BSODs on Inspiron 1720 laptop

[NathanE]

About 8 months ago I bought the above laptop for my mum. I also had optional extra upgrades fitted which were to upgrade the 2GB memory to 4GB and to have Nvidia 8600M 256MB graphics instead of the onboard Intel carp.

It runs Vista SP1 Home Premium 32-bit (go figure, surely specifying 4GB memory should imply a x64 edition of Windows? )

Ever since we bought it it has not been particularly stable. It has blue screened probably once or twice a week with MEMORY_MANAGEMENT (0x0000001A). I've run these memory dumps through WinDbg but all my efforts have came up fruitless. The BSODs seemingly occur in any driver, even the bowls of the Windows kernel. Which leads me to believe it is not an issue with any specific device driver, per se. That said I have seen obscure things like this before so I have, this week, upgraded the laptop to use all the latest device drivers. Latest Nvidia, latest BIOS, latest network/WLAN etc. Just to rule out everything as much as possible.

I tried the wonderful Dell technical support yesterday. Spent an hour on the phone, and probably at least 55 minutes of that time was listening to their onhold music. All they asked me to do was run some Pre-boot Automated Diagnostic... which, as I suspected, passed with flying colours. Then they somehow had enough knowledge of the problem to classify it as a software issue. I was then warned that this may cost money and that " should get my credit card ready". I am not joking here. So after getting through to their software support line the Indian women told me that the problem appears to be "software corruption" and that I must Reinstall Windows. What? Can you repeat that? "Reinstall Windows". I said No given that the Windows install is as clean as the day it left the Dell factory and then I asked for the next possible solution on their list. To which they replied "There is no other solution on my list."

Clearly the Dell support route is completely pointless. I certainly won't be buying a computer from this brand again. But still it leaves me with this reoccuring BSOD problem.

I have now discovered all the lark about 8600M chips being faulty and overheating and eventual complete death. Could it be this that is causing these MEMORY_MANAGEMENT BSODs?

Bare in the mind the laptop is only used for web surfing and e-mail. Literally nothing else. No games or anything. I haven't noticed it running particularly hot or anything either.

What should I do?

 

[iraiguana]

You could get the laptop to go into the advanced diag tests which I had to spend 2 hours with dell to get them to tell me the button combo required. As I had told them it turned out to be a duff hdd with my laptop.

Anyway back to your problem the advanced diag does a more in depth testing and can take a long time to complete. Also try running "memtest" booted from usb/cd to see if your memory has any issues?

 

[NathanE]

I did a Memtest86 for 6 passes and over 5 hours which found 0 errors. I'll try the more advanced Dell diagnostic.

 

[Cybermyk]

I think if you hold down the function key (fn) it starts the diags from a boot partition. You'll have to sit with it cos it asks questions.

 

[Lord Alibaski]

Just before xmas I sent my g/fs Inspiron 1525 back to dell because all I could hear on it was some kind of *dripping* sound coming from the hard drive. I too run the (FN) boot diagnostic tool (keeping hold of the FN button until it boots up) I ran the tool just as I thought it passed with flying colours.

I phoned dell up and told them I wanted the drive replacing they said fine at 1st but then put me onto another support agent who ask me to update the BIOS (which I already did prior before phoning them up) he told me to run the diagnostic tool (which I did before phoning them) he told me he had never heard of anything like this fault before! I asked him does he ever visit the dell custom support forums if so then he would have seen this issue but he didn't. He then told me he would need the full laptop and not just the drive sending back so they could do a full system diagnostic.

The laptop was only gone for 5 days so that wasn't to bad, anyway the final analysis from dell ...the laptop passed so nothing up with it..but funny enough I took down the drive model number before it went away, the drive was a western digital 250GB. Now if there were nothing up with it why send it back formatted and with a completely new drive in the laptop which is a fujitsu.

My conclusion of dell - phone support is a waste of time nothing more to say.