Dell repair worries...

Hi all,

Last Tuesday, I phoned up dell technical service, as my laptop (XPS M1530) had stopped working, I had identified the fault as one of the memory modules.

They said they would send someone round on Friday (today) to fix it, even though I have the next business day warranty.

The tech came round today to replace the motherboard, as this is what dell had instructed him to do... needless to say the laptop still wouldn’t turn on, and after a couple of minutes, he too concluded one of the ram modules had stopped working. So, they are sending a replacement out on Monday.

I am concerned however, that now there is a “bump” in the middle of my keyboard, which wasn’t there before. Has this happened to anyone else? Is it because there are wires in the mother board out of place or something, pushing up on the keyboard?

I don’t mind too much about the keyboard, however, the new motherboard came with bios revision a08, so I proceeded to upgrade it to a09.
As soon as the screen came up saying it was flashing the bios, the fan came on like crazy and after say 30 seconds, the laptop powered off, in the same way it does if you hold down the off button. Is this normal?

Also, when I started up the computer again, I ran HWmonitor to check the temps, one of the processors was up at 81 C! The max I have had it before is about 67C, although it is undervolted. This also aroused my suspicion.

I was worried that when the new motherboard was installed, no cooling paste or anything was re-applied to the connections between the heat pipe and processor etc. Should this have been done? I dont realy know much about thi kind of stuff.

Maybe I am getting paranoid here lol but any input to put me at ease would be great!

 

You have every right to be paranoid. I only get the standard 1 yr warranty with my Dell laptops. I refuse to let them service my laptops for all the reasons you cited.

Yes thermal paste should have been removed, cleaned then reapplied if swapping out the CPU from one motherboard to another.

That's probably why your temps are now higher than they were.

As far as the rise in the keyboard. That could be due to either a wire or cable out of place or a different hardware revision of the motherboard where a component might have been added and not allowing the keyboard to sit flush. It's probably a cable that wasn't routed properly.

 

well, the technician is coming round again tomorrow (today actually... its 3 am) to replace a ram stick, so i will see if i can get him to try and sort out my problems

thanks for the reply