XPS 15 9550 fried. What are my options?

I have an XPS 15 9550 that is almost two years old now. FHD, i7, 16gb ram, 512GB SSD, GTX960M.

I couldn't boot it up the other day, so I plugged it in and immediately smelled something burning. A wisp of smoke came from the keyboard area and now it's fried. Not sure how this happened, but the only thing I can think of is that my dog peed on the side of the laptop several months ago. I cleaned it out pretty good, let it dry, and it worked just fine after that. But maybe something happened resulting from that? Anyone else have problems like this?

Either way, what can I do? Any chances of repairing? I bought a torx screwdriver set and I plan to open up the laptop to take a look. I'll post pictures once I do.

Is it safe to assume I need to replace the mobo? I'm looking at prices on eBay and it looks to be around $400 for a refurbished board. Is it difficult to install? Should I buy a 9560 mobo? Is it compatible?

UPDATE:

Got some images of the internals.

 

Sorry to hear this. The burning smell and failure is a bad sign.

Even the slightest bit of water on the boards is a problem. If it doesn't kill at first there are corrosive effects. Urine and sugary drinks can be much worse than water. If you got it cleaned professionally immediately after the incident, you might have reduced the probability of failure. But that is expensive and provides no guarantee.

Do you mean the liquidation was on the side of the keyboard or that the laptop was closed and he soaked the ports? If it was the first case, your keyboard will likely have issues in the future. There are additional boards and components on the computer also that could be impacted. You really don't know what the damage was until you open the computer.

Also, I would try to get the battery disconnected ASAP. You may need to properly dispose of it as outside the computer it does not provide much protection. There may be some charge/protection circuitry on the battery that was damaged by the urine. That battery has a lot of power and you want to reduce any probability of fire.

 

Thanks for the response. The laptop was open on the coffee table and he lifted his leg and squirted a bit of pee on the left side of the computer. Just marking, really. So only a bit of pee. It hit the screen and the top of the keyboard. Not sure how much actually went into the computer. Ports didn't get peed on. I cleaned it off as best I could and later on that night I fired it up and the laptop was working fine and it worked fine for several more months. It was only the other day that this happened...

So I'm not entirely sure that the two are related. I'm going to open the laptop up once I'm able to and remove the battery, per your suggestion.

 

No way to know without opening the laptop as there is usualy trace evidence of failure, although that might not be definitive.

If you search these forums, you will see lots of failures of the XPS 9550. But "burning smell failures" are not a popular failure mode.

 

Replacing the mother board is not too hard to do

I don't know if the 9560 board would fit in your case, would really need to have the side by side, or see if someone has already tried and posted reuslts

Good Luck.

 

It might just be something like a capacitor, I believe those smoke when they pop. If you have some soldering skills, sometimes you can repair it yourself. It's not like you can break a broken motherboard.

 

I'd replace the dog if I were you... and trust me...I've got enough dog issues of my own but thankfully not pee issues...

 

You have a few options. One option is to buy a motherboard, and sell your damaged one. A damaged non-functional motherboard sells for about $80 on eBay.

Other option is to buy a new laptop, and sell your existing damaged laptop. A used functioning XPS 9550 sells for about $900; and a damaged non-functional unit sells for about $400. Check the Dell Outlet if you don't want to risk any eBay scams.

There are a few reasons why you would consider replacing the entire laptop, instead of repairing it:

1) lf you are not confident in your ability to repair laptops, then something like the XPS 9550 isn't the ideal way to start learning. Thin-and-light laptops will use design you don't see in regular-sized laptops or desktops. There will be tons of little miniature screws, lots of thin ribbon cables, and a very specific order of dis/re-assembly. It isn't "easy" by any means for someone who hasn't done it before.

2) There may be other damage to other components you don't know about yet (such as the battery, display, defective ribbon cables from the power surge, etc). All of that will take extra time and expense to troubleshoot and fix. If you don't have the time or patience to deal with that, then just pay a bit extra to buy/sell the entire laptop unit.

3) Maybe you had your eye on another shiny new laptop? This would be a good time to consider buying the one you've had your eye on.

 

Update: so I opened up the laptop and to be honest, everything looked OK. I noticed some green corrosion on one component, which I assume is from dog pee. I cleaned it off as best I could, but if something blew out and I smelled a burning smell, I assume that won't fix anything? Just cleaning off components? I haven't put it back together yet because I need to pick up thermal paste, but can anyone take a look and let me know what they think?

Images here:

https://ibb.co/cAJL95
https://ibb.co/duHDU5
https://ibb.co/kstFbk
https://ibb.co/j7DgGk

 

My hobbist thoughts follow. A local tech will provide you with a professional opinion, which may differ, after reviewing the machine.

Well that green foam is typcial when liquids contact electronics so you know the probable cause.

This damaged area is the vrm which regulates power and gets hot. It looks like at least two mosfets (the black squares) are damaged.Those mosfets are not off the shelf components. And the motherboard around them is charred and possiblely damaged several layers deep; if so, that will not be repaired. There seems to be physical damage to other components. The fact that we see several damaged components could mean there is additional downstream damage.

Your data should be recoverable.

I think it is safe to say your motherboard is toast. If a replacement motherboard is not too expensive, I might try to salvage the remaining components. Or just buy a new laptop.

EDIT - sorry this happened to you

 

Thanks for the input. So no need to repaste and see if it fires up? Should I go ahead and buy a new MOBO on ebay?

 

Yeah sorry dude, that VRM area looks toast. I would call it a loss. You could always see if there are any electronic repair places, resoldering surface mount stuff isn't hard, but I couldn't tell from the pics if the traces are destroyed...

 

For health & safety reasons, I would NOT plug in a damaged board to mains or connect it to the battery.

As noted above, other components on your laptop could be destroyed or have their lifespan shortened. You won't know about the former until you try. The latter is more difficult to assess. The good news is that a lot of liquid damaged laptops are repairable.

If a new motherboard is cheap, that might be worth the risk as you already know how to remove the motherboard (which is painful) and can DIY it.

When considering the buy vs. repair, assume the keyboard was wet and may go wonky over time. I suppose a lower probability as it has held up thus far.

 

Anything drink related that isn't pure water (not tap) will eventually etch away at the board/keyboard etc. I would consider either making an insurance claim or looking for a replacement laptop, you could go for one thats got a damaged screen (9560 will be fine) but I wouldn't bother putting a new board in as hooking up your old parts may leave you with another magic smoke experience.
Maybe if you got it apart the same day it happened the story would be different but historical damage that took time to manifest is a write off when I assess for insurance claims.

 

GoNz0 is a professional laptop engineer with over a decade of experience so his advice tends to be among the very best here.

Wish Dell provided that level of support lol

 

I think you might be better off selling your notebook on eBay (as broken), even if you just turn around and buy a used one of the same model off eBay. $400 is a lot to spend on a notebook that's currently worth less than $900 if it was working and working on one of these is a huge pain, everything is too damn small. You might end up spending the money and end up back in the same situation.

 

Bloody auto correct put asses not assess

 

Thanks for the advice. I'm going to look for a new laptop and sell this one as not working on ebay. I bought a SSD to USB adapter from Amazon to get the data off the HD and I took out the RAM so I can upgrade the RAM in whatever new laptop I get.

Should i get the 9560? Will a 7th generation i5 and the 1050 outperform the 6th generation i7 with the 960m?

 

Yes it does, faster CPU but no hyperthreading and better performing GPU with the extra bits a 10 series has over a 9 series.
The lack of hyperthreading will hit performance depending if the application can make use of hyperthreading.

 

Looks like 9560 has faster RAM as well. I'm trying to save as much as I can, so I can still drop in the slower Ram from my 9550 right?

 

Correct, I have also tested that. The benchmarks are within a couple of percent due the the slower ram having tighter timings.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

 

The same happened to me (or my 9560) yesterday: I plugged the power adapter in and after a buzz a thin smoke flag appeared and it was dead.

Alex

 

Jeez. What caused it? I hope it's not a serial problem with these laptops.

 

So I bought a refurbished 9560, with 8GB ram and a 256GB SSD. I plan to swap in my 16GB and 512GB SSD from the 9550.

Once I swap in my old HD, will the OS function? I imagine since the hardware is different, some of the drivers are going to be weird. Should I do a clean reformat and new install of Windows? I think Windows was on a partition on my old SSD, so I should be able to reformat and reinstall from my old SSD, correct?

Also, when I bought the 9550, I had a license for MS Office but the refurbished laptop doesn't come with MS Office. How can I transfer the license?

Sorry for all the questions... first time I've had to do this.

 

It should boot in the new laptop but you will need the new wifi drivers ready to install.
Personally I would do a clean install, as for office you will need the licence key.

 

OK so the new laptop came in yesterday. I booted it up and checked it and it ran just fine. I then put in the old ram (slightly slower) and the old 512gb SSD from the 9550. I turned it on and after what seemed like a very long time (I was worried that I was about to ruin my SECOND laptop) it booted up and I was in Windows. After a few updates, everything functioned good as new! I even was able to set up the fingerprint sensor.

I'm still planning on doing a clean install, however.

Here are instructions from Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/5qe3oh/how_to_fresh_install_on_xps_15_9560/

And from this board:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ean-install-guide-custom-iso-download.789769/

I assume they are effectively the same and will give me the same result? Last time I did this (years ago) I was doing installs from a DVD and I needed a physical Windows key. From what I've read, that's no longer the case; the key is part of my BIOS and it will simply update on it's own? Is that correct?

 

Correct. The extended boot happens with new ram as it has to perform memory training with ddr4, it can happen at random if it thinks it needs to do it again.

You may make more money selling the old one in bits of you can wait for it all to sell.

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Yes, I figured I would sell the body, screen and the mobo together, but sell the RAM, SSD, and charger separately. Although I guess I could pull the mobo out and sell that separately too...

 

Predictive text fail on my last post!

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