Need Help ASAP! XPS M1330

Well long story short i have been having problems with my xps m1330 ive had it for 3 years now and its been decent to me... 3 months ago when my warranty was up i sent it in to get the gpu and mother board replaced because of the warranty. Just recently it started acting up bad... Would freeze left and right start running check disk when i tried to restart it...so i decided to reformat it seeing some scan i ran in dos was saying i was missing a system file. So i cleared the c drive and installed vista fresh... re-put my 60gb of music over and everything seemed fine for 2 days... not today it froze up on me ... i tried to restart and got a blue screen that flashed to fast to read and i tried to restart again and got a 2000-0141 error and alot of beeping and crap... so i restarted it and it was gone...

Any thoughts??? bad mobo??? HD???

Should i buy a new laptop??

any tests i should run?

thanks,
Adam

 

just froze up again.... baaaah

 

ive ran the tune HD free hard drive program 3 times... when it gets to 95466 mb the program stops working ... the laptop pretty much freezes up i cant ctrl alt del... i can move the mouse but thats it..

Bad block on the drive or something???

 

I'd call dell. did you extend the warranty?

 

Nope. I didnt, i was hoping to get a new 13'' when i graduated in may.

 

its got the good 7200rpm 200gb Hitachi in it too... I dont mind buying a new drive as long as it fixes the problem... I dont want to dump to much cash in to it however because my led screen is getting them white bright spots again...

 

tried running chkdsk and it found a few bad files but it also freezes after awhile...

 

Each blue screen can cause bad files (especially if write caching is turned on on the hard drive) however this is almost certainly not the cause of chkdsk failing. There are several likely suspects however; first is the memory.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ is now your best friend. Download and create a boot disk from their website, then boot the laptop from the disk and run first memtest86. It will establish whether you have a memory fault.

If you can't get through memtest without crashing/freezing.. then it is likely you have a different fault, the power supply is next likely suspect. For that I would suggest looking at the physical mainboard first, particularly all the capacitors. You are looking for any signs of leaking or bulging. Also whilst there, give the mainboard a general inspection, any thing loose? Any marking or signs or corrosion? Also check the memory is well seated into clean slots.

If you do all the above and memory checks out ok and board all seems good then, the CPU is a possibility. CPU's are sometimes difficult to pinpoint, the things to check here are heat, is the CPU overheating? Run some CPU intensive tests like prime95.

Anyway, key to finding faults is:

1. Be methodical.
2. Be open-minded - try to drop any preconceptions you might have over the cause.
3. Be patient.

Anyway, good luck!

 

What exactly do i need to download from their site. Do i need to iso image burn the disk?

 

i do have an old dell 9300 with a burnt out lcd i could pull the hd from if they are the same and swap it to this laptop and see if it will allow me to completely run check disk and hd tune.

The fact that it stops in the same place every time on the HD check is leading me to believe its the problem. My computer is working now... im typing on it... but if i run a check diskprogram it will freeze on that spot... maybe i just hit that spot on the disk before i had to reformat and that was causing the problems. Also windows update says failed to load even after reinstalling windows.

 

im just going to go ahead and get a new HD... how hard are they to install on the m1330's will any SATA 2.5'' drive work???

any recommendations im thinking
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136280

 

That will work fine.

 

blindfoldedhope.

Did you check the memory sticks (RAM)? Remove them and insert them again into their plugs. I had this type of problem with an old Mac laptop.

Apart form many types of explanations, temperature could be one: The laptop is getting warm and something does not connect anymore due to thermal expansion, due to etc. ...

 

well turns out i might be getting a new laptop because my mom wants my m1330... Im gonna order the new hard drive this week.

im looking at a m1340 or m11x any opinions.

 

More problems... the laptop still works... i just got a blue screen for something about USB... Also it wont read a DVD any more...

COuld this all be hard drive related???

 

my windows update is saying "page failed to load" as well..

 

still unsure...

 

new hd in problems solved

 

Aha, this sounds interesting! thanks for telling us ... . Cheers.