D830 shuts down without warning

I have the same problem with my new D830 Sudden power off and as you say "not nicely" - just a "ping" noise and nothing - restarts immediately and can run all day without problem then "ping" and off she goes. The only thing I notice is I have never heard the cooling fan running but have not found out yet how to check it.

I'll give it another couple of weeks or so then call in Dell to sort it (3 year onsite warranty) if I cannot find a software solution.

I and two colleagues have a Latitude D830 running Vista SP1. Two of us are experiencing just the same (one is not experiencing this at all). We're experiencing the power-off both in and outside the docking station. We too can confirm the ping-sound emitted from the laptop at the time of the power-off.

I've personally noticed the power off happening in conjunction with the latop producing sound and once when attaching a stereo headset to the laptop (in the designated slot). Please note that I'm not stating that the power-off is restricted to or even coupled to sound production.

I've gone over the eventlogs (system, security, application) and nothing has been logged.

I look forward to hearing if anybody has a clue on what is going on and what to do about it.

Thanks,

Mike

Finally got my 830 fixed - at least I hope it is fixed as I had tried everything I could think of, I had even reformatted the HD and reinstalled OS XP SP3 but no other software - problem still occurred so not a software conflict

Eventually I contacted Dell Support and one of the Dell techs had a look at it, ran diagnostics (Fn+ power button on start up) nothing showed up, flashed the bios to bring it up to A14 (latest rev) - lost keyboard, reflashed bios keyboard working but still cutting out even during boot up. Dell arranged service call and replaced mother board, processor and fan - so far problem seems to have been rectified. The service technician was not suprised as he had done a few over the past months - the fix seems to be have Dell change the MB, processor and fan.

C.

Thanks for an this post. I have copied the link to Dell Tech support as my laptop has been doing the same thing. In fact I've had endless problems with my D830 - which is my fourth Dell over a period of 11 years and the most unreliable. I purchased two D830s last year, one for me and one for a colleague and so far mine has had 3 fans and an equivalent number of heat synchs and motherboards but not a new processor - now in the past week I've been experiencing this same shutdown issue. Dell Tech Support also ran remote tests and came to conclusion it must be battery but a replacement one has not proved any more reliable. Hopefully they'll take note of this forum and do something! Thanks.

Any news about sudden shutdown on battery only??  I have a problem too.  My laptop Precision M65 with a Latitude D820 motherboard (0YY709) passed all tests including diagnosis, fan speed, temps, etc.  The battery is healthy (5 LED's  on) and about 6 months old and shows 98% or over 2 hours.  Without a warning, it shutdown off less than 5 minutes even when temp's on a chart looked normal.  Sometimes 3 or 4 min.  BIOS is Version A09.

Solved my shutdown on battery only by changing the Hard Drive from 750 to a brand new 500GB, going back to V10 BIOS and reloading Vista SP2. No problems so far. This shutdown on battery appears to be a BIOS / Chipset related problem, (not RAM) cannot waste time to figure out exact causes ... my suggestion is to revert to the original BIOS for your machine, load a new Hard Drive and reinstall operating system. Check / Test operation for a week or so after each software install to make sure no conflict is apparent. Good Luck.

The sound I get at the sudden shutdown is also like a "diminishing whistle" or ping sound that lasts for 1/2 second.

Edited 5/4/12: Temperature turned out not to be the cause in my case.

I have been trying to pin down the source of these sudden D830 shutdowns.

I believe after doing some work that the Intel (not NVidia) Chipset temperature is the culprit.

I use a program called "Dell Inspiron/Latitude/Precision fan control V3.1" by Christian Diefer to monitor all my laptop's system temperatures.

There are sensors in the laptop to monitor for CPU, GPU (NVidia), Memory, Chipset and HDD temperatures.

On the last shutdown, I noticed that the Chipset temperature was at 138 F, right at the point of shutdown.

Aside from the CPU temp, it was the highest temperature component. The CPU can get up to 180 F or more without shutting down,
but it rarely gets that far with my current setup. Normally, 160 is the highest it gets, so that was not the cause in this case.

I usually have a small fan blowing underneath the laptop (which I have propped up on small plastic cylinders) to keep from overheating,
but in this case the fan was not operating and the Chipset temperature got up too far and it shut down.

I will add more to this as I notice a pattern.

If your 830 is under warranty contact Dell for repair. From what I can gather there is a fault on the motherboard. Mine has been fine since Dell changed the MB, processor etc.

There appear to be two problem areas in this thread ... 1: Shutdown on mains voltage and 2: Shutdown on internal battery power. SSYBESMA appears to be attempting a fix on an 830 running on a machine plugged into the wall socket.

Hi Cliff, I sold my finger print security D830 with 3G RAM, spare power supply and carry bag for AU$400 recently, the battery shutdown problem appeared to be reduced and random after reverting to the original BIOS and installing a new 500GB HDD instead of the 750. It was still under warranty so the new owner had the option of a claim.

[Edited 5/4/12: Temperature turned out not to be the cause in my case.]

I don't say that I have a fix, it's just a workaround. My laptop happens to be a year out of warranty and I purchased it used about 8 months ago for about $240 which wasn't a bad price. Like I was saying, it seems to only happen when the Intel chipset temperature gets up close to 140F. It's not difficult to keep it down below 130F as long as some care is taken to have a fan blowing beneath it at all times. What I will do next to see if it makes a difference is remove the keyboard and blow out the system with compressed air to see if I can get any major amount of heat-insulating dust out of it, but I don't think there's enough to make that much of a difference. As long as the temperatures are managed as I have been doing, the system has been rock-solid stable...not even any BSODs or anything.

The only times that I've experienced a shutdown lately have always been when I didn't have the fan blowing under the laptop to help cool it down further, so it's definitely a heat issue. I feel this laptop was not very well engineered by Dell and they really should offer a free warranty extension due to the engineering defect.

They told me late last year that the NVidia issue is not at all related to the problem I'm having so they would not honor the one year extension of the warranty they have in place for that problem.

Well, I have some bad news. Temperature may not be the issue. It just shutoff again and the Chipset temp was no higher than 129 degrees and maybe lower. The GPU temp was no higher than 118 and the CPU was no higher than 158. So, temperature appears not to be the cause after all. I've had the laptop running well at sustained temps above all those I mentioned without that happening. So, I'm guessing I have an intermittent short on the motherboard somewhere, but it's impossible to tell for sure. I know about "tin whiskers" which is more of an issue with electronics that do not use lead-based solder. It's possible that if I open the laptop up and blow it out, this could be a potential cure. I'll keep you posted.