XPS 1530 not booting up - hardware issue?

I've got a Dell XPS 1530 (out of warranty, of course ). This morning, it just refused to turn on correctly - starts to come on, but screen stays blank (doesn't even show the usual Dell logo etc. as starting up and hard drive doesn't turn over as you'd expect). The power is on but I left it 20mins and nothing much happened; fan is on, though laptop doesn't seem to supply power to USB peripherals. I have held down the power button to power off manually - same thing happens when I try to restart. I removed the battery and tried running it from mains - still the same, though the power adapter itself seems OK.

This is looking very much like a hardware fault Any suggestions? Next thing I'm thinking of trying is removing each of the two RAM modules, in case one is corrupted. Anything else? Any suggestions would be great - I really like my XPS

 

As a fellow 1530 owner who has just come through the same problems, I feel your pain!!!

Here are some possibilities. Your situation sounds like mine.

When you power up the system from a no-power condition, do the lights on the right of the power bezel "race" left-to-right, followed by the system shutting right back down? If so, check the power status light on the front of the computer. If it's on, and you have to hold the power button down for 10 seconds to force the system to power off, then you have precisely the same situation I had - and I had no other name for it other than "stuck in sleep mode." There are a few things you can check, so here are a smattering of ideas for you.

First, a power-on with no video condition sounds like it *might* be the nVidia GPU failure problem. If you are less than one year out of warranty, Dell *might* be willing to replace the motherboard on a dead M1530 on the basis of extended GPU coverage tied to the nVidia graphics processor failing prematurely. You have to go through a Dell consultant to have him or her put you through the paces on the coverage and get cleared for a covered repair, and you might have to politely but firmly remind them of the video-specific extended warranty on the M1530.

The Dell consultant will have you run a few tests, the most notable of which is this: From a power-off condition, press and hold the "D" key and hit the power button. That should start an LCD self-test that rotates a full-screen green/red/blue sequence two or three times. If that doesn't work, Dell will say the LCD is broken and you won't get GPU coverage.

Second, and this is going to sound REALLY stupid, but all I can tell you is that my 1530 revived (finally) by doing this: From a power-off condition, press the "S" key and hit the power button, and see if that kicks it up from a "stuck" sleep mode. No, this isn't documented or verified anywhere, but it brought *my* seemingly dead M1530 brought back to life. I did discover that my hard drive had been pretty thoroughly messed up in the interim, however.

Third, from a power-off condition, press and hold the "fN" key and press "Power." That initiates a self-test the results of which are shown in the three LED's next to the power button (caps-lock, num-lock, shift-lock). All three of these lights should illuminate, with the first one flashing - that indicates that the boot microcontroller is passing control of the system to the CPU. If you suspect the system is truly stuck in sleep mode, that first flashing LED would (in my experience) be a good indicator, because I believe the BIOS setup from a cold power-on is aborted so long as the system is believes its in sleep mode.

Fourth, there is a possibility that the palm rest lid close/sleep switch has gone south, which in all honesty is what I suspect was the proximate cause of my prior failure. Getting to the switch, however, is a non-trivial task that requires substantial disassembly of the system. If you want more info on that, let me know - its too much to go into here.

One last thing, as an additional test, hook a video cable from the VGA port to an external monitor, and power up the computer. See if the external display shows anything. If it does, it suggests the LCD may, in fact, be the culprit.

I realize these are some scattershot ideas, and obviously I can't promise any or all of them will help you, but hopefully it might give you a push in the right direction.

Let me know if you had any success. You're not alone, so don't give up just yet!!! For me, once I got it out of sleep mode, and realized the hard drive was too messed up to resolve, a quick trip to the local electronics shop for a 500GB drive and my Windows install DVD had me back up and running in under an hour, so don't give up the ghost just yet.

-SoonerDave

 

Not sure where the power lights are? Certainly, the power status light stays on and I then have to hold the button down to force power off.

Just over 1yr after the end of warranty Though I may still try my luck with Dell...

The LCD definitely does something and changes colour slightly when I do that, but colours are very muted (more like a hint of green etc. than properly green). Should they be like this?

Pretty sure it's not 'just' a broken LCD: I've had a broken LCD before (and the motherboard changed on another occasion - quality workmanship from Deel) and with the LCD the laptop started up OK but without LCD working correctly. Tried with an external monitor - nothing

No joy with that

That's what happens - the light on the left is flashing.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I think the first step will be to try to lift the data off the hard drive (I have a recent backup, but could live without losing my work since then). I will then look at various disassembly/reassembly options.

Any more suggestions would be great.

 

Tried speaking to Dell on the phone - they want to charge me £100s to fix it. And acted like they were doing me a favour. Seriously unimpressed that what's sold as a premium laptop breaks so quickly

Anyway, off to local computer shop to see what they can do.

 

It's not just a problem with RAM Looks like this won't be an easy fix - will try to decide what to do.

 

I wish I had some better news for you.

One other possibility that I would state up front as being highly unlikely is that you're hard drive has died.

I say that its unlikely because, normally, when an HDD dies, the system will at least still *try* to boot from the device from a power-off state, which means you'd go through POST first - and you indicate you see nothing like that. I didn't either, but the HDD out of my 1530 is in one horrendous mess that's almost unrecoverable. So take that for what it's worth. Pull the drive out, turn it on, see what happens...

 

Hard drive is working fine in a USB enclosure - not sure if that's good or bad news. Anything else worth trying? It's looking more and more like a motherboard issue

 

i had the same problem with the same laptop..
its an issue with the 8600m/8400m series

asked on this forum about it..

check out this thread..

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...-upgrades/512182-disabling-graphics-card.html