Motherboard replacement - Dell E1705

First time posting and I'm already up a creek.
I've got a Dell E1705 (9400) that's 3y/o and has this past weekend suffered some sort of failure. I believe the problem is on the motherboard itself as the computer will not turn on and from reading around my symptoms:

• push power button = green power + HD lights on for ~1sec then off.
• hold fn push power = green power, HD, num, caps, fn, lock all on for ~1sec then off.
• Remove HD = same results as above minus the HD light.

With that said, and assuming that the mobo is the problem, I am looking to replace the mobo with an identical one from ebay. My questions though are:
1) If I replace the motherboard, must I also replace the CPU or any other system components that may be bonded to it? Or can I just transfer the CPU etc. from old board to new?
2) Should I worry about frying the board again? Could it have happened because of a bad battery? (my battery stopped holding a charge ~1 year ago)
3) Looking in the order summary from dell, I couldn't find the part number listed for my particular mobo. After briefly disassembling the laptop and looking at the board from the top I couldn't find a part number on it. Where is the part number listed, if at all?

I would prefer not to buy a new laptop because I had spent the money on this one to customize it into a gaming machine (so it had the top CPU offered in 2006 as well as the best nVdia gfx card incorporated + others) making it a roughly $2400 machine at the time. However, if it's going to cost me $500 to fix I might as well get a cheap new laptop under warranty to last me the rest of my college and graduate years.

Thank you all in advance for your replies, I truly appreciate the help.

 

The cpu is completely removable. So if it works, you should be able to swap it and install it into your new board. Honestly I have never seen a dead cpu. They last pretty much forever, so I am going out on a limb and saying your cpu is working.
However your problems, may not be the motherboard. It sounds like a memory or gpu problem.
Flip your laptop over and remove the two memory cards from the bottom.
Try powering the laptop up with one memory card at a time. If the system fails to go on, try that memory card in the other slot.
Do this with the second memory card to, just try it one at a time.
If the system ever goes on normally, than one of your memory cards is dead. You can figure this out by the process of elimination.
If the memory is the problem, you can send it back to the manufacturers and they will replace it. Almost all memory has a lifetime warranty, so you should be covered.
The problem can also be from a dead video card. Their isnt really a way to test, if the system only comes on for 1 second.
So Try the memory thing first.
If the system still doesnt boot, try taking the whole thing apart and reinstalling everything.
A loose wire could cause the system not to boot.
But if it is the motherboard, or gpu, both are very expensive parts to replace

Good luck,
make sure to unplug the battery and ac adaptor before taking the system apart.

K-TRON

 

How much is the motherboard on eBay?

You can remove your CPU, memory, wifi, bluetooth, video card, or any other device that plugs into the motherboard, and put it on the new motherboard.

I doubt the battery caused the problem.

 

Ebay has new motherboards for about $170 and I feel confident in my ability to install it on my own. I just wasn't sure if I could remove the CPU with the fan or if I would have to break the seal on top and then get a new fan/heatsink. I'm going to try removing the RAM tonight as you suggested and hope that works otherwise I'll have to risk it with the motherboard and if that doesn't work, resell it and try buying a video card.

I had thought that the computer would boot but display an error if the RAM was messed up. I also am pretty sure it was some sort of heat issue because one of the system fans went into high gear the instant I turned on the laptop that morning. It booted up fine but then when I came back from brushing my teeth it had turned itself off and wouldn't turn on and gave the above symptoms. Maybe it would make more sense if it was a video card issue, though I thought it would boot but just not show a screen.

Thank you both very much for the help and I'll try those things tonight.

 

Sorry to bump this but just wanted to update.

I removed the RAM and tried all possible configurations with the two sticks but was unable to turn on the machine.
Would the laptop still boot with a dead video card but just show no screen? It's a dedicated nVidia card and there is no onboard video on the mobo.
So with the ram elliminated it seems to come down to just mobo or gfx card.
But just again, would the laptop, as described above, boot but show no screen if the gfx card was the problem?

 

If the graphics card is dead, the system will try to power up, and shut off almost immediately.
If the motherboard were dead the system would not even turn on.

So I am pretty sure that the gpu is not working properly.

Try reseating the graphics card and see if that changes anything.

K-TRON

 

Sorry to bring this back from the dead but just wanted to update in case other people have the same problem.

I have removed the graphics card and tried turning on the system. When I power up the computer it stays on and I have to hold the power button down to turn it back off. I'm guessing that this means that the problem is the graphics card (geforce 7900 GS part DG008).
I've been looking online for where to buy these cards and it seems like the best place is ebay (correct me if you know a better), though I admit I'm scared of buying a used card since mine just failed on me. Talking with Dell revealed that they don't carry the cards anymore. Oon a funny side note, the man I spoke with suggested a few other cards I could buy and fit in my e1705 laptop... he guaranteed me that they would fit and work. I assured him that they would not since they were designed for desktop computers.

So I just have two questions left:
What are the chances that a new graphics card will immediately overheat like my last one due to some sort of processing issue?
Is it worth it to spend the ~$350 on a new/used card (either DG008 or UF814 with two heatsinks)?

Thank you all,
Ben

 

The bump is not that old, this thread is only 2 weeks old? Old threads are considered over 3months i suppose.


And yeah it seems like your GPU is dead.

There should be more cards than the 7900GS that fits the e1705 AFAIK, so are you sure he suggested desktop cards and not notebook cards used for the e1705!? There should be 7900M GTX i think for it for example? Or any other card. I am not sure it is 7900M GTX, so don't take my word on it. But there should definately be more options than one card.


And don't spend $350 on a used card, you should be able to find one for around $150 i suppose? And the chances for it to overheat like your old one did (are you sure your old one did that?) is the same as before i guess, if it wasn't due to much dust and such inside, that could make the system overheat. So clean it once in a while so it will keep maximum cooling. And reapply new paste so you have fresh paste on it.

 

the go 7900GS, 7900GTX, 7950GTX and Quadro Fx2500m all fit in your laptop.

Here is an amazing guide to show you how to upgrade/swap your graphics card.
It even shows you how to cram in a dual heatpipe model.

http://eduncan911.com/archive/2007/12/11/why-the-inspiron-is-a-king.aspx

When you install a new graphics card, try to get a dual heatpipe one. Utilizing both fans does greatly reduce cpu temperatures.
The E1705 also supports fan control.
Download i8kfangui, and you can control the fan speed for each individual fan in your laptop.

I know it works on the E1705 because I installed i8kfangui on a friends laptop a few months ago.

Also just to reiterate, the graphic card is dead on your system.

K-TRON

 

Thank you Michel.K and K-TRON. I guess I'll just wait and try to find a good price for a used card, though they seem pretty hard to come by. @ K-TRON thanks for the link, I had actually read through that a few times before I touched the card and it is a good site. That's actually what made me think I should hold out for the two pipe model card rather than an exact replacement. The 7900/7950GTX both seem to be more expensive, I haven't looked into the Quadro Fx2500m.

The only reason I'm concerned about it immediately overheating again (i'm assuming that's what happened the first time) was that the fans kicked in to top speed practically as soon as I turned it on the morning it stopped working. Yes, there was certainly some amount of dust in the sink foils but the fact that the fans turned on so hard and so fast seemed strange.

It's too bad the motherboard doesn't have any onboard graphics as a backup. It's getting kind of frustrating having to borrow laptops from everyone on campus and keeping all my files on a flash drive.

Well, I guess that's the end of the story then. Thank you again everyone who replied.

 

Hi,

I'm late to the party on this one, but I have been experiencing the exact same symptoms as described here, with one important difference.

Initial symptom was an inability to boot the laptop (Dell Inspirion E1705). Upon power-on, a single 'flash' of the HD accessing light was noted, then complete inactivity (or at least, so it appeared, though I may not have been patient enough, see further explanation below).

After diagnostics, the HD was replaced, but this did NOT cure the problem (the RAM swap-out described earlier in this thread was also performed - RAM appears okay).

It was observed that if the computer was booted up 'cold', it would indeed complete the boot process. However, it would begin to slow down within minutes, ultimately locking up completely (or quite nearly so) such that a forced shutdown (power button) was the only way to get a chance to try anything else. Attempting to re-start the computer once warm revealed a VERY slow progress - taking as much as 9 hours for Windows XP to get 'running'.

I wondered if the problem was thermally related, so I purchased new fans and heat sink compound, disassembled the unit, cleaned off & replaced the heat sink compound and put the new fans in. No improvement (but hey, at least I didn't make it worse!)

The display (other than one bad vertical line) appears to me to be working fine, so I do not think I have the graphics card issue as described in a couple of the posts. In addition, three different technicians have looked at the laptop. The first claimed that all diagnostics came out fine (and after she replaced the hard drive, there really wasn't anything different about the unit's misbehavior.) The second (Best Buy's "Geek Squad") indicated that they too could find nothing wrong diagnostically.

The third outfit to look at this thing (a local shop that specializes in laptops, or so they claim) has indicated that the problem is with a timing crystal on the motherboard.

So, I'm in the same position as the original poster. I think I need to replace the motherboard, and have found a couple on e-bay. I'm confident in my ability to do the swap (the technician at the last shop complimented me on my work, indicating he almost couldn't tell I'd been in there...)

Does anyone here see anything in my description here that indicates I've missed something? I need/want this laptop back, don't want to spend a bunch on a new one, but I really do need to have the next repair I undertake be "the one" that fixes it.

Comments & suggestions welcome.

Brad

 

Since you narrowed out memory and harddrive,
there are a few problems it could be:
1) dying motherboard
2) connection issue

There are no timing crystals on the motherboard. Their is a BIOS. What you can do is reset it.
There should be a BIOS battery inside your laptop. You want to remove all power from your system (ac power, bios battery, and system battery) Once all are removed, let the system discharge overnight.
In the morning the system will be completely discharged. When you power it up the system BIOS will reset back to factory defaults.
You can try that and see how far it gets you.

If that doesnt fix the problem, check for connection issues in your system, like a loose keyboard, loose touchpad, etc. A loose wire, even if its an extra wireless antenna can short your motherboard. Make sure everything is connected properly and repower the system

Good luck,
There is a ton of good information in the posts above
I take it that your screen comes on and looks fine, so you can rule out any graphics problems

K-TRON

 

Are you under dell's warranty?
If what K-TRON says does not work then I would send it to Dell if you are under warranty. If you're out of warranty (like I was when my e1705 crashed) then it is actually possible to reinstate your warranty for relatively the same price as buying a replacement motherboard!

Just go online or call Dell and ask to have your warranty reinstated. You should then be able to take the laptop to a licensed Dell service center (for me it was my College's IT dept.) or else send it back to them and they'll diagnose it and probably send you a brand new laptop. They sent me a studio 17 which is better than my old laptop in all aspects BUT the video card unfortunately.

I hope this works out for you as well as it did for me,
Ben

 

brbrus & K-TRON:

Thanks for the quick responses. Here's one more bit of info I did not know I still had.

One of the technicians that worked on my laptop indicated she got ONE error code, but wasn't sure what it meant (incidentally, this is a different person than the one that told me about the timing crystal).

She recorded the following on a post-it note:

"Error Code: 4C00:041C Channel 2 is not operating correctly - No periodic ticks were generated. The realtime clock is probably not functioning."

Now, some of that may be word-for-word what she saw, and some of it might be an attempt at explanation.

Does this change any of what you've said? BTW, I am not warrantied on the computer, and I doubt that they'd extend a warranty on a unit that has been opened & has a known problem...

Thanks again for any and all suggestions!

Brad

 

bnorwood,
While I can't comment on the specific error message, if it is actually saying that something is wrong on the mobo then you will most likely have to replace the whole board. (have you searched for the error code on google? I found this: http://www.techsupportforum.com/har...cpu/194263-xp-won-t-load-error-4c00-041c.html )

Alternatively, as I mentioned before it actually IS possible to reinstate your warranty (for the small fee of $50 plus regular warranty charges). My computer was dead, totally dead in the sense that it wouldn't even make it through the power cycle, and my warranty had expired 2 years ago but I was able to get it reinstated and extended for 2 years for the same price as a new replacement motherboard or graphics card.

You should definitely at least consider reinstating your warranty and then letting Dell handle it. (from my personal experience)

 

hi,

sorry for late contribution, but i recently tried to replace my 7800 go with a 7950gtx in my Inspiron 9400 / E1705.

reason for replacement: 7800 go seems to be faulty, i.e. creates display faults, lines, etc. and eventually crashes the machine...

after replacement i get exactly the same symptoms as brbrus describes:

"push power button = green power + HD lights on for ~1sec then off."

i thought i might have damaged my motherboard so put my old video card back in. all was exactly as before the swap, i.e. 'display faults, lines, etc. and eventually crashes the machine...'

so i assumed that it might be a power issue. tried also a PA-13 (130W), with no success. maybe a PA-15 (150Watt) might help, but it could be that the power just doesn't get to the video card.

i followed this instruction (in german!) to replace the 7800 go with the 7900gtx in the Insprion 9400 / E1705: http://www.notebookcheck.com/Tausch-der-No...400.4304.0.html

so a 7900gtx should work. i assume that a 7950gtx should also work...
i have to mention that i bought the 7950gtx card second hand at ebay. so it might be faulty.

... but i think the solution lies somewhere else.

all the best
TIGI