Well, I hope you haven't given up by now on your XPS 200. I couldn't afford to (literally it was too expensive for me to replace so soon, so I committed myself to fixing it). I too had the very same problem; random shutdowns. They become more frequent over time until the unit just spent all of its time cycling on and off. The only way to stop it was to unplug it. Sadly my unit was just out of the extended warranty period so Dell Customer support was no help at all. I replaced the power supply, the motherboard and processor fan (in that order) trying to track down the problem. I bought the power supply and fan directly from Dell which is how I got the very marginal/minimal support. I stripped the unit down to the motherboard without the processor, RAM or any I/O's attached and the problem still followed. It turned out to be the POWER SWITCH ASSEMBLY on the chasis (case). I attempted to order a new one from Dell TWICE (the first time Dell took the order and sent some random cable and the second time Dell took the order processed it for a week and then cancelled it with no followup. When I called the Parts Dept as to why they said they didn't support that part and couldn't/wouldn't order it for me). When all else fails there's always Ebay! I was able to order a new XPS 210 5100C chasis (I have the 5150C but the case is the same), fill it with all the new although it be uncessary stuff I had purchased and the unit is good as new. I ran into some frustration getting the drivers to work right but the unit is running amazingly now.
I truly believe that Dell should have done more to support this unit. A black eye for sure. Unfortunately, they are still the best support as compared to the other PC manufacturers. After all, if we were really committed to quality we would have probably bought a Mac...
We had this same problem on our brand-new Inspiron 530 dual-core E6550 with a 128MB ATi Radeon HD 2400 Pro video card running Vista Ultimate.
These random system shutdowns occurred while logged off but powered on, while the system was logged on but idle, and when using applications. When it occurred, the monitors would black out and the keyboard and mouse would be unresponsive, but the power light would be on and the fan would be running. The only recourse was to power off holding the Power button down for 10 seconds. Upon logging on, we'd receive the standard message indicating Windows had terminated abnormally, and then each time Dell DataSafe would run in verify and recover mode to clean up the RAID1 configuration. In each case, the System Event log reported: “The previous system shutdown at 11:49:06 PM on 3/7/2008 was unexpected.” The time of the shutdown was always PRIOR to the manual shutdown we performed. In one case the shutdown occurred at 11:49 pm with the system logged off and we noticed the system locked at 5:30 pm the following day when we tried to log back on. As always, the Power light was on and the fan was running, but there were absolutely no entries in any of the Event Logs between 11:49 pm (for the unexpected system shutdown) and 5:30 pm when we discovered the condition and powered off. In other words, the system is shutting down without powering down. Strange!
In addition, we had display driver failures. While using any application (Chess, Office, system functions) the monitors would black out and then return with this message: "Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has successfully recovered."
When we reported these two repeating errors to Dell, the technician told us we had a bad system and Dell would replace it. They did so, we set up and configured the new Dell Inspiron 530, and applied the numerous Microsoft Updates, and the same problems occurred. This time, when I spoke to a technician by phone, he told us our system was functioning normally and refused to examine our Event Logs even when he had taken remote control of our system.
When the problems persisted, I emailed Dell on the 2 case numbers open on the system and told them we would return the second system if Dell could not address and fix these errors, and left a message for the technician saying the same thing. We received no response and so we returned the second system as well.
We've been Dell customers for 10 years and have been happy with our three previous systems under Windows 98 and then Windows XP Professional. Now we don't know if these problems are related to the Dell Inspiron 530,the 128MB ATi Radeon HD 2400 Pro video card, Vista, or a combination.
ojsanchez
1 Message
0
January 23rd, 2008 01:00
NotUnique
6 Posts
0
March 14th, 2008 23:00
We had this same problem on our brand-new Inspiron 530 dual-core E6550 with a 128MB ATi Radeon HD 2400 Pro video card running Vista Ultimate.
These random system shutdowns occurred while logged off but powered on, while the system was logged on but idle, and when using applications. When it occurred, the monitors would black out and the keyboard and mouse would be unresponsive, but the power light would be on and the fan would be running. The only recourse was to power off holding the Power button down for 10 seconds. Upon logging on, we'd receive the standard message indicating Windows had terminated abnormally, and then each time Dell DataSafe would run in verify and recover mode to clean up the RAID1 configuration. In each case, the System Event log reported: “The previous system shutdown at 11:49:06 PM on 3/7/2008 was unexpected.” The time of the shutdown was always PRIOR to the manual shutdown we performed. In one case the shutdown occurred at 11:49 pm with the system logged off and we noticed the system locked at 5:30 pm the following day when we tried to log back on. As always, the Power light was on and the fan was running, but there were absolutely no entries in any of the Event Logs between 11:49 pm (for the unexpected system shutdown) and 5:30 pm when we discovered the condition and powered off. In other words, the system is shutting down without powering down. Strange!
In addition, we had display driver failures. While using any application (Chess, Office, system functions) the monitors would black out and then return with this message: "Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has successfully recovered."
When we reported these two repeating errors to Dell, the technician told us we had a bad system and Dell would replace it. They did so, we set up and configured the new Dell Inspiron 530, and applied the numerous Microsoft Updates, and the same problems occurred. This time, when I spoke to a technician by phone, he told us our system was functioning normally and refused to examine our Event Logs even when he had taken remote control of our system.
When the problems persisted, I emailed Dell on the 2 case numbers open on the system and told them we would return the second system if Dell could not address and fix these errors, and left a message for the technician saying the same thing. We received no response and so we returned the second system as well.
We've been Dell customers for 10 years and have been happy with our three previous systems under Windows 98 and then Windows XP Professional. Now we don't know if these problems are related to the Dell Inspiron 530,the 128MB ATi Radeon HD 2400 Pro video card, Vista, or a combination.
NotUnique
6 Posts
0
March 14th, 2008 23:00