Trying to breathe life into a *real* R1 m17x...

[Jzp-notebookreview]

...and I'm having trouble finding proper references to disassembly.

This past week, my wife's 2009 (April order, delivery was much later in the year likely due to the dell acquisition) m17x R1 keeled over. It had some video strangeness that I chalked it up to old drivers and was planning to give it a good cleaning and tune-up this weekend. Mistimed. :-( I'm not an overclocker or serious hardware hacker, just a generalist geek that can follow instructions and do minor repairs.

All the hardware references I can easily find are clearly post-acquisition "R1" with the beveled front and not the original, flat-front like this one... and the latter one clearly is a better design for cleaning and servicability. The main system fan isn't modular in this model, etc.

I've slurped the data from the drive, took that+empty drive bay+RAM+GPUs out and cleaned, patched it all back together and no joy. I've clearly screwed the pooch somewhere along the way, and was hoping someone here might have a pointer for a hardware guide for this puppy.

Original spec from order:
Area-51® m17x

Video/Graphics Card: Dual 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 8700M GT – SLI Enabled
Display: 17" WideUXGA 1920 x 1200 LCD (1200p) with Clearview Technology
Keyboard Options: AlienFX® Illuminated Keyboard – Exclusive Design
AlienFX®: Alienware® AlienFX® System Lighting - Lime
Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T9300 2.5GHz (6MB Cache 800MHz FSB)
Operating System (Office software not included): Windows Vista® Ultimate (64-bit Edition) with Service Pack 1
Memory: 8GB Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 667MHz – 2 x 4096MB
Requires Windows Vista 64-bit Edition
Notebook Tuners and Remotes: Internal Digital/Analog (ATSC) MiniCard TV Tuner
System Drive: Single Drive Configuration - 320GB 7,200RPM (16MB Cache) w/ Free Fall Protection
Optical Drives : 8x Dual Layer Burner (DVD±RW, CD-RW) w/ LightScribe Technology
Wireless: Internal Intel® Wireless 4965 a/b/g/Draft-N Mini-Card
Sound Card : Internal High-Definition Audio with surround sound
Warranty: 2-Year AlienCare Onsite Service and 24/7 Toll-Free Phone Support
Power: Additional AC Adapter - Alienware® m17x 230 Watt Auto-switch AC Adapter

[Mr. Fox]

You may be suffering from the "NVIDIA Defect" and there is a guide in the main Alienware forum for how to fix that. I'll look for the link and come back with it.

What are the symptoms of the "video strangeness" you are experiencing? You've been very fortunate to have Go 8700M GT cards last this long. I take it your wife may not stress the GPU modules too much. My systems with the Go 8700M GT modules usually lasted 6 months or less under conditions of gaming 3 to 4 hours on a daily basis.

Edit: If it is the NVIDIA GPUs that are causing your issues, here is the link: HOW TO: repair your dead graphics card in your alienware!

[Jzp-notebookreview]

She does quite a bit in flash and photo editin, "just" Lightroom more than full Photoshop these days. She'd had some screen blank-then-return that looked to me like GPU reset or switchover; I've no idea how she had things configured. There had been grinding sounds from one of the video card fans last year that went away after a thorough cleaning. We have dusty birds [cockatoo] so I'm routinely cleaning out powder dander from our machines.

She reported that the last gasp (before she turned it over to be sure I salvaged the data) was a grey-out band of the screen image across both the bottom and right-hand side. The system was unresponsive and she had to hard power-down. My only steps were to
- yank battery
- open up the drive bay, pop it in another machine and start slurping data
- open up the remaining everything (RAM, video car pair) and blow out all the dust
- pull a piece of foam (one of three spacers for the video card door) from the CPU heatsink fins (visible/rachable form the video card bay) where it clearly had been sucked and was limiting airflow & degrading the heat sink's function
- reassemble everything the next day after the data copied (~700G over USB...)
- fail to boot or get any video signal or seemingly seek the drive [ulp - what if the CPU bit it?]
- strip down, re-clean, re-assemble, and re-fail to boot
- tear out hair and start searching the interwebs

I'll read the full comments on the card-baking idea before giving it a go. Have to dig out an external monitor to see if the s-video out at least tells me if the machine is booting. Also need to hunt any ebay bids for parts.

Really hoping to find a pointer to hardware guides [support.dell.com of course only has the latter models] so I can properly diag the motherboard.

[Mr. Fox]

The GPU baking works. I had two laptops with affected GPU modules that came back to life after baking. It's only a temporary solution, unfortunately... but temporary is relative. Some get an extra year or two of service out of their video cards, some don't. You could send off the GPUs to have them professionally re-balled and I've heard that is a permanent fix. I've not had it done.