My DV9000 is finally going out.

Remember that 9000 that i got for $300 because it shut down coz its fan had unplugged? Yup, the one with the 8400GS that seemed to fail for everyone except me.

Well, one year and seven months down and since yesterday it's getting obvious that she's dying. But let's look first at what it's gone through.

• I fried the audio input a long long time ago due to a nasty ground loop. Over an year ago IIRC. It also took out one of its internal mics but the left one still works fine.
• Dropped into snow 10 months ago. No damage.
• Ethernet controller died this summer. "This device cannot start".
• Numlock started acting like on models without a dedicated numpad - ie it pulls a numpad in the middle of the keyboard. The dedicated numpad still works but i have to turn numlock off after i use it due to this issue.
• And finally, now it powers on to a HP screen with several blue strips on it, then when it gets into Windows the nVidia driver resets twice before working normally.
• Edit: More. It now shows my core clock as 0 MHz and doesn't allow me to apply overclocked settings anymore. The memory clock is stuck at 200MHz (instead of 400+) and the shader clock has disappeared altogether.

However, with the amount of use she's seen i'm surprised it's been this long. So what's next? Well, i have exams now but once i'm done... i'm taking 'er apart, reflowing the motherboard, replacing the thermal pads with aluminum shims, and hopefully this will also fix the ethernet. If i have time i'm going to be checking the audio board for damage as well, if it isn't the codec chip which fried it's probably fixable.

Failing that, i found a good motherboard for $100, and it has the 8600M on it!

 

Wow you did well for $300.
I have a question, I have a Dv9774ca, identicle.

I was reading you rold thread where you tore in to the fan and was looking at your photos.

On mine my fan makes a burring noise like somethings rubbing on the blades. Its sort of like when you used to clip cardboard to bicycle spokes to make it sound like a motorbike as a kid!

The reason I suspect something is just slightly rubbing is because if I flip the laptop upside down when its off, I can stick a toothpick in against the fan blades and push the plastic blades maybe a millimeter or so down the shaft of the fan motor. When I reboot the noise is gone, like it no longer touches whatever it is rubbing against. But after an hour the noise comes back!

I always said its like one of those HP part # stickers or a bit of that thin plastic shielding stuff they have everywhere is touching. I've never seen photos of the inside before.

Thanks very much for any insight, since you've been inside yours. I've never taken mine apart.

Anyway, is there anything you can think of in or near the fan blades when you had yours apart? It started overnight. It was always on my coffee table, never moved and no chance of sucking anything up in there. I have blown and vacuumed and everything and no change. Thanks.

 

It could simply be the fan going bad. There's nothing the blades could hit really.

I haven't done my dv9000 yet but i'm currently working on an Acer Aspire 5220 - worst thermal design i've ever seen. It had been reflowed by someone else just 1.5 months ago and it failed again. Not entirely, but it would work for some minutes then crash to a garbled screen. Reflowed with flux and it works, but there's a lot more to it than just a reflow.

Two reasons why it failed so early: Whoever fixed this did a bad job at reinstalling the heatsink, and the heatsink was junk to begin with. Seriously, this makes HP's cooling solutions look awesome in comparison. The heatsink has screws only for the CPU and fan - the GPU sits in the middle of the heatpipe and relies solely on pressure!

Installing an aluminum shim for the GPU/chipset (it's a geforce 7000 so it's integrated) dropped the GPU temps from 73C idle to 70C maximum load. Do i need to say more? Unfortunately i ran out of thermal paste after this feat and i still need to do the CPU so it'll have to wait until tomorrow.

 

Job started. Will post pictures soon.

Edit: There she is, naked once again.


And here's what we get for cooling. A decent pre-applied thermal compound for the CPU, a junk pad for the chipset... and... a piece of aluminum foil for the 8400M. The definition of fail has just been updated.


And here's the chips themselves. There's spare pads for RAM chips on both sides of the board - with BGA stencils one could upgrade this thing to 512MB video memory.


What's cooking? Smells like nVidia...

Edit 2: Currently testing with the minimum amount of stuff hooked up. The reflow... had a mixed success. The GPU still started up with a broken pixelated screen (at this point i freaked out), but shutting it down and restarting it with pressure applied to the GPU area (ie like i used to start it) resulted in a clean screen, no more blue lines on it.

The 8400M is now recognized fine in the driver, overclocked settings get applied, games work and the driver no longer restarts at bootup. To sum it up, it runs like it used to. Complete with the garbled screen upon cold start... However, the wired network card is still dead and the keyboard still thinks it doesn't have a dedicated numpad. Gonna deal with the chipset cooling and see what's up with the audio input.

 

Wow. Well since I asked the question about the fan above... I have since had my DV9774 all in pieces due to what looks like the failed nvidia GPU a few weeks ago. Had blank screen and if it did display it just had like pixalated lines and the image froze. I have the dual-core Centrino in it. So its just about identicle to yours. I also found the cheap foil heatsink!
I did the blow torch trick on the nvidia GPU, followed several peoples directions and on You Tube.....did not work. Maybe didn't fix it or I cooked it

Anyhow, just ordered a Manufacturer Reconditioned motherboard off ebay. They have great Feedback for loads of motherboards. Hope to just get it back up as a spare.

BTW, inside my fan assembly is identicle. I have that black sticker thing I was asking you about. Its intact and not actually one of those part # stickers, its more like something glued on and its tiny. Did not find anything rubbing the fan and spinning it by hand makes no noise.

 

The black sticker probably covers something so it doesn't short out, just like the bigger ones do. Personally, i lost that small sticker on mine and nothing bad happened.

Anyway, i changed out the Realtek network chip and it still behaves the same. Checked the sound chip too, nothing burned around it, it means the ADC itself is toast. Will get a new motherboard eventually. Edit: Just put everything back together. You know what's fun? You never realize how many pieces it goes apart into till you've done it yourself.

And, good news... MY NUMPAD IS BACK!!!

 

Glad to see some people have this laptop! I highly recommend you also do a mod to keep your hard drive temperature down. I created a custom wire to boot via the primary slot from my secondary slot. Simple mod but effective and use copper shims to replace the crap job HP did cooling this behemoth.

I will post a more detailed post on my site in some time:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/7154305-post70.html

My current temps:




JAmerican

 

In my earlier comment I said my nvidia died and I ordered a used motherboard for it. I finally just replaced my whole motherboard with a Manufacture Reconditioned one off ebay for $100, who knows what, but it works like new again!
See how long it lasts.

You're right about the number of pieces.

 

You are going to run into the same problems if you don't lower the operating temperatures. What does your system run at? Use this to get a reading of system temperatures... CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting

JA

 

I had Speedfan monitoring it the other day. Dual core centrino idle at about 40C. The GPU idle about 59-60 with screen on. Just online websites, email the CPU goes to maybe 50 and the GPU hit 67. I'm not a gamer. I have not done much else on it so far, its turned off. I'm on my HDX-18 right now.
I did get a copper shim with it for the GPU and scraped that tin foil off the heatsink. Latest BIOS.

 

JA,

What gadget is this you're using to monitor the temps?

 

It is called HWMonitor and HWMonitorMeter Gadget. You can find them here...

SFKilla - HWMonitor Meter

Here are direct links to the files you need:

http://www.sfkilla.com/gads/HwMonTray.zip
http://www.sfkilla.com/gads/HWMonitorMeter.zip
CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting

You need to customize the gadget to look the way you want it to. It is tedious but allows for ultimate control over the look of the gadget which I like.

Regards,

JA

 

Thanks for the info.

 

If you're not a gamer use the nVidia Performance utility to permanently underclock the GPU. This will help temperatures a lot. Here's what works great on mine: 301MHz core, 200MHz memory, 1200MHz shader (the shaders are actually overclocked from the default 800MHz, makes Aero much smoother). These clocks are also the minimum which will still allow you to switch to 3D capable clocks without restarting (the nVidia Performance utility is super buggy and won't let you go back up if you've set the clocks too low).

GPU is at 50C atm and this laptop has been left on 24/7 for at least the past two months.