Out of curiosity, is anyone aware of any instance where Dell has had a product recall or even admitted to a manufacturing defect...OTHER than safety issues (like their current power adapter recall because they catch on fire)?

"I just had a vision of dell becoming some sort of tyrant and shutting down this thread. We'd be pretty unorganized if that happend, considering we only talk on this fourm."

I've saved the contents of this entire thread in case it happens and someone else starts a new forum.

Message Edited by Rybo Flavin on 11-19-2004 08:10 AM

Just a thought. The 5150's seem to fail anywhere between 4 and 14 months. I just got mine back, it failed after 6 months. I have the 3 year warantee. If I use the laptop exactly the way I did the first time I could go through 6 or 7 motherboards before my warantee expires. I wonder if that would wake up Dell?

Message Edited by rich1980 on 11-19-2004 10:58 AM

Basically, remove your hard drive and any other parts you purchased after the fact. wireless cards, ram, stuff like that. I sent mine in without the HD and the extra 512mb stick of ram that I purchased.

Message Edited by rich1980 on 11-19-2004 05:22 PM

Drew,

Sorry to hear that you have experienced this problem twice.  Do you have the phone number for that Senior Support Representative?  Could we all call her?

Thanks,

Phillip

It is certainly good to see so many others have the same problem.  My 5150 was bought in June of 2003.  The power problem first occurred in February of 2004 and after going through the same 1.5 hours of technician tests I sent my laptop in where the mother board was replace.  Problem solved....until last week (November 2004) when it happened again, except I was out of warranty (lesson learned!).  I have already spent 2 hours and talked to 6 Dell people about them replacing the mother board at their cost.  It took 3 mins from when I described the problem to the technician until he said I needed to send it in; 3 minutes!!!!  The other 2 hours have been spent trying to convince Dell that they need to stand behind the $700 repair.  I concluded by the quick diagnosis that it was a known problem and have kept very detailed minutes of all Dell conversations.  I was very encouraged to find the amount of postings indicating how widespread this is.  My last conversation with Dell was with Senior Support Representative who offered to split the cost of the repair.  I said this was unacceptable at which time she agreed to bring it up at her "Team Meeting" to see if there was more that could be done.  I called her back and left a voice message just now informing her that Dell's own community forum is full of people who have the exact same problem as I do with the 5150 and that I hope she considers this for her "Team Meeting".  We will see next week what happens.

I hope u get a good deal, and please give us the name and phone number of the representative. This is my second motherboard and my warranty expires in 40 days. Im sure that i will use that number in a few months...

 

 

Just wanted to add my name to the list here.

One more for the power failure problems with the DELL 5150.

Worst, I've only had the 'symptoms' over the past three weeks, but now the laptop is really dead.

Hopefully DELL can at least post some knowledgebase article about this problem so it is easier to find that this is a regular occurrence.

Purchase Date: December 2003
Purchase Location: Australia
Manufacturing(?): Malaysia


Dell Inspiron 5150
Intel P4 3.2G
1GB RAM
60GB HDD
15.4" UXGA
DVD+RW
Internal Wireless
Internal NIC

This one's my home/office work machine so it's sudden demise , especially when I'm in TONGA and the DELL/Australia service is an expensive courier job away, is really saddening for me and my 'few' clients.

I've loved the performance on this beast, even with all these Toshiba, Sony large-screen laptop owners walking around.

I occassionaly had the problem described earlier, where putting the system on suspend/hibernate caused a system crash. [I think that would be four or five times total since having the system]

Weirder: two or three times I've taken out the laptop to power it on and it would give me a warning message that the system shutdown due to overheating (although I am very certain I powered down the system before putting it in the laptop bag)

Latest symptoms started early November where for four nights I would take the laptop home but it would just power off (as if there was some overheating/safety mechanism kicking in.) Unfortunately in all those cases I brought the machine in to work and would have no power problems all day. Initially I suspected some applications causing the failure, until the problem morphed into power on failure before windows loaded (three days ago.)

Woe me: Now, the system has complete died, with no amount of pressing the power having any noticeable power-on effect.


Historical Chart:
-----------------

December 2003: Bought the 5150 from DELL Australia

November:

Week #2:

1st Occurrence, system shuts down after installing application X
- uninstall/delete application

2nd Occurrence, system shuts down after what seems to be going into power saving mode.
- Delete Windows XP Plus Pack
(i.e. real neat screen saver, and APM code)
- Reseat RAM chips

3rd Occurrence (three days ago)
Power starts up but windows does not complete startup process
(power cycle)
Power starts but does not complete BIOS POST Sequence
(power cycle, replace battery with another DELL battery bought with laptop)
Power starts but doesn not even start BIOS before shutdown.

Once in a while over the past three days the machine will start and go into Windows and I can work happily.

unfortunately it would on its own shutdown, except (as mentioned in earlier posts) the power is still on, fan is motoring along and occassionaly I can even get the CD Tray to pop/out.

Of course my wife supports my purchasing a 'new' laptop if it is for work, but she would like to cut down our costs.

I have already sent my notebook in for repair, and its still working great knock on wood. However, I remember one time this problem happend and I obviously had to turn the notebook off by holding down the power button and when I turned it back on A Windows file was corrupted. So I had to pop the Windows CD in and it fixed the problem luckily without having to re-install windows or formatting the hard drive. Now think of it.. someone probably had the same problem and was not as lucky as I was, or maybe they were as technical as me.. so they lost everything. As I have said many times, this is obviously Dells problem and they should step up to the plate and take care of everyone once and for all. But when individuals start actually completely losing data.. that's when I get fired up. Its one thing to have a hardware problem, and fixing it. But its another thing when we lose important documents, etc.

Interesting observation.  5150 design unfortunately requires mobo replacement for a multitude of problems (from a corrupted bios or a bad audio jack to this shutdown issue).  Some of this comes with the territory of a relatively low cost portable machine, and is understandable.  What is not acceptable is the dearth of proper support (service bulletins, recalls, replacement boards at OEM cost, etc.) when design flaws manifest after warranty.