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M1730 Monitor Flickers then Locks up Black Screen

post #1 of 19
9/6/10 at 2:25am
Thread Starter 
This afternoon I started experiencing brief flickers coming from the monitor of my Dell M1730 then at some point after, I hear one loud beep and the monitor goes to an all black screen (its still on and I can see the mouse cursor), but I can't move the mouse with the mousepad or with a USB mouse.

No response whatsoever. Only thing I can do at that point is power off and power on.

It boots up fine, I can browse the internet again, then at some point the flickers start to occur again and eventually, BEEP, then lock up to all black screen.

My temps don't seem to be too hot so unsure what is causing this.

Dell M1730
Windows XP Pro
Intel T9300 2.5Ghz
4GB SDRAM
500GB 7200RPM HD
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post #2 of 19
9/6/10 at 1:04pm
well this could be a few things, but i would start with the 4Gb memory DIMMS

Try re-seating them - test still fails then next

Try using one DIMM in Slot A than Slot B, then try the other DIMM in Slot A and Slot B.

hopefully you will find one dimm needed to be re-seated, or one DIMM is defective.
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post #3 of 19
9/6/10 at 4:35pm
Thread Starter 
Interesting.

I've wondered if one of my SDRAM sticks were bad.

Should it read 4000MB RAM or should it read 3070MB of RAM if I'm supposed to have 4GB's?

I figured 4GB's would read as 4000MB's, but my diagnostics says I have 3070MB.
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post #4 of 19
9/6/10 at 4:49pm
Thread Starter 
Nevermind, I see thats because my 32bit windows can't handle 4GB's of RAM and can only use the 3070MB's.

RAM sticks seem fine, reseated both.

I left the notebook on when I got home from work this morning, but when I woke up, the clock said 10:33am, and it was really 3:30pm.

So the thing locked up at 10:33am, didn't goto a black screen this time, just everything locked up, and clock sat at 10:33am till I rebooted.
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post #5 of 19
9/7/10 at 2:54am
Thread Starter 
Well, I think my video card is about to go...

Im not crashing to a black screen anymore, now I simply lockup to whatever is on the screen, except there are horizontal lines going across the screen and any images become all distorted looking.

I keep hearing a slight clicking, and then a flash on the screen, then everything pauses for a moment, then another clicking sound, then everything goes normal again till the next click sound occurs.

The clicking comes from the hard drive bay area and when that happens audio / video pause (which thats been happening for a while), but after a while everything eventually freezes up.

As mentioned above, I tried both SDRAM sticks one at a time, had same problem with both of them in either slot.
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post #6 of 19
9/7/10 at 8:39am
Why don't you try running a chkdsk on your drive first? Or even using another drive.

cheers ...
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post #7 of 19
9/7/10 at 6:43pm
Thread Starter 
I ran chkdsk this morning, no errors found.

I also ran Dell diagnostic, no errors found.

I don't have another drive to use.

Thanks
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post #8 of 19
9/7/10 at 7:34pm
Stick in a LiveCD and run the comp from it. See if it behaves ok.

cheers ...
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post #9 of 19
9/7/10 at 8:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by romes View Post
Nevermind, I see thats because my 32bit windows can't handle 4GB's of RAM and can only use the 3070MB's.

RAM sticks seem fine, reseated both.

I left the notebook on when I got home from work this morning, but when I woke up, the clock said 10:33am, and it was really 3:30pm.

So the thing locked up at 10:33am, didn't goto a black screen this time, just everything locked up, and clock sat at 10:33am till I rebooted.

The problem is typical of memory issues

Have you been monitoring your temps on the CPU and GPU ?

and you may need to try a fresh install as you may have a corrupted driver. it could also be the hard drive, but usually the diangonstics would indicate a problem there.
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post #10 of 19
9/7/10 at 10:56pm
Thread Starter 
Looks like its a heat issue.

Ive been able to run the system for 13 hours straight with it sitting on top of a box fan blowing on low. Can play videos, game apps load, no hiccups.

Take it off the box fan and it crashes within' 10 minutes.

So looks like I may just need to disasseble and clean this thing out, new thermal paste on GPU / CPU.

Any suggestions on removing the old thermal paste if I don't have thermal paste removal solution? Are there any alternatives?
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post #11 of 19
9/8/10 at 12:54am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by qhn View Post
Stick in a LiveCD and run the comp from it. See if it behaves ok.

cheers ...
Never heard of a LiveCD before. Did a search and see what you are talking about. I'll see if I can make one tomorrow.

Thanks
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post #12 of 19
9/8/10 at 6:39am
Quote:
Originally Posted by romes View Post
Looks like its a heat issue.

Ive been able to run the system for 13 hours straight with it sitting on top of a box fan blowing on low. Can play videos, game apps load, no hiccups.

Take it off the box fan and it crashes within' 10 minutes.

So looks like I may just need to disasseble and clean this thing out, new thermal paste on GPU / CPU.

Any suggestions on removing the old thermal paste if I don't have thermal paste removal solution? Are there any alternatives?
Just scrap the old paste off and use some alcohol to clean the surface. Take a look at our guide section, plenty of tips and hints there.

AS5 is a simple good paste replacement, I use IC Diamond and Coollaboratory Liquid Pro on my comps.

cheers ...
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post #13 of 19
9/8/10 at 6:18pm
Thread Starter 
Have spent the last 12 hours formatting both secondary and primary hard drives and reinstalling windows. Install is almost done.

I had a problem last night and couldn't boot into safe mode, it kept giving me an error saying access was denied even though I was logged in as Admin.

Then I tried a system restore and it wouldn't even open. It would open a blank page.

So, I figured something was wrong with the OS and it should be reinstalled since the system restore nor BOOT.ini would function.

I also found that my primary hard drive had 4 partitions on it (must have been OEM because I had never added any partitions). Why would Dell have 4 partitions on the primary hard drive? One was DELLMEDIADIRECT, another was DELLRECOVERY, and another had no name, along with my OS partition.

Baffling..

After I get this reinstall done, will see how it runs, then take it apart this weekend and clean it and apply new thermal compound. Its got to be due for that regardless.
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post #14 of 19
9/8/10 at 6:26pm
Leave those Dell partitions alone, you never know when you need it

Have fun with the tinkering go slow, and stick closely to the disassembly instruction

cheers ...
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post #15 of 19
9/8/10 at 10:06pm
Thread Starter 
System seems to be fixed now after a reformat.

I reformatted and repartitioned both of my hard drives.

Seems like its new again, running fine as of now.
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post #16 of 19
9/9/10 at 2:51am
Thread Starter 


Same problem again. Looks like hardware.

Time to disassemble.
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post #17 of 19
9/9/10 at 5:04pm
Clean off the CPU and GPU and re apply new thermal paste

take the fans out and clean them

Clean out the heat pipes as well

When you put it all back make sure the seal around the heat pipes in intact.

So that the fans blow air through the fins and out the back of the laptop and not leak back into the unit. (there should be some black tape in this area that seals the cooling unit
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post #18 of 19
9/10/10 at 12:42am
Thread Starter 
Thanks Dave and everyone else. Will be taking it apart this weekend. Will post results.
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post #19 of 19
9/10/10 at 5:49am
Take pics would ya?

cheers ...
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