Reviving an ancient beast

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EclipseRydr

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 7, 2009
Messages
146
Hello, some time ago I picked up a laptop Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 1 w/ the following specs...

I apologize if this is in the wrong section, still new here.

- Intel P4 3.4ghz
- 1gb RAM
- 80gb hdd
- 256mb ATI radeon 9800
- 8x DVD+/-RW drive

I noticed that when running apps, any apps for that matter, the fans would get real loud, but not to the point where the laptop would shut down.

So I got the manual, took apart the entire laptop, sure enough, clogged fans and thermal cooling area, so I took care that, then put the laptop back together and...

When I hit the power button, the 3 green lights (num lock, caps lock, and lock) turn on for a few seconds and so does the battery and power light, but the screen stays black, no fan noise, no hard drive noise, the lights turn off, and nothing happens.

I took apart the laptop thinking I didn't connect something right, but I followed the steps backwards too and could not find anything wrong. I took it apart and put it back together 2 times, still nothing.

Anyone have any suggestions? I'm thinking of taking it to a local tech but I think they're expensive, I live in Orange County, CA.
 
On the plus side, Dell tends to publish service manuals for all their products on their site. Go there, read the service manual, follow the instructions for disassembly and reassembly and unless you broke something, you should be fine.

My guess would be a short somewhere. Could also be dead/poorly seated memory. Or just a dead motherboard.
 
Thanks for all the links and tips guys, it was my own fault, the CPU was not properly aligned whoops!

So I put thermal paste on the CPU, cleared all the ducts and fans, and I've noticed a bit of improvement, but every time I try to run Steam for example, or even Skype or a couple of Mozilla firefox windows, each by themselves, not simultaneously, the fan starts to act up, real loud.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Should I up the ram to 2gb, and put in a 160gb samsung IDE drive in there? Right now it's got 1gb ram and 80gb 4200rpm drive... I really can't think of anything else, unless anyone else has this machine and the loud fans are a real common issue

Thanks!
 
Probably the bearings are shot and the fan needs to be replaced. You could try and see if it is possible to oil it, though these fans are generally not designed to be oiled.
 
EclipseRydr said:
Does anyone have any suggestions? Should I up the ram to 2gb, and put in a 160gb samsung IDE drive in there? Right now it's got 1gb ram and 80gb 4200rpm drive... I really can't think of anything else, unless anyone else has this machine and the loud fans are a real common issue
Click to expand...

It's a Pentium 4 CPU. It's gonna run hot. So that fan should be running, even though it's loud. With that said, use Notebook Hardware Control and see if it helps a bit.

Whether or not to upgrade to 2GB of RAM depends on whether or not you can find DDR SO-DIMM RAM for $20 or less. As for the larger drive, really depends on how much data you plan on putting on that drive.
 
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