I've been given a xps m1530 laptop to repair, the screen is dead and I believe the previous owner used the vga out port to view the laptop on a external monitor. Ive just seen a load of GPU fix guides on you tube, but seeing as the VGA out port works fine, would this mean the lcd itself is at fault? Thanks.
If the VGA port is working find then yes, the screen is at fault. One thing to test is to boot it up and shine a torch at the screen. If you can see an image then either the inverter or backlight has failed and might be cheaper to replace than the whole screen.
Thanks for the replys, just spoke to the person who owened it. It was working and then stopped a year ago, there was display via an external screen. However he just told me something i didnt know and have just found out, its not booting, the cpu is spinning for about 2 seconds then nothing, I dont want to buy parts for this if its not working. First port of call? laptops are much harder than PC's thats for sure! Tried the torch test and nothing, but that could be because the things not booting into a logo at all at the moment.
Tear it down, replace thermal paste, check contacts, so on and so forth. Reassemble; try again. If it doesn't work; you've used about £3 worth of thermal paste and some time. Anything more than that will be 50/50 as to getting it to start again.
Before I realised about the screen and the booting problem last night, i removed the screen housing because it was cracked, and I was also bored so removed the heatsink assembly, cleared the crap thermal paste off, lightly lapped the copper seating and reseated it with AS5. Its not an overheating problem i press the power button the fan whirs for 2 seconds then dies, the power LED goes on for 2 seconds then goes out, if i press the button the led lights up then goes out again. Ive read on another thread thats a signal for mobo failure? Ive taken both sticks of ram out and tried to boot it (it would boot without ram wouldn't it?) but it didnt, some led lights just flashed at me. I think it could be the motherboard? Turning into an expensive free laptop
Yeah it sounds like the motherboard has failed now. It's probably not worth sinking any more money or time into it.
Thanks for the replies Yeah sadly I tihnk its the mobo too, I really disslike laptops, this is a nice xps, fingerprint recognition, new lid and screen and it would have been perfect... now its a strip and sell job Such a shame, The last 3 dells I've come accross have all had problems. Got another inspiron 1570 which blue screened twice after new OS installs, I've bought it off someone and I was hoping a new hard drive might work... now ive also found the flat cable had a gold connector slightly bent... So I'm hoping a new hard drive and a repaired or new motherboard to I/O cable will solve the problem, but now i think it could be another motherboard problem as this model also suffered from overheating graphics!!! Any ideas if i could be right?
