M1330 troubles

Hi,

I've had my M1330 since June 2008 and it's been giving me some troubles now and then, here's a brief overview:

-laptop started heating up due to excessive clogging - cleaned out the fan

-vertical lines shortly after that- dell exchanged the motherboard

-nearly a month ago had a problem where my battery couldnt be identified by my adapter which led to it not charging my battery

- my CD-Drive initially stopped burning DVDs but now stopped recognizing CDs altogether.

What has to be noted as well is that ever since my motherboard has been changed the laptop hasn't been running as well as it did when I first got it.
I speculate that the cooling pad wasn't changed and that it has basically dried up thereby decreasing the heatpipes effectiveness.

I'm running either BIOS A14 or A15 (will check on reboot but seriously, it won't make a difference). I've tried formatting Vista and am currently running Windows 7 for less than 2 months and I'm still getting the slowdowns. The fan's airflow is extremely weak even though I unscrew it every now and then to check for clogging and the heat is basically unbearable on my lap during longer browse sessions even after forcing fan speed to high with Ik8fan.

I don't even want to talk about my battery, which basically stopped working 3 months ago (I just get a red X when I unplug - usually only lasts 15 minutes on a charge) even when charging and uncharging it correctly.

At least I was smart enough to get a 3-year warranty on this p.o.s...
Anyways, does anybody know if it's realistic to somehow get an upgrade to the newer lines (e.g. xps1340) due to the amount of trouble this lousy machine has caused? Even though the amount of trouble seems quite severe, problems associated with the m1330 line is relatively prevalent and in that respect I woulnt say that my laptop's track record isn't THAT bad!

Nonetheless, I didn't spend nearly €1k on a laptop which acts sluggishly while running a divx video concurrently to an installation.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

 

Call Dell.

IIRC, their policy is 3 times to fix or it gets replaced

 

Where the hell are you using this thing? In a saw mill? I have owned my M1330 for over 2yrs now and the insides are pretty much dust free. I would suggest you have a clean up at home first lol

As described above if your laptop is only 6months old then get it replaced as there is something definitely not right. When they change the motherboard the technicians are told to also change the heat pads although even if they forgot, the pads would not have dried out in 6months.

When Dell replace /fix your latop, I highly recommend you perform the copper shim mod as this will sort your heating issues......assuming you sort the excess dust issues.

 

I'm sorry, I meant June 2008!
Well, I guess the clogging is just a minor nuisance compared to other issues I've been having.

 

OK the way I see it your paying for a service so us it call up XPS support for a visit make sure to give all failing symptoms you have noticed. They will say your battery is not covered by warranty which is true so you may need to buy a replacement battery. If and when you get replacement or service do the copper mod..

 

but I was in the belief that the copper mod was going to void the warrranty so I never really thought about doing it

 

Assuming that you called Dell up once for each of these problems, you should already qualify for a replacement.

 

I had problems with overheating with my XPS m1330. Even something as simple as watching a youtube clip would heat up my palm rests until the point where it was too hot to touch, and then my computer would throttle down and become unusable.

I got my motherboard and heatsink/fan assembly replaced and ever since then my computer has been running really fast; I suggest you try it one more time.

Also the slim 9.5mm dvd drives really suck -- my MATSH*TA stopped burning dvd's a long time ago.

 

Hi BlackRussian.

For how long is your XPS running with the copper mod now? Did you experience any problems?

Thanks for some comments,

cheers,

XPS36.

 

There is no guarantee with the copper mod. What you have to remember is that the chip is flawed by it's design and as such WILL always fail at some point or another. All the copper mod does is help postpone this for as long as possible. Without the copper mod, my first chip lasted almost two years before failing. Now I have the copper mod and I only use the laptop on a hard surface that permits proper cooling, I hope it will last longer than this, which should easily take me to my next laptop.

 

Re everybody.

Does anybody of you know, why the Nvidia GPU is failing? What is the physical problem of the chip? Is it the connection to the motherboard, which breaks after some time due to temperature or lies the problem rather inside the chip?

 

I only did the mod along with a heatsink mod July of this year.
I did not have problems as such but the weather here made my XPS unstable and was running hot. In short I had to use my rig in a room with AC on to keep it cool as summer here can get up to highs of 40C.
Did the mods to my rig and run's a whole lot cooler than it did.

 

A mixture of the two if you Google you'll get many hits on the matter.