INSPIRON 9200 completely dead again

I have a Inspiron 5160 with motherboard problems. Was replaced once, and 3 months later is dead again and out of warranty. I did not add anything to the system, and the power supply was fine.

So did you do anything about it or is the end of it that you have a broken laptop now?

I called Dell and tried to talk to someone but they didn't want to work with me unless I paid for the extended warranty. I understand that I was out of warranty and don't feel they owe me, only that they had just replaced the motherboard and it was only 3 months old, and would have like to talk to someone who had the capability to at least work with me a bit on getting a new one. They wouldn't even discuss selling it to me unless they diagnosed the laptop, which you have to pay for the extended warranty before they will do. I may have been talking to the wrong person, but I was really not satisfied with the level of service I recieved. I'm just going to buy another laptop, as this seems to be a chronic problem and even with the extended warranty I cannot be sending this system in every time this happens as I use it for presentations and I need something reliable.

Well, once it is out of warranty, it is for sure that DELL cannot be blamed for charging money. The problem is more that I lost some confidence into DELL.I need this laptop as my primary working device. I'm consultant and each day that I cannot work means loosing about the same money as a new laptop would cost. It happened once to me and at that time I bought a Toshiba to have something to work with until I would get my DELL back. They fixed it pretty quickly. However setting up the complete environment means to me loosing another 3 days before I can work on a different laptop.

Right now the situation is extremely bad for me. The out of warranty department would repair my laptop for about $500. I would do so right away, but it takes them between 15 to 20 business days and by that time I will be back in Germany (I'm in Seattle right now). So what I did in parallel was to order a new motherboard from a 3rd party vendor since also the out of warranty department didn't have a replacement of my motherboard on stock. The motherboard itself costs $588. I was hoping mostly that it would just be a fuse which could be fixed within a day. I think the fuses are names "PL" on the motherboard. I checked them and they all look okay.

If there is any other idea what I could do, please let me know.

Hi feedlebum,
replacing the motherboard will fix the issue but NOT the root cause of it!!! Meanwhile I got a new motherboard and replaced the previous one. However something in the system is wrong which killed 2 of them already. The 3rd seemed to work nicely but it started now with some other issues - like freezing the system completely, switching off the power all of a sudden and once the system process ran with 100% never stopped again.

Verifying the CPU and HDD temperature, the CPU was about 38C while the HDD ran on about 40C (a little bit hot for a HDD I think).

Now my question to you: Did you ever modify anything on your system? Mine shipped with one 1GB module and right before my first crash I added a second 1GB module. So I'm wondering if that could be a correlation between us.

Meanwhile I bought a 9400 which was just delivered to Germany and I will pick it up on Sunday :-) However I will give this laptop to my girlfriend and it should work for quite a while. So I'd be happy about any kind of hint - even just running some testing tools or whatever.

Thank you very much!
Henry

So, this is the third time this has happened to me.  You can read the whole sad story on this thread:

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_general&message.id=200267

 

Basically, the 1st time I was under warrantee, so I sent it away and they repaced the motherboard.  No problem.  The 2nd time I was 7 days out of warrantee.  Yeah.  Still, I kept calling Dell until someone understood that it was a continuing problem that started when I was still under warrantee.  I couldn't get it to start, so they took it, it started for them and they sent it back.  Of course, when I got it back, the USB ports didn't work, so I had to call another 5 times or so until someone thought that smoke coming out of you laptop might be somewhat dangerous and they too it back and replaced it with a refurbished 9200.  That was 3 months ago. 

I bought a new AC adapter just in case, but that's evidently not the problem.  There was a shock and it turned off.  I unplugged everything (battery included) and held the power button down for 20 seconds.  A few times.  I put the battery back in and the power light just flashed and clicked at me.  I tried taking the battery out and holding the power button a few more times.  It finally turned on again after about an hour of leaving it be and the melting-electric-smelling smoke came out of the back-right exhaust port, just like last time.  Windows said it found a new USB device, which it started to install.  After a minute of that, it said it had problems with the install.  No suprise there.  I plugged my USB mouse into the back USB ports and the red optical light didn't even come on (this is new).  The side ports make the red mouse light come on, but the mouse does nothing.  All instances of USB-related hardware in the Device Manager say everything's A-OK.  The Device Manager is a dirty, dirty liar.  When I told it so, it didn't seem to be affected.

This particular issue seems to only happen in association with a static shock.  It seems to me that static shouldn't be an issue unless you have the system open and have direct contact with internal components.  I guess I'm wrong when it comes to this model.  Do a search on these forums for 9200 and you'll see how many people have this same exact problem.  Too many.  I think it may be some sort of design flaw, but I really woudn't be able to prove something like that.  I guess I'll try calling Dell again, but I surely can't afford $500+ to fix this thing.  I'll worry about what other action I can take if I get to that point.  I use it everyday and there's no way I can do anything productive in Photoshop or Dreamweaver, etc with the touchpad.  Games are right out the window.  I suppose I'll try getting a PCMCIA USB card and see if that works.  If so, fine.  I use USB for too much stuff to just let it go.  I also have to test out the firewire port, which I also need.  I'll post an update.

I'm not sure if any of this is a help to you guys...I just really needed to let off some steam.

Same thing happened to me. While the computer was on, I unplugged the network cable (not the power) and the computer died. After that computer won´t start and when I press power button the power indicator blinks and it makes a low ticking noice. I presume after reading a bit here on the forum that it is the motherboard.

I also think it has to do with static shock, that the laptop is extremly sensitive to static shock even though no contact with internal components can take place. In my case it seems like when I unplugged the network cable, this caused a static shock that was lead inside the computer thru the network port and evidently caused serious damage to the computer.

Has anybody here with this problem ever gotten their laptop started again, without replacing parts?

Will dell send a new motherboard if I want to buy one from them and what would this cost?

My worst problem is that I have 2 weeks work (that is not backuped) on the harddrive. Any suggestions how I can get this data off the harddrive?

Thankful for any help

 

 

I can´t get it to start no matter what. I can press the start button 1 minute and it will not start.

I am not under warrantee so... and I don´t know if I want to spend $500 on a new motherboard if there is something wrong with the computer that will lead to that the replacement motherboard burns as well. The cause of the problem must first be found, and that is probably impossible to find out, maybe Dell knows but they will never tell.

Maybe it has something to do with the usb ports or the network port? They break and then the motherboard locks up. If you could get yours to start but you burned the usb part of the motherboard, there must be a connection.

What happened when you computer stopped working, did you plug or unplug anything at that time?

I unplugged the network cable and the computer died, I think it got a shock thru the network port and that caused damage inside....This is of course a major design flaw in that case, and dell will never admit to that, because then they have to replace a lot of computers or computer components.

What gets me the most upset is that a 13 month old laptop just dies like mine did. Reliability is non existent and I will never buy a dell laptop again. They obviously bring out products without fully testing them beforehand. Quick to market with new products and maximizing profits are more important, than reliability and customer satisfaction. After all I am not the only one with this problem and a dead laptop.

Hi all,
the correlation between a static shock and the breaking motherboard sounds very plausible. In fact at home, my laptop never got any shocks, but staying at the hotel, I sometimes got some load while walking and when I touched the laptop, there was a static shock. However I never touched my laptop at the time when it happened. It was just standing there on an isolated desk in a cubicle of my client and all of a sudden it stopped operating.

So I question here if the static shocks did pre-damage the system and it was just a matter of time? The first mainboard lasted quite a while. Dell replaced it for free since it was on warranty. On the second mainboard I also had bad luck since it was out of warranty. The out of warranty department would have replaced me the mainboard for about 300 dollars (don't remember the correct amount), however it would have taken 15-20 business days and that was too long for me. So a 3rd party vendor has sent me a replacement mainboard for about $610 (including the shippment). I replaced the mainboard and since that time it works fine, so I keep my fingers crossed ;-) However I didn't plug in the 2nd memory module again since I was afraid that this caused the damage. Meanwhile I have an Inspiron 9400 since a non operating laptop costs me about the same prize per day as a new laptop would cost. All in all I made about $27.000 loss when the laptop broke the 2 times and that's where it stops to be funny.

However if the static is a general construction failure, Dell should feel responsible for fixing this even though the warranty expired. I mean they can keep replacing mainboards when someone with warranty crashed his laptop as well, but that won't solve the root cause of the issue and if someone already crashed his mainboard, he would be a candidate for crashing it again and again. Maybe it's just some tiny piece of isolation material that needs to be added so they could provide a do-it-yourself kit / or instruction.

Well mine is not a 9200, but a 5160, and I've had the same problems. Soame time frame as well. I'm on my second motherboard and it's dead again and I'm not going to replace a motherboard only to have it happen again. I agree, quality is not up to par, and the customer service has been horrendous, not up to Dell's reputation. I wont buy another.