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Dell M90 some flashing lights and no booting - Please help!!

post #1 of 10
5/29/11 at 9:05am
Thread Starter 

 

Hi,

 

Thanks for this great forum. Hopefully someone here can help me?

 

I have a Dell M90 Precision Laptop, and its a great computer and still very useful indeed. I use it and its Quadro Graphics for 3D CAD using SolidWorks software www.solidworks.com

 

 

I have a problem now, that I do not understand. I am unsure if the blinking lights are a symtom of the problem, or if they have always done this, and I have not noticed!

 

The problem is that after the BIOS screen I am getting the warning that there is "No boot device present" and indeed, there should be but again pressing F1 does nothing. 

 

I am not sure if the hard drive is spinning up or not. As the fans in this machine are loud. 

 

Also, I do not know if this is related, but I am getting a flashing light on the Power LED. That is two green flashes and then two orange flashes, repeatedly.

 

Can anyone help me, as I require this machine for my home business.

 

Kind regards,

John B

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post #2 of 10
5/29/11 at 9:17am
Put in an installation disk and see if the system starts up with that. If it works, you might want to remove and re-seat the hard drive. But possibility is a bad drive at first look

cheers ...
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post #3 of 10
6/13/11 at 8:11am
Thread Starter 

 

hi, thank you for that.

 

I have now fixed the booting problem, and this was caused by a faulty mbr.

 

I now have a problem however that is caused by up the design of the m90 computer. problem is that the m90 is advertised to be able to use 4GB, however only 2GB up shows up on Win7

 

I have installed 64 bit Windows7 to try and correct this. 

 

But the problem is with the BIOS which is revision A08, and I hope that it is the latest.

 

I have completed all of the windows updates, but I still have a problem. I am unsure what to do, as I think that I have the latest BIOS (rev AO8) and the memory that I have put in there should be fine.

 

I really need to access 4GB to use the system for CAD, as it was intended.

 

Can anybody please help? 

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post #4 of 10
6/13/11 at 3:45pm
I doubt that you will see the full 4gb since the 945 Express Chipset is 32-bit and will limit the amount of accessible RAM to 3GB+, even when running a 64-bit OS

cheers ...
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post #5 of 10
6/14/11 at 10:56am
As qhn stated, the machine would be limited to about 3.25 GB of RAM even if you have 4 GB installed. Anyway, there is no need to enter an Operating System (such as Windows 7) to check your installed RAM. Boot your computer and press F2 to enter BIOS setup. There you will be able to find a list of components inside your computer and it will list the installed RAM. If the BIOS says that there is 2 GB of memory installed then try to isolate the problem. Take out one of the RAM modules and boot the computer with a single RAM module. Check the BIOS to see that the BIOS recognizes 2 GB of installed memory. If this is the case, then remove the currently installed RAM module and replace it with the one you took out earlier. Again check the BIOS to see that it recognizes your memory. Come back here and tell us your results. My suspicion is that either one of your RAM modules doesn't work or one of the DIMMs on your motherboard doesn't work.
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post #6 of 10
6/14/11 at 11:04am
And by the way, you will most likely get the same amount of memory with a 64-bit Operating System as you will a 32-bit Operating System. The reason for this is that your machine has a 32-bit chipset and the only thing you can do about that is purchase a newer computer.
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post #7 of 10
6/22/11 at 11:44pm
Or solder a new northbridge on. :P
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post #8 of 10
6/23/11 at 12:43am
couldn't you simply sell the other ram chips and buy a 4gb chip? If it'll support that.
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post #9 of 10
6/23/11 at 1:51am
Thread Starter 

 

Ok,

 

Thank you for all your answers, this has been really useful!!

 

The M90 is a wonderful machine, and I have had mine for about 7 years, and it is still as fast in my opinion as any laptop I have ever used!!

 

And this is for 3D CAD and really processor and graphics intensive work using the Quadro. And now I can't tell you how well it runs. Really amazing computer, best build quality ever and great performance.

 

I will summarise the problems and their resolutions, so this might be useful to others.

 

1. The original flashing lights problem (prior to this thread). No display, and backlight comming on only. 

- Computer had been overheating, and this caused the Quadro FX2500 graphics card to warp or the BGA (ball grid array) chips to develop dry joints. 

 

I carefully cooked the video graphics card, after removing all components and heatsink/heatpipes in the oven at 200 deg C for 8 mins. Now it works perfectly and yet the computer still has a tendancy to get hot... I now think that they all do this?!

 

2. The computer worked for 4 weeks but then would not boot with the error "No boot device present"

- This was caused by a faultly MBR

 

Easiest way to fix this was using hard disk partitioning tools. Luckily I recovered the partition intact. 

 

3. M90 could not see 4GB memory installed.

 

64 Windows installed. Also, a weakend clip meant that when fitted the second 2GB memory stick was not fully seated correctly!

 

It now sees 3.25GB ram!

 

4. 

Quote:
Originally Posted by matchbox2022 View Post

Or solder a new northbridge on. :P

 

IMG-20110621-00013.jpg

 

Done!!

 

No, only joking. 

 

But I did the following. (a) removed all lint from blowers and heat pipes. (b) re-seated chips and added new heatsink compound (seems to go off after 7 years of overheating and was brittle, grey and probably no good. (c) Checked fans with multimeter to see if they were working, removed and cleaned out gunk with cotton buds.

 

Now when I was testing the computer, it was still overheating. Literally the heat pipes were way too hot to the touch, and not only this, but the fans did not come on regularlly or soon enough in my opinion. 

 

A check on the temps using Piriform Speccy revealled 

 

IMG-20110621-00011.jpg

 

Mad tempretures above!!! Especially graphics at 75 degrees C !!!

 

... and this was at reast, not under load!!

 

So further investigation, and it seems that the main fan works, but I was puzzled at no Graphics card fan running. So I checked with Multimeter, and also swapped them round. 

 

The physical fan was not broken. Its just the BIOS was not telling it to come on. Weird.

 

I have to go out, but I will continue when I have returned. Have a meeting at 11am!

 

Cheers,

Bid 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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post #10 of 10
7/30/11 at 6:33am
Thread Starter 

 

OK, 

 

the computer is fixed and runs great. 

 

This is a much better computer than many new laptops and I fixed heating using a cool programme for Dell called i8kfangui: http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/

 

I have added a Hybrid Solid State drive from Seagate, the Momentus XT and now I am good to go!!

 

I recommend the Dell M90 as a CAD or heavy processing workstation!

 

Cheers,

Bid

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