HELP! Something's loose inside my 1520!!

I flipped the laptop over to remove the battery (after 20 minutes of usage) and something started moving inside it.

I removed the hard drive and the express card cover and had a look but i saw nothing at first. After bouncing it around i started hearing what sounded like a screw moving inside the laptop from one place to another. So after lighting the HDD bay up i saw an actual screw lodged in between the SATA connector and the upper platform on which the RAM stick is installed!

Anyway, i managed to remove it... It's longer than the HDD mounting screws and has blue paint on it. By this point i was really freaked out, so i thought i should calm down, but after lifting the laptop the noise IS STILL THERE. So, something is moving inside my Inspiron. As i shake it horizontally i can clearly hear a metal bit going left and right. I can hear almost nothing when moving it vertically. The noise is somwhere in the HDD bay area/express slot/speaker or whatever else is in that area.

I worked up the courage to open it but after unscrewing the bottom screws and trying very gently to pry it open i chickened out and tightened them back up.

Does anybody have any idea what is dislodged? I'm really sad because i like this laptop and to have screws falling out of it and hearing stuff moving around really upsets me :cry:

So, anyway, please help me!

 

Call Dell and ask for a replacement laptop, or see if you can send it in to get fixed.

But no, I do not know what is dislodged.

 

ive seen a lot of weird things with computers...but this is a new one for me...definitely call up dell and offer to send that last picture to them...

 

prob whatever that screw was holding down is what you hear. get a replacement imo

 

I didn't buy it directly from Dell. I'm outside the US (Romania) and the distributor ordered this laptop and sold it to the reseller and i bought it. So i think warranty is with the distributor.

What i'm scared about is that if i send it, they're going to keep me without it for some months and i'm also terrified about how they actually handle these things. I don't want to find scratches on it or the screen or any physical damage which would just lead to a fight with the distributor and me resending it again and essentially have no laptop until 2009...

Oh man, this is really bad

 

warranty is always through dell. it stays with the laptop.

 

Open up the notebook and fish out the offending part. If things don't work, send it to your reseller/distributor. Download your service manual from the Dell website to know how to go about!

 

^^^ then i agree, you can get the service manual online and take it apart yourself its actually pretty easy to do..

 

Wouldn't this void the warranty?

I tried to take it apart last night but like i said, i chickened out

 

What options have you got? Neither chickening out nor getting terrified helps! You need to do it yourself or let others do it!

 

Yeah, i would do it, i suppose it's not that much different than a Desktop...

But does it void the warranty?

 

Does it really matter? Don't have your Mind Blank! Either do it or get it done.

PS: If I were you, I wouldn't turn on the notebook again till the issue is solved. What if whatever is in there rolling shorts the circuits?

 

I also have a noise coming from the HD bay. When I rotate it from left to right I hear a moving sound (not metallic so not a screw) and sounded to me like it was the HD reading head (sorry, don't know the English word).

Had a friend of mine looking at it and he pointed out that it is the spring which holds the Expresscard slot, so nothing to worry about.

 

sinstoic - i'm still thinking about it. Tomorrow i'm going to a Dell authorized service and ask how long it would take to remedy the problem. Depending on what they tell me i might open it myself... Anyway i'm using my other laptop until i fix it...

paulmadejong - i too thought it was the spring. It does sound like a spring to be honest but that doesn't explain the fact that i had a screw coming out of it.

 

have you checked the service manual?

here's a link to it

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins1520/en/sm/index.htm

obviously if dell can do it and quick, then you probably want to leave it to them. They might know which component or general area by the blue ring on the screw.

 

That's what i was thinking. I myself can't localize it because i can't be certain the screw came from the HDD area and not from somewhere else and rolled up where i found it.

But, i suspect it can't be a time consuming job the find the problem...it's just that you kinda have to remove everything to get to the actual insides.

 

Got the same sit in my Acer Aspire 5920G, just replaced it with a new one