D630 Owners Thread

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I haven't seen an IDE Dell laptop since the Pentium M days.

 

Hi D630 Owners.

I have one that I love dearly. Bought a couple of years ago at a computer fair. End of lease. The hard drive gave up a couple of weeks later but I didn't mind sticking another in and it has run great until today.
I thought I'd update the BIOS... Everyone has heard of it "it ain't broke, don't fix it" Well I have got another for you, "the devil makes work for idle hands". So now I have blown 4 hours of my day off on google and messing about trying to find a way to get it back up.
The update appeared to go ok but on switching it back on afterwards, it displays the new BIOS number A18 (there is a newer one I have now discovered) the bar runs across to the right, the F2 and F12 script appears at the top right of the screen. It sits there a while and switches off.
I have made a bootable USB and put the newer BIOS on it.
I did get it to almost start, windows XP apologised for the failed boot and carried out a chkdsk and after that nothing again.
I am hoping to catch it and change the boot sequence to get onto the stick but so far it has switched off again before I could do that.

I have seen something about booting up while holding down the end key. This involves stripping BIN and HDR files from the update exe and I haven't any experience of doing this. Although I am getting closer to having a go.
I'll time the point at which it cuts off, as I wonder if it's a setting in the BIOS that needs changing?

Just wondering if any of you long term users have any ideas for me.

Thanks in advance

 

What version of the BIOS were you using before, and have you tried flashing back to that version? Failing that, maybe try a different version of the BIOS.

 

So that will work with a Dell D630?

 

Yes, the M2300 is identical to the D630 except for several parts (ie. motherboard and hinge cover, which says M2300 instead of D630).

 

I did get a newer version loaded off the USB stick. Once I worked out the stick was the C drive.

It made no difference, seems to me like a heat issue, maybe a dry joint somewhere and pure coincidence that it started failing after the BIOS update.

It is an nvidia board version.

I ended up getting another 630 with an intel board in. I swapped out the hdd from the broken one and loaded the video drivers. I am writing this on it now. The processor isn't quite as quick and before long I am sure I'll have it apart and swap over the chips.

Got plenty of spares now.

Happy to hear of ideas for fixing the nvidia machine.

Gavin

 

There is no fix if it's a bad GPU... you can try to reflow it yourself with oven/heatgun, but even if it works, it's a temporary solution at best.

 

I have an Intel D630 as well, and it's a great little machine. Glad you got your issue sorted out.

As wolf said above, there is no permanent fix for Nvidia issue. Swapping the CPU though is very easy as I am sure you already know.

 

My niece has a D630 and she recently managed to fry it by constantly using it on her bed. I've replaced the mobo, processor and heatsink. It was an Intel GPU on the old mobo and nVidia on the replacement.

My question (concern) is there is a visible gap between the heatsink and the GPU and heatsink and chipset. The chipset had quite a thick looking thermal pad on it.

I have hunted high and low for somewhere that tells me what thickness thermal pads are needed and I cannot find that info anywhere. I phoned Dell twice and I think they sent me round the world 3 times before I eventually got to speak to a guy in the UK - who had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. He told me to use thermal paste - which I have done but the gap concerns me. I told him there was a gap and his advice was just to pack it with thermal paste!

The old pad on the chipset tore and there wasn't one on the old GPU as the old heatsink didn't go over the GPU.

Can anyone give me some advice please? It's doing OK with the paste but I'm not comfortable leaving it like that.

Alison

 

Try slightly bending the GPU portion of the heat sink downward. Don't bend too much and don't crease it when you do it. Be very gentle when you do it, you don't want to go too far.