Inspiron 1764 will boot for 90 seconds from cold, then turns off and won't POST

Inspiron 1764
Core I5-430M Arrandale

This is my father's notebook. He went on vacation for two weeks and left it off and unplugged. When he came back he said it seemed to work fine before just shutting off.


From my own testing:

If left completely off for a few hours, it'll boot and stay on long enough to get into Windows. Then it'll completely shut off (fans spin down) with only the power light on. Power button will turn the power light on and off but nothing else.

Same behavior if I go into the BIOS instead of booting into windows.

I've tried reseating/removing the RAM, hard drive, and optical drive. Tried a different Dell power supply.

I'm guessing it's the motherboard at this point.

It's out of warranty, but I can renew with basic depot service for $170. This is about the same price as a 'new' replacement motherboard from eBay.

My question is, does this sound like something that would be covered?

Thanks in advance.

 

Temperature may be shutting it down. Have you tried to clean the heat sink coils???

 

First thing I checked. Blasted the heat sink with compressed air. I got some dust but not a huge amount that would suggest blockage.

 

I own an 1564 and I assume the fan assembly on the 1764 is about the same as on mine. Dust will get trapped between the fan and the fins of the assembly. And I'm not talking about a tiny bit of dust here, In mine it was literally a wall going from 1cm to about 0.2cm.
You can't blow it out with compressed air either. Cleaning it out lowered my temps about 15°C as it severely limits airflow. It's worth a try, Dell made some weird throttling on these machines so therefore it could be thermal shutdown.
From what I recall it does this at 85°C, bit with the restricted airflow it would keep throttling my CPU back because even at 0.96GHz it'll still stay in the 80's. I assume if it hits 85 again it'll come to a thermal shutdown.

However, to clean it you'll have to open her up completely and the motherboard has to come out if I remember correctly. I could check my pictures for you but I don't have them here at the moment.

Also, try without a battery & try resetting your BIOS settings to default, might work wonders.

~Aeny

 

I had a similar issue with an HP a while back. Completely blocked the fins on the HS. I use a real air compressor, not some crappy air in a can so I get some real pressure. But, you can damage the fan if you aren't careful. Best thing to do is take it apart.

 

Finally got around to tearing it down.

I braced myself for a giant wad of dust and found... nothing. The fan and the fins are almost spotless.

I'm open to further suggestion at this point.

 

I'm still going with temperature for now. Apparantly lots of these were lemons but once you got a good one they should be durable. I'd try to get a read on those temps (cpu/gpu) if it stays on long enough to get them. If it's not that then I have no idea.
Tried resetting the bios by pulling the cmos battery? (I wouldn't try reflashing yet to avoid it turning off in the middle of the process and ending up with a brick.)
Tried the diagnostics when pressing F12 at boot?
I hope your dads 1764 is up and running again soon.

~Aeny

 

Think its a dying power supply...But seems its been checked.