Laptop problem

by **JayCee** Tue 16 Feb 2010 - 14:41

Well it always happens, my laptop went out of warranty last September and its just packed in yesterday. Its a Dell XPS 1530 so it wasn't cheap. Got Dell to tell me the tests to do to diagnose the fact that I have a black screen and it does not fully boot up and.....the MB is kaput. They quoted £350 ish to fix it so I asked if I could opt for the extended warranty (bearing in mind how long it has been out of warranty) and they said yes £160 for 3 years . I was quite amazed that they went for it and promptly booked an engineer to come and sort it out. I don't think that is a bad deal if he sorts it out. He will be here in half an hour so I will let you know

by **JayCee** Tue 16 Feb 2010 - 15:50

OK update as promised. The guy came inside 24 hours which was great, replaced the MoBo and it still does not work. He is back tomorrow or Thursday to try again.

by **SithTracy** Tue 16 Feb 2010 - 16:11

That sucks... but glad they went for the option to extend the warranty... that comes as a surprise to me... Still, never cared for Dell machines. I have a work issues Dell laptop (long in the tooth) and had the RAM replaced recently for the second time. It is issued by my office... I just tell them I ran Memtest86+ and it failed, here they come with more RAM.

by **bubbles19** Tue 16 Feb 2010 - 18:50

John

Something to try as just a blank screen could be the LCD or backlight at fault. If you have a monitor around then try plugging that into the laptop and see what happens (unless of course you don't get any indication of power on the laptop :lol: )

You might have to try changing the output mode via the keyboard - bot sure what it is on a Dell but on IBM/Lenovo it is Fn + F7 to toggle between the lcd/video port.

Also if you do get power to the laptop then try it in a dark room - if you can just see an image on the screen it will be the backlight/lcd causing the problem

I could have provided you with the 3 yr warranty for £100 in used non-sequential notes delivered to a PO Box North of the border lol!

by **JayCee** Wed 17 Feb 2010 - 21:09

Alex, I tried another screen as one of the tests that I did myself and it diddn't work. Anyway update number 2. Guy came again and replaced the replacement MoBo and it still didn't work. After a bit of head scratching he removed the ram and tried the individual sticks, turned out one was faulty and Dell are sending me a replacement. Can't fault their response times, its just their diagnostics that suck.

by **SavageNFS** Fri 19 Feb 2010 - 5:31

Wish i saw this post sooner. The EXACT same thing happened to me three laptops ago. Faulty ram sticks can cause some weird stuff to happen. Glad the guy thought to at least check the ram, but I'm sure he went to square one after swapping out the board twice...