2300 series problems

It has been a bit over 2 years since the 2370 was introduced. Based on the messages on this board, I have decided that either most of the 2370's & 2371's are either dead or the survivors are plugging along day to day without problem.

 

Actually I've got a 2371 that's still working pretty well. I originally had problems with it and had it sent in under warranty and they replaced the LCD, but then it still had problems and they replaced the motherboard. Now I've begun to have problems again.

When I hook up the laptop to my 20" widescreen and do anything graphics-intensive, I've noticed the video card will hit as high as 119C according to HWmonitor. And on a couple occasions I believe it has completely overheated because the whole unit will freeze up w/ the screen pixelated. I found these forums though and I updated the bios to 1.09 and that seems to have helped a little bit, but I'm thinking I need to open 'er up and do the video card heatsink mod.

After hearing that there's decent drivers out now for Vista I decided to spend $13 and throw another 1gb memory in there and I'll upgrade back to Vista this weekend probably. (I had already had Vista on there about a year ago but it was so slow and wireless support was atrocious, so I switched back to XP)

Other than that though, this baby's still pluggin' away. It's been a great laptop.

 

After my original 2370 bit the dust, I replaced it under my home owner's insurance with the 2371 twin, an Everex ST5340T ... in fact, I just swapped over the hard drive and was up and running without a hiccup.

The first ST5340T lost the Wi-Fi module within a month and the unit was replaced. The second unit lasted about 9 months and the motherboard died the same death as most 2300 series. Everex replaced the motherboard under warranty, but the tech that did the work was horrible. S/he stripped screws and failed to properly reinstall the heat sink. I demanded and received another entire replacement unit.

I immediately pulled the factory heat sink and reinstalled it with much greater care than the factory, using quality materials (I've posted my install procedure in this forum).

The Nvidia GPU always runs hotter than the AMD CPU cores. I consider 80C to be the redline for the GPU. (I use the CPUID Hardware Monitor for temperature readings.) Admittedly, I always make sure there is a significant airgap between the fan intake and the surface below it, but I have yet to actually hit 80C since reinstalling the heat sink, even in a hot room (27C+ / 80F+) with little air movement.

(knock on wood) This last ST5340T has been in operation without problem for about a year now. It is literally used everyday, all day.

 

My 2370 is still working perfectly as it has from day one. Upgraded to 2 gigs of ram shortly after I got it. Did have to have the dvd drive replaced under warranty - out and back in one week. Running vista ultimate sp2 beta with the original bios version. I use rm clock utility performance on demand to achieve full 1.6 ghz.

 

I have had my 2300 since November of 2006. There was a problem with powering up about six months after purchase which was repaired under warranty (two tries) but it has functioned perfectly since. I've drug it around Europe and Asia quite a bit, too. Still running XP on 2 Gig of memory. I'm not savvy enough to do anything sophisticated with it so it's completely stock except for the memory upgrade.

I'm a little concerned about posting this -- tempting fate, you know.

 

My above gpu overheating problem is now completely solved thanks to securityconsulting's gpu heatsink modification procedure. No more hard locks or display problems and my gpu is consistantly staying below 60 C and hasn't yet gone above 66 C at all.

 

i still have mine. it's dead though. best i can tell the memory controller is bad on teh mobo. i had it up and running RHEL 5.3 for a couple of weeks and it just kept shutting itself down. any time i attempt to boot it up now it will post and give me a splash screen but after that it's just a technicolor snow storm. thinking about flashing the bios and seeing if that does anything for me. but i think i'm just SOL.