Dell M1330 problem

kutmasta · 1 Apr 2009 at 21:47

My M1330 died on me today. I think the graphics card has packed in, because the screen stays black (with occasional coloured vertical lines) and the VGA output doesn't work at all. Some quick googling shows me that there are loads of faulty GPUs shipped with this particular model (Nvidia messed up the dies apparantly)

Is there any way I can confirm it is indeed the graphics card that is the problem?

If thats the case I reckon I'm completely out of luck, considering the warranty ran out exactly 1 month ago, replacement motherboards cost about £200 + labour to fit it.

Dappy · 1 Apr 2009 at 22:26

If your not getting any VGA output, then yes the graphics card is the problem and as you say this is the most common problem with this model.

Is your laptop under warranty? If not, I think Dell extended the warranty to cover this particular problem for an additional year.

kutmasta · 1 Apr 2009 at 22:42

Dappy said:
Is your laptop under warranty? If not, I think Dell extended the warranty to cover this particular problem for an additional year.

I'm fairly sure it isn't. Like I said, according to the Dell website my warranty ran out about a month ago. I'm gonna try and contact them tomorrow though.

Gibber · 2 Apr 2009 at 23:01

How long have you had the laptop? I beleive Dell has an extra years warranty on laptops with these GPU's as they've acknowedged that they're likely to fail much quicker than expected.

Andy90 · 4 Apr 2009 at 00:51

Irrespective of the warranty running out 1 month ago, the Laptop should be of 'Merchantable quality'

What this basically means is that barring misuse of an item, it should work as intended for a reasonable amount of time. Failing after 13 months isn't seen as reasonable.

You can look up the term Merchantable quality on the Internet, I found this link on an online law site, which gives you some background.

http://www.desktoplawyer.co.uk/dt/browse/law/lawguide/defective-products/the-common-law-position/S75860-33506X/

If you do not get any joy from Dells Customer Service (and they can be a bloody nightmare) then visit your Local Trading Standards Office - they can be very helpful.

elitetrick · 14 Apr 2009 at 23:44

My 1330 did exactly this a couple weeks ago. I eventually got off my lazy ass and emailed them, they replied within a day, and booked an engineer to fix it the next week.
He came today, said he does loads of these and if it wasnt for this common problem he would have barely anything to do. took him about 20minutes to replace the motherboard. works fine now.
i bought mine off ebay with 1 year warranty that has run out. this problem has 1 year extended warranty so just fire off an email. Really surprised at the exceptional customer service given all the horror stories you read about dell.