MY 7700 is DEAD - Page 2

Who manufactures the 71-D90T0-D05 motherboard?

Hi Omagian,

Who manufactures the 71-D90T0-D05 motherboard?

I'm in a similar situation as you - I need to fix my machine myself. My support ended back in May 2006 (or thereabouts) for my 7700m and the machine died in July 2006 - I've been too pissed to even look at until last week. Alienware basically wants this in order to help me any further:
1. $129 for extend my service plan so i can talk to their "support" people.
2. Me to pay for shipping to Alienware
3. Me to pay for labor + parts to fix this
4. Me to pay for return shipping

I refuse to pay $129 US for their support technician to say "are you REALLY REALLY REALLY sure you have it plugged in?" I called in once before due to the machine shutting itself off during a game (it was heating issues - the vid card fan won't turn on automatically) and the tech said "well, just don't play that game" - unbelievable. I never called them again - they are useless. You'd think they would be able to diagnose a heating issue after all the posts on this message board. I confirmed the issue myself after a friend on here pointed me at the "Getthermal" download which showed the vid card getting up to 125 Celcius. My left wrist suddenly catching fire was also a good indicator.

Anyway, I figured this current issue was fairly serious - likely the mobo but I took it to the local laptop shop kuz they said "OHHH ye$$$ we can certainly diagno$e and fix this". They said it was the power supply...so i figured what the heck - a second power supply would be handy even if this isn't the problem and fought with Alienware for 2 weeks to send me a @#$#ing power supply. When I finally ordered it and they took my $$$ and I waited a week & then called in to find out why my order hadn't changed status they informed me: "these are on back order" and didn't know when they would have stock. When it was available at the end of the week, they did Fedex it to me though which was nice. The other agrivating thing about it is they had to get me in a conference call with Visa to validate my shipping address for a $100 dollar part. I've spent more on concert tickets online without issue. Their purchasing system is a joke.

Anyway, the real point of my post: Who manufactures the 71-D90T0-D05 motherboard?

I can't seem to find it in any posts. A friend of mine thinks it is Intel but on some parts site it shows it as being Sager...however, it's really a rebranded Clevo machine so with all this conflicting information I'm trying to track down who exactly makes the motherboard so I can try and find it locally.

Thanks,

Clay

For me, =

I got busy with a screw driver late lastnight and took it apart - my former 1.5yr old Alienware 7700 paperweight is just a pile of pieces now...mUWAHahahahah

I found these markings on the CPU side over by the PCMCIA slot

HannStar J MV-4
94V-0 0503

Thanks Omagian!

BTW, did the Disk manager help you at all?

Omagian,

I know the board you linked to supports the newer video cards, but will it also support the 6800Go video card? I have convinced my wife that I will probably need a new mobo, but it will be a hard sell on the new video card.

-tBR

Omagian, did you order the AC adapter (power supply brick) with it? is it the 200w (or 220w or whatever)?

Also, you didn't happen to do a write-up on the tear down procedure for the laptop did you? LOL. Or did you find a write-up on the web somewhere? Or did you wing it? LOL.

LOL, I had to convince mine too. I'll be ordering it in about 2 weeks. If this doesn't fix it then I'll be ordering the 7900 512mb vid card since I've narrowed my problem down to either the mobo (most likely) or the vid card (next most likely). If I need the vid card I'll be having to jump through hoops to impress the wife enough to justify dropping another $500+ haha. But as long as my lappy gets fixed with no cash going to AW then I'll be happy, LOL, I don't need them getting excited by the all the pr0n they'll find on my system. LOL.

I would very interested in seeing what you did during your mobo replacement.

yes, please post the pics.

good job! nice pics, man. I see I was right about having to take out to mobo to change cpu fan. what a pain in the ass.

thanks, lol. I have saved all the pics. Much appreciated.

I know it's going to take alot of time but this laptop great with lots of power so the time it takes to do the job will be well worth it if it works.

Do you have the 6800 Ultra, I have the 6800 Go and the fan assembly does not look like yours.

Also, I can see how to remove the covers to expose the LCD hinges, but how did you remove the hinges/posts from the base?

And I guess I'll need to look on the support site to see how to remove teh CD/DVD drives.

Yea, lol, you might actually have to do some leg work.

One of my Cd drives come out by removing a screw under the hard drive cover. I have dual DVD/RW and CD/RW+DVD drives

Dear Notebookforums members ,

Thank you all for information leading me to rjtech.com and your postings regarding the re-install and setup of the RAID + WinXP. All I had to do was google & search forums - never once did I need to post a question to perform the actual fix. It is only thanks to you that I have successfully replaced the defective and burnt out D05 version of my 7700m motherboard with a D06 version. Your knowledge has been an immense help and worth more than the AW corporation + Dell combined.

Dear Alienware/Dell ,
You have staff on the helpdesk that know nothing about computers or troubleshooting. You are too scared to admit when you've sold buggy h/w. You are a corporation incapable of "doing the right thing". You'll never get another dollar from me. When you have a client (that has purchased multiple machines from you) call the helpdesk multiple times for a supported piece of hardware for the same issue, you do not tell them to "go play a different game". You diagnose the issue (walks like a heating issue, talks like a heating issue...lo-and behold, IT IS A HEATING ISSUE!!!) and resolve it. Even worse, when this issue is quite common (as I can see based upon this forum and googling) you should be responsible and recall or FIX the issues. I shouldn't need to tell you this.

Regards,

Clay

Where did you purchase the v6 board, and am I understanding you correctly. The v6 is a direct replacement to the v5.

Mrlenster

great detailed pics!

Yessir, my new mobo (71-D90T0-D06) was a direct replacement for the old one (71-D90T0-D05).

http://www.rjtech.com/miva/merchant...._Code=MB-D900T

I also upgraded to the 7900GTX vid card. I see that the 7950GTX is now available for the D900 T/K series on their website.

I didn't know it before, but the front panel now has an LED display that works. Might have been a BIOS option but it was disabled when I got mine (straight from the AW crap factory).

Also, I think my sound is better now but I could be halucinating.