Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
Some back story:
I've had my Inspiron 1420 for a little over 3 years. In the summer of 09 it's graphics chip was replaced under Dell's Extended Warranty for the defective card. I've had no other serious issues with it. However, for the past 6+ months the fan has been making a loud noise (getting louder as it speeds up). I believe this to be a bearing failure within the fan and ordered myself a replacement fan.
Also, I recently purchased a usb 3.0 flash drive and a express card -> usb 3.0. I run Vista Premium 64 bit.
Here's where I am at now:
Saturday night (1/15/11) I finally got around to replacing the fan. While I did have to take apart the laptop 4 times to get it right (fan casing had an inward dent in it and my wireless hard switch nub kept coming off the track on reassembly), the fan was installed and was noticeably quieter. I used Arctic Silver 5 on the graphics chip and graphics ram chips on installation.
I used the laptop all day Sunday. I left it on (upside-down and on power save mode) all day Monday and Tuesday. It did get restarted at least once and was put to sleep each night. I had a temperature program installed to make sure everything was fine. My 2 cpu cores were between 30-50c depending on load, but my graphics chip was 70+c (I never saw it above 80, but I didn't push it). I don't recall running a similar program prior to changing the fan, so I cannot compare it. My palm rest was NOT warm where the chip was, so I was not worried.
Tuesday rolls around and I receive my express card to 3.0 USB. It is a generic one from China. Vista could not find a driver within the included software it came with, so I went on the internet and found a Syba card that matched it exactly. I downloaded and installed those drivers. Upon completion of driver install I was told to restart PC.
PROBLEM
When I restarted my notebook I got almost to the Vista splash screen and then the laptop turned off. I tried getting into Safe Mode but could not get past the splash screen there. I then could not load Vista or Safe Mode. I tried Safe Mode again and it hung on the driver: crcdisk.sys. The fan progressively got louder (spun faster) at each of these attempts until it shut off completely. Which leads me to believe a heating issue.
Upon starting the notebook again, it was turning off before the BIOS even finished loading. I decided it was time to see if something was wrong with my fan placement. I took the laptop apart again and took out the fan. I cleaned the graphic chip and ram and re applied arctic silver 5 and reinstalled the fan. On startup, the fan got progressively faster/louder and the laptop would shut off before the BIOS would finish. I did not feel very warm air coming from the fan either..
My next step was that even though I did not touch the processor at all while in there, I took off the CPU heat sink and cleaned the top of the processor and heat sink with alcohol wipes and applied arctic silver 5 and then put them back together. Now the stuff that was on there was pretty crappy and I was unable to get all of it off because it was baked on pretty good. This did not fix my problem.
Here's what I'm contemplating doing tonight (mostly long shots):
Putting the old fan in to see if it works...
Removing the CMOS battery and then replacing it..
--- Eventually I might replace this to see anyway
Removing the processor, reseating it, and then reattaching the heat sink.
Calling Dell
See if NVIDIA class action law suit settlement will help.
I cannot figure out why this would happen. If the graphics chip is the one overheating, I wouldn't think the system would shut off so quick. I have no idea if the express card driver install had anything to do with this. I do not see how it would as that would be on the HDD.
Thank you all in advance,
Wayne
Inspiron 1420 Boot Shut Off (Heat? Error?)
Discussion in 'Dell' started by WAD, Jan 19, 2011.
