Guest FrantiC Report post Posted October 14, 2009 Yeah the absence of the PC beep kinda throws me. Isn't there enough flash memory on a mboard to hit bios even without any RAM installed? It's a Dell XPS There's like 20 bloody screws and lots of plastic to bend to get it all apart! Pisses me off The memory is read only (unless you are flashing it). The BIOS needs to be loaded into the RAM. Oh noes, Not a dell Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Simon* Report post Posted October 14, 2009 LOL yes a Dell OK so BIOS is on the RAM? No RAM no go?! Haha am gonna try RAM before I rip it apart. Off to Hastings in 10 mins, listen out for the V8 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest FrantiC Report post Posted October 14, 2009 LOL yes a Dell OK so BIOS is on the RAM? No RAM no go?! Haha am gonna try RAM before I rip it apart. Off to Hastings in 10 mins, listen out for the V8 Nah nah, RAM is on the chip on your board. But everything gets loaded into RAM for processing. So the BIOS gets loaded from it's chip into RAM. Drive past EIT lol I am at EIT at the mo and in 10mins I'll be out at lunch. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Simon* Report post Posted October 14, 2009 Nah nah, RAM is on the chip on your board. But everything gets loaded into RAM for processing. So the BIOS gets loaded from it's chip into RAM. Drive past EIT lol I am at EIT at the mo and in 10mins I'll be out at lunch. OK that makes more sense. I thought too that dodgy RAM shouldn't stop the HDD light from coming on, but a dead or problem mboard would Ah won't be goin' past EIT on the way sorry Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DRTDVL 0 Report post Posted October 14, 2009 laptop motherboards are common failures... it's due to the heat they are exposed to... Simple things to try... 1) complete power down, unplug from mains, remove battery, wait 30 seconds try again... 2) boot with no hdd - any errors (check power light on laptop - sometime the bios beeps are actually power light flashes on some laptop) 3) download a prog called memtest (http://www.memtest.org/) it will test your ram out for you 4) you should have a cmos battery otherwise you would loose all your bios settings pull that and power down system as in 1 5) is the system fans running? Very common for the fans to die and cook the system. Espically if you use it on a soft surface as it blocks the intake vents... (stupid designers) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DRTDVL 0 Report post Posted October 14, 2009 what model xps? you can download the service manual to tell you step by step how to pull it apart properly Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Simon* Report post Posted October 14, 2009 1. Done. No joy 2. ditto 3. Will have to try it in another machine I guess 4. OK - getting to it is a bitch! 5. Nope! I just checked and the bloody fan is not running. Scheiser!! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Simon* Report post Posted October 14, 2009 what model xps? you can download the service manual to tell you step by step how to pull it apart properly 1210 Good idea! Got time to find me a link? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DRTDVL 0 Report post Posted October 14, 2009 (edited) cough google search = http://www.google.co.nz/search?hl=en&r...ual&spell=1 cough http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/syst...en/SM/index.htm http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/syst...10/en/index.htm Edited October 14, 2009 by DRTDVL Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Simon* Report post Posted October 14, 2009 snap just found Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
martyyn 2 Report post Posted October 14, 2009 Whilst in your in there with everything apart, make sure you take the time to clean the fans. I had so much dust in there it looked like it was a spongy filter thing ! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DRTDVL 0 Report post Posted October 14, 2009 dry compressed air can from tricky dicky or jaycar is golden for that job... wouldn't hurt to get a can of circuit board cleaner and giving it a good spray also.. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bmw_guy 0 Report post Posted October 14, 2009 I can do it, I did one last week Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
antil33t 90 Report post Posted October 15, 2009 Try pulling a RAM stick (if it's got two) and just use one. in some cases a machine won't post with dead RAM. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
elmarco 56 Report post Posted October 15, 2009 (edited) I vote motherboard. Had a Toshiba notebook with similar symptoms last week - wouldn't do anything and appeared to be HDD. Turned out to be a cooked motherboard. As a side note, to reinstate your entire system (all data, O/S, passwords, settings etc) easily to another machine you can use ShadowProtect to take an image and then roll it back onto the new machine. We use it at work on mission critical servers and can literally rebuild a server on new hardware in minutes (basically as fast as the network or USB caddy can transfer data)... Think you can download a trial version for a month. Edit: Course, the HDD has to be operable for it to work.... And you can do it on secondary, primary, and USB connected disks. Edited October 15, 2009 by elmarco Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Simon* Report post Posted October 15, 2009 After pulling it all apart and giving it a good clean it seems to be the motherboard at fault. No life, no fan = bugger Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Simon* Report post Posted October 15, 2009 Anyone had any joy sourcing a motherboard from Dell outside warranty - or are they just a generic one? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DRTDVL 0 Report post Posted October 15, 2009 don't bother... maybe look for a broken model on trademe... But good luck... Typically if its out of warranty and it's a laptop it's time to strip it - sell the parts and buy a new one... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bmw_guy 0 Report post Posted October 15, 2009 Download a program called EASEUS data recovery wizard. It works 9 times out 10 to recover lost data. No software will recover all of the files and some maybe corrupt as a result of this. If you like i can send you the full version which allows you to recover all the files. The trial is sh*t as Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Simon* Report post Posted October 15, 2009 I'm pretty confident that all the data on my hard drive is fine. It's the motherboard or chip that's sh*t itself Will change thread title I guess Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
antil33t 90 Report post Posted October 15, 2009 It's pretty easy once you've got a usb enclosure just to grab everything off, since you can't just put that drive into a new laptop and be done with it. (unless it's 100% the same) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DRTDVL 0 Report post Posted October 15, 2009 yes you can... you just need to install the required drivers that are missing Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
antil33t 90 Report post Posted October 15, 2009 yes you can... you just need to install the required drivers that are missing last few times I had tried this, Completely different chip sets, it would blue screen on start up.. Yes It can be done, I just prefer to have a clean copy. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DRTDVL 0 Report post Posted October 15, 2009 last few times I had tried this, Completely different chip sets, it would blue screen on start up.. Yes It can be done, I just prefer to have a clean copy. That sounds really really weird as cpu/chipset shouldn't impact the software os installation. I've taken a few laptop drives and run them as primary drives on other machines, even swapped out sbs installs to other newer boxes... We have swapped hdd's from p3's to p4's to amd athlons to dual cores as it's got some lovely licensed software that they lost the serial key to and the company no longer exists... whooo fun times... Typically new machine = fresh install of everything but you can't always do that... I know win2k play that nicely nice with swapping boxes, but a repair install would typically fix that... meant you kept all your software as installed... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
antil33t 90 Report post Posted October 15, 2009 It's a bit easier to experiment in a corporate environment, oh how I would love to play. I had some problems going from an NF2 to NF4, would constantly bluescreen recovery installs ftw, though I try not to do that. But normally I'll do it the long tedious way when repairing someone's computer. Becomes especially annoying when they want "everything" backed up. and they don't tell you where everything is. Or you find they were storing important files in the directX folder. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
