Dell XPS M1530 Won't Turn On

Discussion in 'Dell' started by chinesewaterboy, Dec 11, 2009.

  1. chinesewaterboy

    chinesewaterboy

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    Hi, I'm new to this forum and found it while googling for a solution to my problem.

    So here's how it happened, on Sunday night I was watching a documentary (no intense action or loud sounds) and noticed around once every 60-90seconds, the screen would hang (the sound kept going but the picture froze) once I went from Full Screen to windowed mode, it would resolve the issue, then after another 60-90seconds the windowed screen would hang, and then changing to Full Screen would resolve it again. This kept going until I decided to turn off the computer. This was the only unusual behavior that I noticed prior the problem.

    After turning off the computer, I went to work, and later Monday afternoon, I came home to power it up, pressing the on button seemed to have turned on the computer (power light on, and I could hear the initialization of the hard drive) but then, everything went silent and the screen never came on, the hard drive also did not continue spinning although the power light stayed on. After holding down the power button until the system shut down, I tried again and the same thing happened. This continued for the next 5-6 tries, until I decided to try dropping the laptop after powering on (I had hoped it was a hard drive issue, and that the hard drive's free-fall sensor would fix the problem), this actually seems to have done something. I dropped the laptop after powering on from a height of about a foot (around 30cm) and this seems to have turned on the computer but it went to the Dell Media Direct screen, which then went to a blue screen saying:

    NMI: Parity Check/ Memory Parity Error
    The System has halted

    After trying to drop the laptop like this a few more times, it wouldn't even go to this screen anymore (now my guess was a loose physical connection somewhere). Well now it won't turn on at all and drop or no drop it only shows the power light on, but does not come on. I took it to an authorized Dell service shop that I found through Dell's Customer Support website (I'm currently overseas in Beijing, and 6 months over my warranty) and they told me what I was hoping most not to hear, that I had a dead/fried motherboard. They were very thrift and not willing to listen to me very much, so I didn't get all my questions answered. The problems I find with this diagnosis are that if my motherboard were fried:

    -Wouldn't it have died in front of me? How could it have been fried while it was turned off?

    -How could I still come to that Dell Media Direct loading screen if the motherboard were dead?

    -Might this be a hard drive issue? and if yes, would having a dead hard drive lead to not being able to turn on the computer at all?

    Thanks for any and all help, I'm down to using a 5 year old Inspiron laptop for now :(

    oh p.s. Dell told me the way to fix the problem is to change the motherboard, which is gonna cost around 450$ USD, so I'd rather not change it.
     
    chinesewaterboy, Dec 11, 2009
    #1
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