DELL Latitude Displays Issues

Question

We currently have ~50 DELL Latitude D620/D630 in production with traveling sales people around the US. Over the past 6 days we have been having one failure per day, and had previously had 4 other machines fail in the previous week. The symptoms are the LCD displays show vertical and/or horizontal white lines, the user reboots and the LCD never comes back on. Some users have external monitors/docking stations, and this will continue to work 50% of the time. We've worked with DELL tech support and the current fix has been to replace the system board and LCD. They've tried replacing just the LCD and it never resolves the problem, so they've taken the shotgun approach of doing the System Board and LCD which has fixed all machines that have been repaired so far (except when they send dead replacement parts out). I've looked online to see if anybody else is having similar issues, without success. It seems very unusual for all of these machines to start failing at the same time since they were purchased over a 6 month period and all went into production at different times. Additionally, since they seem to be dying on a daily basis should we request system board and LCD replacements on all the working units to prevent downtime for our salesman who are traveling 90% of the time? Normally we can overnite a loaner, but due to the high number of dead machines we currently have there are no loaner units available.

We are familar with the Nvida Chipset Quadro NVS110M issue, and DELL phone support has said that its related to the video chipset (probably this) and that they've had a large backlog of repair requests. I was curious if anybody could confirm this, I'd really like to be proactive with these repairs since our sales people are dead without they laptops.

Zach

jaydubau2 · Answer

My D620 also went to no video yesterday. nVidia 256mb M110 Dual ext monitors had 'tiled' screens. Rebooted, and no video at all. Undocked, no video on LCD.

Connected external monitor to laptop, got at least a tiled, unusable screen. Thinking surely the video card, after research and dismay, this appears to be only a chip on mother/system board. Seeing your post seems to confirm this.

Fortunately, I have my rock solid Fujitsu Lifebook [my real traveling laptop] to fall back on. 2 years and a month on the Dell, so I expect to get it repaired under warranty.

ZachHunter · Answer

UPDATE 12/17 @ 9:30AM  ::  We had another 2 machines go out today.  The bad news is, one of the units (DELL D620) had the system board replaced 3 weeks ago for the same problem.  Another was a DELL D630 that is ~6month old, after undocking, removing the battery and holding power button down for 30 seconds, and putting back in the battery it POST with video. My Sr. Administrator got off the phone with DELL tech today and told me that the DELL soltuion is to replace the system board with a new system board of the **EXACT SAME TYPE**.  Yes, this means we are getting new system boards with KNOWN bad chipsets.  The representative on the phone (level 1, with low knowledge of IT) said that the fix is a combination of things... 1. Replace System Board 2. Upgrade BIOS to latest version (D620 = A10, D630 = A15)    ** We are under the impression this effects the temp sensors that control fan speed. 3. Upgrade Video Drivers    ** Lowers threshold for fan to kick in. It's important to note that we've already had 6 repairs and they've never once done step 2-3, they only replace the system board.. turn on the unit, and leave!  The last board they replaced was 9 BIOS revisions behind, which makes me think these are some really old spare boards that have been sitting around for awhile. We talked with our DELL account representative and asked for PRO-ACTIVE service on all our machines, but if we are going to get new machines with faulty chipsets... I'm not sure this is really a PRO-ACTIVE soltuion...

ZachHunter · Answer

Update 12/18: Today we've had more issues with machine that had been previously repaired. We had a tech come out today, and while working on the unit we asked him a bunch about this issue. He said that he is doing a minimum of 3 system boards per day and suggests we always ask for a "System Board" and "LCD". It turns out that the 2/4 units that needed to be repaired needed a combination of these and we have 2 units down today because only a "System Board" was sent out and now external video works but not the built-in LCD. He said the problem is with the "Power Inverter".

During the repair, he probably spent 20 minutes on the phone with DELL tech support and ended his conversation saying how bad they were. They demanded he plug into an external monitor to diagnose if the external display worked, I guess this means everybody with a laptop is supposed to have an external LCD around... We got him one, but he was frustrated cause he knew it needed a new inverter but they wanted to troubleshoot the problem with him before they would ship parts! I actually feel kinda sorry for the DELL On-Site tech, you'd think that level of service was only for the customer...

Zach

ZachHunter · Answer

We'll, today we had a system board, CPU, heat pipes replaces on a previously repaired unit that the video went bad on and everything is working ok now. After the last repair, the system would get burning hot and auto-shutdown after a few minutes. I'll assume this was due to a bad repair (incorrect rebuilt, or bad replacement parts).

Another unit in our main office that was updated with the latest BIOS & Firmware started to have bluescreens with the video driver. We are hoping this is driver related, and reinstalled the driver again since this unit has already had the system board replaced 2x over the last 3 weeks.

We're waiting for the tech to make 2 additional repairs, since the system board was not enough to fix the video issue. With new system boards, the laptops now have working video on external montiors but the laptops LCD's are dead. The tech(s) said this is due to the power inverter, but 90% of the time they have to replace both (system board and LCD) to get the laptop working again.

jaydubau2 · Answer

Thanks for your detailed posts. I have ticket in to our reseller, but dont expect any action until next week. Our on site tech did look at it, then returned it to my desk. With permission, I'd like to add your post to my repair ticket. Thanks again Zach

Jeff State of Maine OIT

ZachHunter · Answer

Take what you want, I'm posting in the forums to share the knowledge. I thought it was very weird that the techs have all said this is very common but there is very little posting online (forums or google) about this. It's a real pain, since every call to DELL support is a different randomly skilled individual with a random skill set. The techs seem to be much better, but they're not troubleshooters... they swap and replace, so if something doesn't work they just order more parts... Good luck, hope ur able to get your problem solved.

Eranz3 · Answer

Hi,

it's a well known problem, documented over the net.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/08/20/dell-extends-warranties-for-nvidia-flaw/1

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/186/1010186/dell-models-defective-nvidia

http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2008/08/18/nvidia-gpu-update-dell-to-offer-warranty-enhancement-to-all-affected-customers-worldwide.aspx?PageIndex=2

I had the prob twice with my D630.

The only solution dell figured out till now is changing the bios - causing the fans to work all the time....

and another thing - the replaced motherboards are not new, its refurbished....

I must admit that I'm so dissappointed... I was sure dell is a serious firm but this is not the way a serious company should treat the customers. Sorry.

baramacher · Answer

I have also had these issues.  I've been looking all over for information.  It is very frustrating!  I do up to 40 repairs a week sometimes and I am so frustrated with this and I don't even want to work on them anymore.   I'll get a D620 or D630 with a bad LCD, I hook it to an external monitor and it displays fine.  So I order an LCD.  I just fixed one a few minutes ago, put it all together and STILL doesn't display, but does to an external monitor.  I have over 2,000 laptops that I work with for our field reps.  I have pulled brand new laptops out of the box with these issues and keyboards not responding correctly.

ZachHunter · Answer

I feel your pain. We're still dealing with these issues but our account team has been great. The problem is caused by the NVIDIA chipset, it seems to break the LCD & SYSTEM BOARD. You need to replace both to fix the problem. Our problem has been, days after replacing these items the same unit will break with the same issue. We are at the point where we are going to have all machine with the NVIDIA chipset replaced with the lower Intel Video Chipset. Yes, we paid a premium for NVIDA but right now we'll be happy if we can keep our mobile workforce online!!!

I'm really suprised there is no class action on this, since it's effecting many people across the board (not just DELL). I'd like NVIDIA to recall all systems with this chipset and/or offer us a life-time warranty for any display issues with NEXT DAY SERVICE.

We no only work with senior level support people, so we don't have to deal with the hour long basic troubleshooting and they call back and follow up on a daily basis. Dell gets 5 stars for pushing this up to upper level management! The last machine they replace with a E series machine, cause it had died 3 times. This isn't a good solution since the D -> E series doesn't share the same docking stations, so we are having them replace the systemboards with Intel Chipsets.

I'll let you know how it goes... If you got that many machines in the field, I suggest you contact your REP and let them know what your dealing with. I'm sure they want the business and DELL can probably make NVIDA eat the cost assoicated with making you happy!

ZachHunter · Answer

I just wanted to say, I dislike the dell censoring system on this forum.  I really think they should ditch it, I keep having messages deleted cause I use legal words or acronyms that show my distain for the whole issue!!!  Argh!!! I wonder if this will get bleeped as well ??

jaydubau2 · Answer

I'll add my update. Our business partner was quick to get my systemboard replaced, and the LCD and inverter a few days later [Dec 29th].

We are fortunate that these models [D620] were not deployed on a large scale basis. I have resisted going with the company standard issue, as Dell has been my choice for many years.

So far so good, but I suppose it is only a matter of time before I'm back with no video. Good luck to all, I can only imagine the nightmare you both are experiencing.

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DELL Latitude Displays Issues

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