the recall.....

Who supplies them with their power supplies? Seems like they did the
reasonable thing. I have five of the 85 Watt power supplies (I don't
like to carry them between home and office) and they all seem fine
to me.

 

Chalk me up for another failed GPU on a m1330 whose primary warranty recently expired. Does anyone have details on what is supposed to happen with the extended warranty for the GPU?

Dell apparently is going to send me a box to send the computer to a depot to get checked out. That will take at least 7-10 business days. Who knows how long before its actually fixed. Not exactly XPS service.

The worst part is I was working on my wife's Christmas present, which was a new website for the family. Looks like I need to go find an emergency gift. Dell quality and service stinks!

 

Well thanks to this thread, I have decided to avoid buying any laptops with those nVidia cards. ATI here I come!

 

I sent mine in here in Canada, and it took 3 business days:

1 business day to get the packing material
1 business day to get the repair done
1 business day to get the repaired machine back

I am very impressed with their turnaround. When I had an HP, it took over two weeks, and they still didn't fix it!

 

Seven months have gone since I got MOBO and display changed:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3411671#post3411671

and problems seem to be here again . My M1330 froze about 4 times and stopped booting 2 times right now, showing a black screen with some white color on it.

As soon as it happens again, I'm contacting Dell one more time.

 

Are you certain that it's paint (and not residue from thermal paste, etc.)?

What's the revision number (assuming you wrote it down or took pics before they swapped out your mobo...)?

 

Well you clearly have some kind of problem but those are hardly concrete indications of a dying GPU... .

What do you mean with "stopped booting" - that your 1330 wouldn't start after pressing the pwr button? Did it only start after some amount of "cool-down" time..?

Do you have a temp monitor app installed (like 18kfangui) and what does it read for the cores and gpu during idle?

 

Hey all, I'm new here, but we share a common problem ^^

After reading many posts here, I thought I also finally join the club and contribute in some way. My m1330 story goes like this:

i bought it in November 2007. By Jan 08 the first symptom started, i.e. sudden black screen and shutdown when playing a game (Guild Wars). I was calling with Dell a bit about it, but they talked me out of doing anything (doh me). Some months later the symptoms got worse, blue screens of death occured. By Aug 08 the pretty vertical stripes came and my mobo was replaced. I got an A00 (while I had an A01 to start with).

It worked fine for a while, but only because i didn't play games on it anymore. After a while I got fed up with that though, i mean, cmon, i also want to be able to use the comp for hobbies, not just work... especially since i wanted to get started with corel painter. But as soon as i used one of these programs and the comp reached a certain temp (something around 100C for the cores and ~90C for GPU; i checked it with HWmonitor 1.10 sometimes during gaming), the black screen came back. So i called dell again, and this time they didn't fuss about it, but send someone to replace the mobo again (yay me, didn't have to wait til the vertical stripes).

Now I have an A06, with bios A13, a new heat assembly (it looks different from what i had before inside), and a 4 year warranty for the mobo :O the good news, my temp dropped: before the change i had a00 with a14, the temps of the intel cores and graphics were idling around 60C. now i have the a06 with a13 and new heat assembly and the temps of the intel cores are around 40C (idle; when i'm surfing a bit, like now, they remain at 40C). so, i guess ... yay?!
the only thing i don't like is that the temp of the graphics card didn't drop after the change, it's still idling at 60C and i guess that's the temp that's the most important one for this particular problem aight? :'(

anyways, i also ordered a zalman cooler; i finally want to be able to game and paint without ugly crashes in between ... i don't trust this new mobo anyways ;P

greets,
tydra

oh, and PS, i have the normal pads on, no copper mod.

 

Yes...it won't come off. My motherboard is A01.

 

After pressing the power button, it seems to start but stops with a blank screen with some white stripes:


The problem wot worse, now I'm unable to start my laptop, I press power button, then multimedia buttons ligh on in sequence, and then nothing happens: black screen, power button is on but the system does not respond, I'm contacting Dell right now.

 

Well I was actually curious about the GPU's revision #, not mobo. For example, my first two GPUs were G86-63 0-A2s and my latest GPU is a G86-63 1-A2... not that I frankly know the difference between both, but I was just interested.

As for the white "paint", one of my mobos had several yellow markings (paint dabs) on several of the components, giving me the feeling that they were "check marks" (indicating that the component(s) had been somehow tested or maybe even replaced...), but the GPU wasn't one of them. An example can be seen in IMG_3801_web from my pics, 8th row, 5th col. (see link in my sig).

 

Sorry, I didn't take a pic of my before GPU, and I'm not keen on removing the heatsink to see what my current GPU says.

 

Yeah, doesn't look nor sound good...

Well, while you're waiting on Dell, I'd be curious to know what the LCD test looks like on your rig. Just press & hold the "D" key and then hit the power button...

 

Dell technician told me to do that test, I got a full screen color sequence on the monitor: white, red, green and blue colors. So the display seems ok, they're changing the mother board one more time.

 

One more for the club! XD
My m1330 just failed today. Ironically, only a few short hours after another tech had come to replace the LCD (for a totally unrelated issue). Dell's sending a box now, and apparently I'm getting a new motherboard and GPU.
Mine failed about six months after I received it too! What, is Dell putting tiny time bombs with each m1330 or something?

 

Oh dear, Mine has just died aswell (Purchased June 08). I don't use it much either - Very disappointing. I've got three XPS M1330 machines in my family, all purchased at the same time. I'm worried that they'll be the next to suffer this problem; although, they have also had their problems which are unrelated to this - LED Display needed replacing (twice) and a keyboard problem.

Not impressed with these notebooks but Dell support has been excellent.

 

Happening to me too - started to manifest itself the other day while watching movies on the TV connected with an HDMI cable.

I started getting funny colour spotting then a complete lock up of WM player.

After I changed the Nvidia control to only out put to the secondary monitor I could watch the rest of the movie. Next day when I tried to restart, nothing bu funny coloured lines.

Luckily I sync my important files with my my desk top PC & external Maxtor HDD using Allway Sync (highly recommended for a home office back up & file sync).

I just got off the phone from Dell, they obviously are extremely well aware of the problem because as soon as I mentioned vertical coloured lines, the girl on the phone asked if could press & hold the `D' button while holding the power on button from start up - as soon as I told her there was a series of full screen colours occurring without lines she said someone will be out tomorrow with a new mother board.

Disappointing that this problem persists, but I have to say that the service is pretty top notch so far (lets see what happens tomorrow).

Here are a few pics on how it manifests, sometimes it boots straight away into the coloured lines, but sometimes I still get the Dell splash screen - albeit blocking.

 

we can report this one on cnn's i report.. maybe dell will act fast if this goes to the media...

 

Hello! (happy new year!!)

My laptop has started to die again, so the replacement motherboard only lasted about 7 months. However the dell technical support guy was very helpful, it took less than 10 minutes for him to authorize a on site repair (didn't have to spend ages trying to fix the problem over the phone), even though I was not able to replicate the problem during the call.

 

Another victim checking in here

I bought my M1330 new in June 2008.
The device froze and bluescreened on Dec 29th, late evening, so the following morning I googled up nvlddmkm.sys which brought me here...

I updated the bios to A14 - device still crashed, and tried updated the display driver - which I had installed previously as a suggested Vista update but immediately rolled back because the fan speed cycling problem OFF-FULL-OFF-FULL rendered the device unusable IMO - device still crashed.

So I phoned Dell support 08:30 30th Dec and didn't waste much time; my device passed the display and bios diag tests but the tech arranged for an engineer to home-call on the 31st Dec with a new motherboard, which is fortunate as the device finally died completely that morning, so for the record 36 hours between first crash and failure.
The (outsourced contractor) engineer turned up here (Hampshire UK) at 11:30 and was done by 12:10 - he assured me that the new GPU was an updated build, and reused the old thermal pads/heatsink assembly. Dell support phoned me while he was here to check he had arrived...

HWmonitor.exe reports GPU temperatures min 61C max 106C, MS Office applications with some heavy-lifting Excel macros in humongous spreadsheets, Chrome for surfing, Google Earth to pump the GPU, no gaming.

The engineer didn't reset the bios clock, which I only realised when I noticed my post-sync HTC Diamond was displaying the wrong date and time...but apart from that the whole support experience was quite remarkable - device fixed on a New Years Eve less than 28 hours after the support call!

A BIG thumbs up to Dell support, especially with a year's warranty extension covering any GPU failures...

 

So, I'll expect mine to die within 6 months from now

If it doesn't last more than 6 months, why don't they do something else to resolve this issue

 

Odd, everyone here seems to be getting only motherboard replacements. The Dell rep on the phone told me they're sending a box over for me to ship it to the depot; apparently, I'm getting a GPU replacement too. Hopefully that'll be a more long-term solution? *crosses fingers*

 

The GPU is on the motherboard

 

Well, about 24 hours after I called Dell XPS support, I had a guy turn up here on the door step (2 hours early) and after 2 hours he had replaced my motherboard and reassembled the XPS - everything is now working fine.

His suggestion was to get one of those laptop pads with fans in them to help reduce the build in heat which takes out the GPU.

So I might just do that - prevention is better than the cure so they say.

So I have to say that it is annoying that this design fault occurred - but I must say that I was super impressed with the Dell service and response times .

 

Joining the club. Got the same problems a couple of days ago. Actually it was the last day of the original guaranty ^^

 

I have a 1530 and I do have the same issues with the dying computer and the lines and the other issues that you guys have had. I first got a new harddrive sent to me to switch. Last week they were here replacing the motherboard..and now it all begins again *sigh*

Anybody wanna buy a computer ?

 

I originally bought the M1330 in July of 2007. I first noticed the blue-screens associated with the nvidia drivers in December of 2007. As I was one of the first buyers I was also one of the first to experience this problem. I blamed vista to start with... my bad. After weeks (!) of trying to deduce the problem, reinstalls of vista, etc, Dell finally replaced my motherboard.

A year later... and the problem has started to come back. Freezing of media player, occasional macro blocking, vertical lines appearing, etc. Quite infrequent at moment, but I know this is just the start. So, as soon as the vertical lines appeared again I took a photo. Contacted Dell and after the usual "update drivers, check system, etc, etc" they agreed to have a technician come out and replace the motherboard again.

I really hope the design flaw has been fixed?!

 

It's not clear if the problem is fixed or not. Perhaps Apple will say something this week about it. Until then, I'm not buying anything with an nVidia graphics solution in it. I noticed that Dell is now using Intel Integrated x4500 graphics in their computers for integrated solutions. Any idea as to the performance improvement from X3100?

 

Yeah I know that. But I figured that since most people were getting on-site fixes that ONLY the motherboard was being replaced (and they just left the GPU be) or something. I thought you couldn't replace the GPU on-site.

 

The GPU is soldered onto the motherboard. If it were in a socket, then it might be field-replaceable but then we wouldn't get these ultrathin designs.

The best solution is to get integrated graphics - maybe Dell will replace with a motherboard with integrated instead of nvidia.

 

6 months have passed since i ordered my m1330, and a couple of minutes ago i get those vertical lines! luckily I read before hand that its an overheating issue and I called dell and they are sending a technician in to replace my motherboard! I'm using the m1330 right in front of the window to keep it cold

When i run the diagnostics or run it at room temperature, i get the lines and crash etc..

Hopefully the new mobo can eliminate this problem in the future

*edit: Since the symptom seems to have miraculously fixed itself, should i still worry and have them replace my motherboard anyway?

 

I can just imagine a picture of someone using their M1330 mounted in their refrigerator.

 

I had my motherboard replaced just yesterday. Just to make sure that the problem is gone for sure, could you please let me know which diagnostic are you referring to?

My problem was fixed before the tech came out as well. The tech still replaced the MB for me. Hopefully they'll do the same for you too.

I do have to say though that after the problem I have noticed that the fan spins up and down very randomly - even when it is cold and haven't been used in a while. This happened with an older bios (A07 I think) and is still happening after the tech upgraded the bios to the latest.

Is anyone else having this issue or know about it? Or do I just need to mount it to my refrigerator?

 

Press F12 at boot up and there is a diagnostics menu

hopefully we wont have to mount it on a refrigerator hehe

 

Do the copper mod....