Dell XPS Notebook : POS

[HAVOC]

I spent a few hours tonight with a clients Dell XPS Notebook.

P4 3.4Ghz "Prescott" lol
1GIG sodimm PC3200
80GIG toshiba HDD
Radeon 9700 mobility

The issue is the following:

Press the power button. Sometimes it will boot to windows just fine.
Once in windows for (any) period of time, the LCD screen will go black.
The LED lights on notebook will still be on and fans are running. You can't get the screen to come back.

Restart. Sometimes it will restart and sometimes when you press the power button, the LED lights come on, then they all shut off and the PC will not boot. Then after pressing the power button enough, yu can get it to boot.

Startup. I've had a period, when pressing the power button wouldn't do anything at all. It wouldn't startup and none of the lights would come on at all.

So... then at one point I actually got into windows and installed "speedfan" which has a "Dell Notebook" mode.

CPU - 89C
GPU - 55C
HDD - 30C
DIMM - 44C

Holy crap!!! So I shut down and removed the fans on the under belly of the notebook, removed the dust and also removed the dust that was clogging the heatsinks that are at the back of the notebook, which are connected to Heatpipes, which come from the CPU.

Reboot... Start Speed Fan

CPU - 65C
GPU - 55C
HDD - 30C
DIMM - 44C

Cleaning the fans & heatsinks lowered the CPU temp over 25C.
I let it run for an hour. Then, it just shut off. I couldn't get it to reboot. Then finally it reboots, I check the Speedfan logs and find it was back up to 85C.

SO OBVIOUSLY this notebook suffers from major heat issues.
What can be done? I was looking into the "Vantec Lapcool 2" but what is that going to lower the temps? 5 to 10C may-be???

What does everyone think?
Please... This is serious, no "Dell" related comments. It's not my Notebook, it's a clients.

 

[AnthraX]

1) Still warrantied? If it is, just send it back to Dell.

2) I had a very similar problem with mine. I think it was almost the exact same problem. The only reason I didn't try and fix it was because it was still under warranty. They had to replace the mobo.

 

[HAVOC]

Actually it's no longer under warranty. It's passed it's year. Plus, the owner also lost all of the (OEM Windows Disk as well as all recovery and driver dsks).

I basically explained the issue to him and told him he can try a notebook cooler platform or send it back to Dell and have them service it.

I hate notebooks and would never dream of taking them apart.