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Broken m9700i laptop advice.

post #1 of 4
7/7/11 at 4:56am
Thread Starter 

Hi,

 

I recently aquired a broken alienware m9700i laptop.  I tested the disk and found it bad so I've thrown that out.  The laptop now works but when I try to install windows xp it starts copying the files and then the dvd appears to stop working and the laptop crashes/reboots/freezes. 

 

However, I got out a fedora linux usb stick and booted from that and it worked right up until the point where you would normally see a GUI and a login window then it freezes every time unless I use an older version which works fine even for several hours of watching videos.

 

I have opened the back and found that it is a core2 processor and an sli nvidia mxm graphics card of some kind.  I tried the mxm in the other slot but it didn't post.  The ram tests OK with memtest86+.  I put it all back together with arctic thermal paste.

 

So my question is this a hardware problem or is the laptop only compatible with vista (which I don't have)?  I can probably get a copy if this is true but it is quite expensive for a guess.

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post #2 of 4
7/10/11 at 8:24am
Sounded like more a hardware issue to me. Try reviving a "broken" comp is always challenging. In your case I would go first with "baking" the GPU and pray

cheers ...
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post #3 of 4
7/15/11 at 10:23am

Greetings

 

From my own experience with these models I can give you an answer to your failure. First of all, the freezing may be caused by several factors, such as : overheating ; ram failure ; hard drive failure ; gpu failure ; north bridge failure ; broken cpu. Concerning to your laptop, on board you have the nvidia GF-GO7900-GSN-A2 chip which seems to cause these problems. If you already have replace the thermal pastes, thermal pads and you had removed all of the dust. You may have the broken graphic card, all of the Nvidia chips from series 6xxx - 9400 ( All models from [ all kind of IC chips ] 2005 [ When the ROHS came out ] untill 2009 [ When they finally fixed it ] ) has the " fabric " failure and the only possible way to repair it, its to replace the chip for newer one which will run at last as long as the old one was.

 

More about of these " bad bumpers " you can find over here : 

 

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1049921/inquirer-confirms-apple-macbook-pros-nvidia-bad-bump-material

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post #4 of 4
7/21/11 at 5:52am
Thread Starter 

Thank you both for your answers!  Since asking the question I have found out a bit more about fedora and ubuntu and have found that I can make ubuntu work by changing "nouveau" to "vesa" in /etc/X11/xorg.config. 

The more I use it, the less I seem to want to go back to windows, so I guess I am happy for now.  I'll try the baking the GPU method if it gets any worse.

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