Dell Studio 1535 wont start. Flashing mute and volume up buttons, solid volume down button.

Hi, my Studio has just crashed and won't restart. As I mentioned in the title, the mute and volume up buttons are flashing and the volume down button is solidly lit. I could find every other diagnostic code apart from this one when searching the Internet.

Does anyone have any advice?

Thanks,

Andy

 

are there any beep(sounds) from your laptop when you try to start it ????
if so.......this might help you if you have "strange" beeps coming from your laptop.....


otherwise..........(as always) start with a clean install of windows just to exclude windows glitches or driver glitches.....then proceed with the trouble shooting


ps...i guess the motherboard/gpu..........repaired several of laptops with this kind of "deadness"

 

Hi KSMB; thanks for your reply

There are no beeps. Upon powering up the media lights do their knightrider thing as normal and the hard drive light flashes as normal. Then the diagnostic code starts. It doesn't even get to the bios screen. I wouldn't be able to re-install Windows in this situation.

I did recently fit a new motherboard as the GPU had failed. Everything was fitted correctly and it was working fine, within normal operating temperatures (CPU around 40°C and GPU around 50°C). I really could do with finding out what the diagnostic code means. I don't want to replace the motherboard (again) if it's something more simple or a CPU fault. As I said, this is pretty much the only error code that I couldn't locate. Very frustrating

 

This is infuriating.

I have now replaced the motherboard and the same blinking lights are occurring.

The original motherboard was a 1537 board (OP171H) the graphics chip died on that. It would come one for about 20 seconds, start to boot up, then the screen would go black. I checked with an external monitor to confirm it was the graphics chip.

The only board I could buy was a 1535 board. It worked fine for a week and then crashed. On restarting the flashing error code (from the original post) started blinking. It wouldn't even boot to BIOS,. I've now replaced the board with another (new) 1535 board and the same blinking error code occurs.

The strange thing is, when I put the original 1537 board back in, it works and starts to boot up as normal, until the screen goes black. But it boots into bios fine and starts to boot Windows.

I really could do with finding what this error code means.

Anyone know any more?

Typically this is happening a few weeks before my PhD thesis is due to be submitted. I could scream!