Computer dead

anksta

anksta

anksta

Soldato
Joined
19 Jan 2005
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I have a Dell Inspiron 531 that I got almost 3 years aago now, I'd always had custom builds before but was sick of the issues so just bought a full thing in one go and never had a single issue with it, until now.

It hadn't been used in 4 months cos I was in China and now I'm back using it everyday its just gotten worse and worse over the past few days, started by me going to the toilet or something and coming back to find it had restarted, then it wouldn't boot up the first time and had to have a couple of goes. Then it started freezing, sometimes bluescreen sometimes not. It kept going to system repair and asking to do system restore, I did this the first few times and then after a while let it go and after about half an hour it restarted fine, a message saying it had fixed an Nvidia driver, after that it worked alright for a couple of days but then today it broke like 4 or 5 times, coming back on with even the Dell sign screwed in the BIOS screen, loads through to windows with the screen of a rubbish 80s video game. When you restart that from the windows log on it loads ok, then the cycle starts again.

I haven't put anything new in or on it other than the new vlc player and whatnot, dont play games, dont run pirated software or anythin. I am assuming its the motherboard as I think its onboard graphics but any input will do.

I have another motherboard somewhere that I have no idea whether its better than this one, I've only really done graphics card installations and formats before so I dont know much about changin motherboards, if I just change the motherboard will I need to format and everything? As I have a fair few things on there I'd like to get off.

Any help appreciated, cheers.
 
Well what else have you installed bar VLC?
You should have some kind of repair disk that can restore your pc to factory which if that doesnt work means you have more problems.
 
Biz.Kid09 said:
Well what else have you installed bar VLC?
You should have some kind of repair disk that can restore your pc to factory which if that doesnt work means you have more problems.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure I binned that.

Not that long ago and all actually, I'd say within the last month.

Sod's law that is innit. Had it literally 3 years and never had even the slightest thing wrong with it.

What else can I do? Does it not sound like a hardware thing rather than software? If its breakin the BIOS screen.
 
If it was mobo it wouldnt be able to go into Bios.

As it is going past Bios, and posting with the Windows screen coming up might be hard drive.

Can you do a repair disk on the hard drive using Windows see if that cures it.
 
worthingsaxovtr said:
If it was mobo it wouldnt be able to go into Bios.

As it is going past Bios, and posting with the Windows screen coming up might be hard drive.

Can you do a repair disk on the hard drive using Windows see if that cures it.
Click to expand...



tried to get on then, got past the log on, msn starts up and then thats it, dead again, just gonna leave a black screen for a little while see what it does.

Joke and half this, doin my head in, this is why I bought a full pc in the first place, specifically to not have to deal with this.
 
Sounds like the graphics chip in the motherboard has overheated (NB, SB I cant remember!). This is way too common in pre-build systems, especially laptops. If the worst comes to the worst replacing the mobo should be fine. I wouldn't get this done via a PC repair shop and especially via Dell, they will rip you off with an overpriced part.

I have had a few Dell PCs and laptops for a few years, they tend to break down very quickly, and overheating graphics are a common fault with them. The sad thing is, they are designed to break after a period of time, so you buy a new PC or take out a protection plan with them. When my Dell XPS laptop went down with overheating graphics, it was covered as it was a company machine. They replaced the laptop mainboard, then put in some poor heatpipe cooling solution with thermal pads. They do not learn from mistakes and use adequate cooling.

Dell are well known for using inferior parts. [/RANT]
 
If I put a graphics card in there, will that fix it? I might have an old one somewhere, in fact I definitely do, not sure what it is but it will say on it and I can get on the drivers on the internet probably innit?
 
I have a Dell Inspiron 531 that I got almost 3 years aago now, I'd always had custom builds before but was sick of the issues so just bought a full thing in one go and never had a single issue with it, until now.

It hadn't been used in 4 months cos I was in China and now I'm back using it everyday its just gotten worse and worse over the past few days, started by me going to the toilet or something and coming back to find it had restarted, then it wouldn't boot up the first time and had to have a couple of goes. Then it started freezing, sometimes bluescreen sometimes not. It kept going to system repair and asking to do system restore, I did this the first few times and then after a while let it go and after about half an hour it restarted fine, a message saying it had fixed an Nvidia driver, after that it worked alright for a couple of days but then today it broke like 4 or 5 times, coming back on with even the Dell sign screwed in the BIOS screen, loads through to windows with the screen of a rubbish 80s video game. When you restart that from the windows log on it loads ok, then the cycle starts again.

I haven't put anything new in or on it other than the new vlc player and whatnot, dont play games, dont run pirated software or anythin. I am assuming its the motherboard as I think its onboard graphics but any input will do.

I have another motherboard somewhere that I have no idea whether its better than this one, I've only really done graphics card installations and formats before so I dont know much about changin motherboards, if I just change the motherboard will I need to format and everything? As I have a fair few things on there I'd like to get off.

Any help appreciated, cheers.
Click to expand...

Have you seen this Dell support journal HERE, also your manual HERE.
 
Right, so turned on this morning, all fine, being the sort of person I am I convinced myself it was now fixed (like gays telling themselves they're straight) and we were away for a few hours. Then of course it breaks, so I took off the cover and removed all the dust that was in there (a lot), this made the little BIOS splash screen a little better but no difference.

Now I've got it to a point where it loads up almost every time but the resolution is the lowest possible and you can't change it, I'm typing this now with the back button on my firefox like a 3rd down the screen and this little box is almost the full width and its a 24inch monitor. I thought I had another graphics card but its a different size, I didn't even think this one had a card in it but it does and you can't plug in on board so I don't know what to do.

I had a look at those sites and if I make a restore disk or whatever its called will that erase all my data? I have quite a bit of stuff I'd like to keep and nowhere to back it up onto and no money to buy anything.

Am I screwed?
 
Arite, found another graphics card my mate's dad gave me ages ago, GeForce 7300 I think it is, whacked that in, started straight up, not had a problem with it since.

I've not chucked it yet just in case but this pretty much confirms it was defo the graphics innit? Shall I bin it/
 
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