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potential issues with this solution
I was dispatched on a call last week for a Dell Studio XPS 8000 with this problem. The original GT200 was being replaced with the upgraded GTS240 - the customer had been told the new card would be different/an upgrade, so he was not caught off-guard by the different card.
The new card, however, could not be used in this case because of the following:
a) the PSU in the system had no GPU power hookup, which the GTS240 clearly required;
b) the GT200 has 1 each VGA, HDMI and DVI connector, while the GTS240 has 2 HDMI connectors - and the customer's system was sold with only a VGA cable.
So even if there had been a hookup on the PSU, the system could not be used until the customer had purchased an HDMI cable, and thus there could be no verification that the problem had been solved, or even if the replacement GPU was functional!
As a result the GT200 was left in place, the follow-up call is to replace it with another GT200 (although the tech on the phone had indicated that this would also be an 'upgrade'); and instructions are to "UPGRADE VIDEO DRIVERS FROM NVEDIA WEBSITE" (sic) ... which the customer had already done while on the phone with Dell Tech Support - 3 times thus far.
The logical solution to this issue with systems such as the XPS 8000 would be, inconvenient as it may sound, to dispatch a replacement PSU with a GPU hookup and an HDMI cable (both as secondary replacements should the system in question have the same issues with the GTS240 as did the XPS 8000.
alumni72
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November 28th, 2011 05:00
Well, since this was my first post and it was a response to an aged post for which it was not clear how to reply - and I used the only apparently 'reply' mechanism available to me (New Post link above the original article, as opposed to the 'Start a new thread' link to the right ... I was hoping this would show as a reply to the original post, but it did not. So here is the original post to which this is a reply, so that my 'OP' makes a bit more sense:
en.community.dell.com/.../19332029.aspx
DELL-Chris M
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November 28th, 2011 06:00
So was the GTS240 replaced with another GT200? The XPS 8000 only has the one PSU (power supply unit) so it should have the required power supply leads. The only time we ship HDMI cables is when the customer purchases the high ended 27" and 30" Dell monitors.
alumni72
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November 28th, 2011 06:00
Yes indeed - I'm going out on the call today. The original GPU was a GT200; there was no hookup to power the GTS240. I looked several times, because I couldn't imagine an XPS system without that option. I didn't want to even try it without the power hookup, so I called it in and the Tech on the phone told me they would be sending out a different GPU that didn't require a power hookup, but was still a slight upgrade over the GT200. When I got the dispatch today I checked the part number and it's F834P - a GT200 again. I don't have high expectations for this 'resolution' since the customer was telling me that he had already been on the phone with Dell several times over the past year and had upgraded drivers from the nVidia website.
I understand about the cable - I asked the customer if he had an HDMI cable and he didn't - the documentation for his system clearly stated it was an 'additional purchase'. It's possible this system was assembled with the wrong PSU, but there was definitely no GPU hookup coming off of that power supply. So as it stands, for this system at least there doesnt' seem to be any available resolution.
DELL-Chris M
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November 28th, 2011 10:00
The XPS 8000 sold with high end video cards (GeForce GTX 260, AMD Radeon HD 5670) that must have a power supply lead? Those leads must be tucked in the chassis somewhere.
alumni72
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November 28th, 2011 11:00
Believe me, I checked multiple times and with a flashlight - there were no extra leads to be found.
While I was there today I made a note of the part # for the PSU in the system - we are not provided with any official means of identifying parts, so I cannot check it myself (when we receive our dispatches, the only means we have of identifying the parts numbers provided is by using Google - if we had access to any kind of parts database it would alleviate many embarrassing situations where we have to ask the customer to describe the problem, because there is either no information available via Google (or sometimes the same part number is used for very different types of parts for desktop and laptop models). In case the wrong PSU was provided initially, here is the part #: CN-0K159T-42940-99M-01UM-A01.
I replaced the old with the new - both GT220 models, actually - and installed the latest nVidia drivers, dated November 5th 2011. Apparently the Dell tech who dealt with this problem remotely only went to the Dell Support website to get the latest drivers from there (the downloaded file on the customer's desktop was dated June 2010). Latest drivers on the Dell site are currently dated January 2011. the customer's BIOS was still at rev. A01 and the latest is A03, dated 2009, so I updated that as well. Hopefully the combination of BIOS update, very current video drivers, and a new video card will resolve the customer's issues.
For the record, in addition to this (minor) problem, the customer had simultaneously been having intermittent system lockup problems as well for which a reboot was required - this was also random and occurred perhaps once every month or two. Again, ePSA diagnostics identified nothing wrong with the system when the old video card was still installed, so this more significant issue, for which the customer had actually contacted Tech Support, will be resolved by the new card as well.
I'm curious, though, to know if the PSU in the system is the model that is supposed to be there. Clearly, since there is no onboard video with this system, there should definitely have been a power hookup for a video card.
DELL-Chris M
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November 30th, 2011 10:00
These are the 350w power supply part numbers J130T, K159T. You could check the label on the power supply and see what part number it has.