Inspiron 5150 issues?

i think my brother has that kind
and he had problems with it too
something about the motherboard...
i cant remember everything he said was wrong with it, but he had issues
hmm...hope that doesnt happen with my new dell

Sad.

I feel your pain.... mine is starting to act up.... every now and then at start up it'll lock during the POST. and I bought mine in Late 03

Hey Dell!

Hey Dell,

I know you monitor these forums. Why not give the nice young lady a Christmas present and offer to fix her lappy for free. It sounds like a defective part or bad engineering on your part. Maybe she isn't legally entitled to it, but think of all the good will you would generate in an important user group!
In return she should make her boyfriend eat his "doo doo dell" words.

Thank God I got the 4 yr Complete Coverage [ Gold Package ] with my e510.. Well, I usually never get extended warranty but with 30% off + $150 MIR, it would've been sinful not to !! ... and yes I really like this smiley too so..

If there is a component failure thats one thing but to describe this as a design flaw is another. The number of complaints would be on a large scale and it would be very noticable in a forum like this. Having even a handful of complaints is within reason based on the worldwide sales and worldwide membership of these forums so it really cant be concluded that there is a design flaw. and each complaint could be resolved with repair. That would even lean the arguement more in favor of a component failure and not a design flaw. The design is engineered to be pretty much foolproof, even when a machine is pushing new components to the edge of the highest performance. Wish you the best.

I agree with Aurora. I know 2 people who own notebooks based around the 5150 form factor which is the 5100 and the 1100. Although the notebooks exhibit the heat issue they still work as intended too. This is mainly the reason Why I stress people consider longer warranty options because notebooks require more care that users cannot always control unless the notebook has never been touched. To those who buy notebooks please look into at LEAST 2 years on warranty to save yourself headaches.

And as for SEGERmonster
The issues:

1. Not a big deal, but the fan ran all the time, and was quite noisy.
A. All pentium4 based notebooks suffer from this even today its naturallya design flaw that could only be cured if your notebook had 30 minutes of battery life because it had more than 4 fans actively trying to cool your notebook.
2. Laptop would get HOT, even when on a solid surface.
A. Related to the same issue regaridng Pentium4 and small form factor notebooks. No company was free of this issue thus the eager transition to low power PentiumM cpu's
3. ...which was because my CPU was overheating, causing my laptop to shut itself off on a few occasions (before it went to Laptop Heaven)
A. Again relate to Pentium4 as you suggest.
4. ...probably caused by the location and size of fan (intake on bottom!)
A. Correct but this is a common design flaw all notebook manfucaturers couldnt really get around on.
5. The rubber feet fell off within a month or two of ownership. (Apparently for some this causes other major issues, such as pressure points on the palm rest that would cause the laptop to shut off, but when two fell off, I took all of them off.)
A. Rubber feet falling off is stress related. Commonly ive noticed people who use the notebook on there laps or move the notebook frequently while on a hard or tactile surface resulted in the feet coming off. Dell still usesrubber feet as opposed to Plastic legs due to durability and the inexpensive method of replacing the feet. FOr furture reference rubber feet coming off is covered under warranty and not under cosmetic stress so should this happen again on another notebook ensure you call or email your computer company to ask for replacements.
6. My CD-rom drive broke several months ago; the little plastic pieces that hold the CD in snapped off, and eventually the disc in the middle fell off. My boyfriend managed to fix it - probably with superglue...
A. Im amazed how this could even happen. I suppose stress from constant use is the culprit here since dell buys these drives by the lot from many manufacturer such as SONY, Samsung, LG, LiteOn and others its difficult to say whos to blame here again if this was during your warranty period it will no doubt have been replaced at Dells expense.
7. AC Adapter port connection to motherboard is broken; This conclusion came from researching on the Dell Forums. The result is no charge to the laptop and laptop will not turn on once battery is expended, which is the ultimate demise of my laptop...
A. Suprisingly due to how common this notebook is repairing this is quite cheap. The port is embedded into the main chasis so you may not even need the otherboard replaced. Many companies buy this type of notebook to scrap if for individuals such as yourself needing such parts. Is a good resource tool for find such parts. www.bay-wolf.com to compare the parts you need and then research it using also you can try Froogle.com to limit down you seraching down to just part purchasing. Since Dell has manuals online on how to deconstruct your notebook it shoudl be rather easy if you follow the steps correctly. At this point what other option do you have other than to sell it as scrap parts?

Yeah I'm outta warranty, I did however do some upgrades to extend the life of it just a little (i.e. added more memory, new 100gig 7.2k hard drive, and a dvd writer) but outside of that, I may turn this thing into a server/firewall for my network.....

Darlin', that is YOUNG (maybe not for this forum, but everywhere else),
If ever I am in a position to be an anonymous benefactor, you can expect a brand new lappy to be delivered without even so much as a charge for S&H

Well I bought a 5150 in August of 2004 as I was going ot university and needed a laptop. So ever since then the thing has broken down so many times that they ended up sending me a inspiron 6000, which I am on right now. I did however have to argue and yell at them telling them that the 5150 was a faulty design and that they knew they were selling a dud, there is a class action lawsuit going on btw over dell selling faulty computers. The huge problem on the 5150 is simply the motherboard, it will only last for tops 18 months then it will break down on u. The best thing I ever did was get the extended warranty of 3 years complete care, which was extended for another year because of everything that happened to me with the computer.

So what I think you should do is call dell up and tell them that you want a replacement, if you complain enough, they will eventually just give you one to shut you up, thats what i find anyways.

my 2 cents.....

Without sounding mean, what did you expect? The Pentium 4 was NOT NOT NOT designed to be in a notebook computer. So you run out and buy a laptop top with the P4 and it overheats. Big surprise. I sat next to a guy with a HP P4 lappy and the fans were so annoying.

My 1100 has been a great computer. I'll be sad to give it to the new purchaser tomorrow. The computer has always ran pretty cool with the fans on intermittently. I haven't had a problem with the power adapter either and the chassis is shared.

The rubber feet is not a big deal. Mine fell off from me carrying my computer in my backpack with my books. I never fixed it but I did plan to put a strip of non-slide tape used for chairs on the bottom of it.

I'm delivering the 1100 to the new owner tomorrow. It will be a sad day.

Actually the 5150/60 and 1150's are well known for the 2 faults of the Hex Schmidt trigger or U56 Getting bad solder joints some claim from the plastic boss rubbing from Bay C cover, and the DC jacks being a problem.Weve also seen a ton of these with poor solder joints in the supply line but they are still way better off then the HP ZX,ZV, and ZD series notebooks.. An Attorneys office contacted us regarding a class action suit for the Hp's and asked if we'd be interested in maybe being a consultant for them. Dont buy one of these 3 models or the Presario R-3000 either.. Trust me.

I am writing this from my second 5150. The first one had the mother board replaced after 2 months. Then the second one died 2 months after the warrantee expired (and they did not even call to see if I wanted to extend it, of course, since they know the 5150 is a lemon). I paid 750 to out of warrantee support to get a new one. I grabbed the hd out of the old one, but instead of sending me a 3.4gh ht machine, they sent me a 2.6 ghz inspiron 6000 which cannot seem to read the hd from the 5150 (which I did by screwing the 5150 hd into the 6000 hd cradle). Anyway, to use that drive, I bought another 5150 online. It worked for 3 months and the screen just went dead on me for the second time. Dell support - which takes 3 hours to reach on a good day, is the worst in any industry. They are even worse than the cable company. Worse than any company I have ever worked with on anything. I will never buy another Dell as long as I live, and I would not take a Dell machine if you paid me to take it - it costs too much time when it breaks and the hassles of dealing with their "support" people are incredible. The only things they are trained to say is "I am very sorry you are having troublel" and "I am sure I will be able to resolve this". And then they start with the usual "it sounds like a virus problem" crap that shows they think a dead screen can be caused by a virus.

While the i5150 has sure had its fare share of problems, I have to say that I agree with Dell-Machina and Aurora on this one in saying that they are not all lemons. I am typing this from a i5150 that I have owned for almost 2 years now. This laptop has been used as my primary computer since the day I bought it and it still works great. This is despite the fact that I have hardely ever even turned the thing off in the two years I have owned it. Trust me, it gets used.

As to the poster that started this thread, I think 90% of your problems could have been easily fixed by simply replacing the feet. This laptop being P4 based is obviously not going to run that cool. I believe that the feet were replaced with taller ones going from the 5100 to the 5150 model to make room for additional airflow to the fan. By taking your feet off you probably choked off much of this airflow, hence your overheating problems.

While there have probably been more issues with this model than most other model lines under dell, they are certainly not garbage. Where else can you get a P4 based laptop with 3+ hours of battery life?

510M AC power fault

I too have now found to my cost the poor quality of Dell....

My 510M laptop kept going off ac power and first dell diagnosed a faulty adaptor. When this did not solve the problem they collected it to look at it. I have today been informed that the ac port has come loose from the motherboard and that I will have to pay £325 plus vat to replace the motherboard to 'solve the problem'. This is despite still being in warranty!!!!!!

Apparently I have caused the damage I HAVE NOT

Having researched this accross the net it seems that the 5150 model is well known for this problem and that the fault lies with the poor design and soldering of the port to the motherboard. I kinda suspect that my model may have a similar faulty design but simply has not come to the fore yet? I feel very conned that Dell are trying to wriggle out of the warranty and don't know what to do????

I too have now found to my cost the poor quality of Dell....

My 510M laptop kept going off ac power and first dell diagnosed a faulty adaptor. When this did not solve the problem they collected it to look at it. I have today been informed that the ac port has come loose from the motherboard and that I will have to pay £325 plus vat to replace the motherboard to 'solve the problem'. This is despite still being in warranty!!!!!!

Apparently I have caused the damage I HAVE NOT

Having researched this accross the net it seems that the 5150 model is well known for this problem and that the fault lies with the poor design and soldering of the port to the motherboard. I kinda suspect that my model may have a similar faulty design but simply has not come to the fore yet? I feel very conned that Dell are trying to wriggle out of the warranty and don't know what to do????

ps I had already had a defective hard drive and keyboard replaced and yes it also got ridiculously hot.......