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Inspiron 530s graphic card or mb problem?
hello, I've got an Inspiron 530s manufactured at the end of 2007, with Windows Vista.
A couple of months ago began an odd behaviour at startup:
I press the power on button, the blue led on the button turns on and so does the fan at high noise,but when the fan slows down (and the boot should continue with the Dell logo) the system turns off , then after a couple of seconds it powers up again by itself. This on-off cycle repeats 3 times then the Dell logo appears and the boot proceeds without other issues, so I didn't care much. Well, in fact it's my sister's pc, not mine, so I didn't care much.
Yesterday more trouble: my sister reports that during normal use the screen graphics corrupted (went pink) then Windows crashed and didn't boot again. In the evening I tried and it boot up as usual (magic!!!), and I left it on, but later I found it in some power save mode, but I was not able to wake it up again. I tried some more times to boot it without success. Then I noticed that the Dell logo showed during POST is a little corrupted (it has a regular grid pattern of black spots), so I gave up blaming the operating system....
I opened the box hoping to find lots of dust which could cause heating problems, but the internal was quite clean, the hottest part was the power supply but I could keep my hand on it so it wasn't very hot.
Today, just for fun, I made it boot with an old rescue cd of mine and flashed a new bios, from 1.0.5 to 1.0.18 but didn't see any positive effect, as expected.
So, I hope someone could give me suggestions to what spare part should I look for!!!
My main bet is for the graphic card, but the triple on-off cycle at boot make me think of mb or power supply problem.
thank you
shesagordie
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May 11th, 2010 15:00
okrimar
When the problem happens, are there any error messages, if there are, please post the exact text of them.
What is the colour of the power button LED, is it Blinking, or Solid?
Are there any 'Beeps', if there are, check the 'Beep' codes in the following link?
The Inspiron 530s Troubleshooter and Diagnostic Guide, is HERE
Bev.
okrimar
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May 12th, 2010 15:00
hi,thank you for your reply. I've read the guide you linked.
I didn't have any error message on screen.
When I press the power button the led is amber for perhaps half a second or less, then solid blue during the "high-speed fan" phase (a couple of seconds), when the fan slows down it turns amber and fades out to completely off in half a second. Then it restarts by itself with the same sequence.During all this I can't hear any beeps.
At the third time it doesn't turn amber, it stays solid blue, I can hear a single beep (just one, not "repetitive short beeps") then the Dell logo appears and the boot proceeds.
So I could exec the diagnostics, as explained on the diagnostic guide. I got a fail on the video memory test, he wanted 0xFFFFFFFF, he got 0xFBFBFBFB on mode 320x240x16.
So the graphic card is a problem for sure. But how it relates to the three on-off cycles at power on?
okrimar
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May 13th, 2010 12:00
ok, this evening I removed the graphic card (an 8300gts 128Mb half height) from the box, and connected the monitor to the graphic card embedded in the motherboard.
Everything now works smoothly, no more three on-off cycles after pressing the power on button, and Vista boots without problems. Since my sister is happy with this (she doesn't need 3D acceleration for Facebook games...), I can consider the problem solved.
Thanks to Bev for suggestions and to the forum for some insights I found here and there
shesagordie
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May 13th, 2010 12:00
okrimar
Please to hear the problem is resolved. :emotion-21:
Bev.