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Dell xps m2010 ati graphics card bootup, freeze problems

3K views 3 replies 2 participants last post by  emosun 
#1 ·
:banghead: I have a dell Xps m2010 laptop which had the problem of laptop screen freezing, ultra slow bootup .

it was repaired by dell in may 2011 where they replaced motherboard, hdd, ram and ultimately replacement of graphics card solved the problem.

it suddenly stopped booting up in feb 2012, i can see the power lights come up, hdd light coming up and thats it.


After googling the problem of dell mxs m2010 not booting up i came to the know that actual cause of the problem is graphics card.

Apparently there is not proper contact between heat sink and the graphics card or/ and the thermal paste has spread on the dye thus causing short cercuit and stopping laptop from booting up.


As per the solution shown- i disconnected the heat sink to find that actually the thermal paste was on the sorrounding cercuit board dye. i cleaned it up and it started just to hang/ freeze later, it will take some 5-6 attempts after it to turn on again where it will again freeze.

I found out that there are some 12-13 chips on the grahics card while have corrosponding blue thermal paste kind of stuff on the heatsink solution, these blue thermal paste actually get in contact after lots of tightening of the screws on the heatsink but still some where not in proper contact. I assumed these certain chips are not getting properly cooled leading to laptop freeze up/ failed boot


I put some thermal paste on the blue ic coller/ thermal paste and hurrey it started to boot up reguraly, only again it will freeze after 20 or so mins.

the thermal paste is the best quality i could find, it looks like an injection and i took proper care so as it does not spread on nieghbouring circuit board.

please help me out as i find dell online tech support crappy and the in home warranty is expired, this is my work laptop and i run solid works on it hence its thermal stability is critical for me .:grin:

the laptop has 4gb ram and recently replaced hdd, hdd does not make any funny noise if that helps!
 
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#2 ·
I think you explained it best yourself.

If the laptop wasn't designed correctly from the beginning then it's going to have this native problem. Most likely whatever gpu is currently in it got fried again from the thermal paste they used and thus the machine boots 20% of the time.

You can try replacing the gpu again , or .... (I would recommend this more so) buy a laptop that doesn't have any problems natively from the factory.

Your dell lasted the warranty period which is how long dell designed it to last.
 
#3 ·
thanks for the reply but i dont think that the heating system is poor design as i have two of these laptops. first one was used for four years without a single problem and thus looking at its reliablity and excellent cooling ( laptop used to be kept on for days at strech and never hanged or freezed) i bought this one as well.

Unfortunately first one is with my cousin in England as of now hence can not try cooling solutions etc from it, but i know that this being the same system can perform excellently.

also regarding laptop turning on 20% t ime cause graphics system is fried i am confused. if it fried then the sensor should not let it boot!

i installed a gpu monitor software and it does show radical increase in temp bar, it does not show temp just a bar, immidiately i see laptop fans turning on but by then system has hanged already!! and i force restart the system again it hangs after 5 mins or so sometimes even sooner.

instead of thermal compunt can i use paper etc to bridge the gap between ic and cooling solution? or any other solution to solve this problem?
:banghead:
 
#4 ·
I would say your best bet is to replace the gpu and use actual gpu thermal paste and not cpu thermal paste.

Also , a component can be fried and still function somewhat. The fact the card only works 20% of the time really shows it's mostly a hardware issue.
 
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