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Inspiron 1520, replacing motherboard
Hello
My Inspiron 1520 just died a few days ago. I did the tests to know what part is failing and I'm pretty sure that the problem is in the motherboard. The laptop garanty is expired, so I want to replace the motherboard by myself. I think i would have no problems in replace the piece, the thing is that I'm not sure if I will need some software to switch on the computer. Is it necessary to flash the bios? I have not the CD's that came with the laptop, so I dont know if I can use a bios flash-cd made by myself (I read some tutorials about it and I can do it, but I dont know if it will work).
I mean, if I replace the motherboard, and the rest of pieces work correctly (I have xp and suse installed on the hard drive), will the computer run without any aditional task? or must I flash the bios before the laptop can start?
Thank you very much.
ejn63
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December 28th, 2012 10:00
Not necessarily - either fault could be at a low enough level that the system won't get far enough into POST to display a fault code.
What was the initial failure that led you to conclude the mainboard was faulty?
Dudo22
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December 29th, 2012 05:00
But that is not the code, its solid-blink-blink, which as I read, means that the memories are not placed... If i could know somehow that the videocard is the piece to exchange, I would repair it... but if I'm not sure, I really don't know.
I suspect too that it must be the video card, when the laptop died I was playing a video game and I had a blue screen with a message of hardware fail and a code (that I didn't write down... yes, I'm not very smart).
Thank you for your help ejn63
Dudo22
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January 2nd, 2013 11:00
Finally the problem was in the nvidia 8600m. I did the hairdryer trick and now the laptop runs perfectly, I don't know how longer will the PC work, but for now I know that if it fail again it will be probably the video card.
Thank you for your opinions ejn63, it helped a lot.
One thing, this problems with nvida cards, are related with the design of the card or just with the gpu chipset? i mean, if the failure comes again, maybe it can be repaired just replacing the gpu instead the whole card...
ejn63
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January 2nd, 2013 12:00
It is the GPU chip that fails - but they're all faulty, so any replacement chip will simply fail again in the future.
Dudo22
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January 2nd, 2013 14:00
Well, all of that cards can be poorly designed, but mine worked fine for 5 years. If i replace the gpu for 30 € and the video card runs another year, the repair is worthy. I know it will fai in the future again, but if it works for a reasonable time, I will think about buying the gpu.