XPS M1530 hot & shuts off

Hey everyone.

I purchased my Dell XPS M1530 back in early February from the Dell outlet(refurbished). My intentions for the laptop were to be able to game (Mostly WoW) & communication with home on my deployment. It arrived like new, no cosmetic defects, no hardware problems.. or anything. I was highly impressed, it being a refurb and all. The laptop had yet to give me any problems what so ever until about three days ago. I was playing some World of Warcraft and it started getting really hot (so hot I couldn't have it on my lap) and then it shut down eventually. After it shut off, I let it cool down for a couple of hours and then decided to power it back on. Everything came back up great, but as soon as I went back to WoW, it did the same thing. Since then I've also tested it playing a DVD and playing some other games. It does the same thing! I know it can't be ventilation either, because it's never gave me this problem whether it be on my lap or on my desk in the past. I have even cleaned the fan on the bottom with canned air. So finally, this morning I decided to call up Dell and see what they could do for me. After chatting with a tech rep on their website for about an half hour and getting the basic questions out of the way, I got a phone number and talked to a service rep. that knew a little more about what might be going on. He checked all of my event logs, had me reinstall directx10 and do a system restore as far back as I could go, but still the same problems. I told him I would try and reformat and back up all of my valuable information, then get back to him if the problem was still unsolved. So about a couple of hours ago, I was sitting here backing up pictures and what not and all of a sudden it just shuts off again. This time I wasn't even playing WoW or doing anything video card related. So, I am curious if anyone else has had a problem related to this and if anyone has any suggestions for me that might figure out what is going on. This is real frustrating because I am in Kosovo right now for 9 months with the army and the last thing I wanted to deal with was hardware issues on my laptop. The service rep did tell me if everything he told me to do didn't fix it, Dell would more then likely replace it, but I don't really want to lose communication with my wife & other family members back at home, while their replacing it. ( I use skype as my phone )

So just curious, how long is their process of getting a laptop replaced, or do they just send you a new one and you send the old one back?

And, if you have had this problem, what did you do to fix it, or what have you tried?

Also, if their are any good reformat guides out there, could someone guide me to one? (I'm still fairly new to vista)

I really appreciate any help/suggestions/comments..

Thanks!

Dustin

 

You should be able to keep the laptop you have until you receive the new one.
Then you ship back the old one in the box the new one came in.

If the fans are working and it's still getting hot, maybe the heat sink came loose and isn't making contact with the processor and video card. Or you might have one of those bad Nvidia video cards that they talk about in this article
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4483

 

try installing a different driver for the graphics card....might help

 

So after being on the phone with Dell the last 5 frickin' hours troubleshooting my laptop. (Reformatting, system restore, diagnostic, ect.) They finally decide that they need to ship me a new motherboard/video card, yet there is one problem. I am over seas and they will NOT ship it to my APO. They suggested that I could send the laptop home, but that would mean I would be without my skype phone and webcam for probably a month, maybe longer.(so no communication back home) On top of that, taking risks that my 1530 could get heavily damaged in shipping due to the fact that I have none of the original packing with me. And there's more. I won't get back to the states for another 8 months which basically takes me out of warranty, although the on floor manager told me that it since this is in my case file and that it happened during warranty they would still fix it when I get home( I don't know if I'll run into a problem proving that then ). I'm just frustrated as hell right now because this mean I will have to go 8 months without any type of gaming or watching movies on the laptop. (Which was the main reason I went with the Dell XPS line) Anyone got any suggestions? I've been flip flopped from the Dell International service to XPS to small and medium business hardware support.. is there anything I can do? I know getting a refund is out of the question.. too late for that, but I didn't know if anyone else had a problem like this in the past. ( I doubt it ) and curious if anyone had any helpful tips for me.. I thought about opening the laptop up to see what exactly is going on.. checking to see if maybe the fan on the GPU was working, but would that void the warranty?

Help!

 

Opening it up does not void warranty. If you break something in the process physically like snapping a wire inside, etc. That would.

 

Get something like HWmonitor and see what exactly is heating up and how hot it is getting. Also look at turning your fans permanently on and undervolting & underclocking as a last ditch countermeasure until you can get a proper fix.

 

I know next to nothing compared to most people on these forums, but I do remember when I was deciding between a 5400 rpm HD and a 7200 one I chose the 5400 one because apparently the 7200 rpm heats up laptops much more than a 5400 one. Or so I read.

Mine gets pretty hot sometimes, and I have the 5400 RPM one, and I'm playing Civ4, not something more demanding like WOW.

Maybe your hard drive is contributing to the overheating?

What I just said could be totally irrelevant and/or stupid. But just a thought.

 

I am sorry if this has been asked before. But is your fan working?

 

Then fan is working fine according to the diagnostic..

I used a program to read the temperatures of the different hardware pieces in my laptop earlier and my GPU is idling at 80 degrees Celsius and gets up to 100 degrees Celsius!! I tried explaining this to dell, yet they still will do nothing. By the time I get home and am out of warranty, I won't just be having problems with the video at those temps!!

 

Well, seeing as you have to wait a long time to get it repaired. You could try the following.

If you are SURE the fan is working (can hear and feel it, regardless of what the Dell Fan tests says). Maybe removing the crazy amount of thermal paste Dell applies to the CPU/GPU with some Arctic Silver could remedy this? Also make sure the fan is clean! Vents are free of dust and derbies.