Avoid 1 year laptop warranties

Problem

Switched on my laptop the other morning, before preparing a habitual bowl of cereal, and returned to find a blank screen despite a happily glowing power LED. Hmmm, I flipped the switch to restart.

Watching everything, closely now, I notice to my dismay that there is a series of yellow green dots in columns appearing over the intital bios screen on boot. It continues during the display of the windows progress logo, after which instead of the normal login screen greeting me there’s nothing. Blank nothingness. As I restart for a second time, I note the whirring sounds that I associate with windows shut-down ~ interesting.

Debug

After my first calm moment of thought: I consider that this probably isn’t some software incompatibility or horrendous virus. Although the most likely culprit is the graphics card, the next easiest suspect to eliminate is the screen.

Hitting F8 after the bios posts (shivering at the sight streaked white through the options text) I start up in safe mode. Success, hmmm, no streaking at all, perhaps the graphics card is ok after all.

Check out device manager, nothing out of place, unrecognised or the like. I take the opportunity to remove some recent software installs (although, this is probably less debugging and more prayer). System seems stable in safe mode. Reboot number three.

No change.

Bounce back to windows safe mode, uninstall NVIDIA’s drivers.

Restart (5). Further success (well, if you ignore the sinking feeling that the continuing streak of bios and windows causes) we have clean and clear screens at a substantially reduced screen resolution.

Google (yes, that word has almost superceded ‘find’ or ’search’ when looking for something online) for streaking issues. Little of relevance; download latest stable NVIDIA drivers (hmmm, did I say recent? For the GeForce Go 7900GS mobile chip ~ 5th July 2006 [2006-07-05] ~ version 84.63).

Reinstall graphics driver, installing… Yes, I want to install in spite of it not being certified by XP… blah blah… Black screen of nothingness. Ok, so we’re back to driver incompatibility (ignoring the bios bit) or faulty graphics hardware.

Revisit safe mode; Dell website for specially wrapped and approved NVIDIA drivers. No progress. (Let’s call it 10 more reboots.)

Warranty & Support

Sounds like a support call is in order; which is probably the first time one begins to wonder exactly when one bought said equipment and under which of the multitude of warranties does it fall?

As it turns out the laptop was purchased around 1 year 6 months ago. Fortunately, because of some combination of special offers on warranty deals and laptop hardware paranoia; I had opted for a 3 year next day on site warranty. Not so fast, we are talking about a laptop purchased in Australia, and it’s wet sitting here in the London rain.

Off to the Dell websites (for each country). Dell has this useful service tag page which provides my specific applicable warranties and their expiry dates. My resulting list of 6 different warranties is a little over complicated and could do with linking direct to each warranty’s details, but I’m not complaining since there was no BS regarding looking up the right country, standing on one leg, touching your nose with your eyes closed, etcetera.

Next stop dell.co.uk technical support via online chat. Calls to helpdesks are often a little bit of ‘Russian roulette‘ (especially if you’ve ever worked in a technical helpdesk environment, and can recall the worst of your colleagues) however this is a positive story.

In spite of the representative being unable to locate my details (lost in the ether, no doubt) ~ I wasn’t fobbed off. In fact I was encouraged to continue, no nonsense about being unable to help with another nation’s laptop.

After fully describing my situation, it was suggested I hook up to an external monitor to check if the streaking appeared there also (it did). And to try running some software to perform a hardware test (software didn’t work).

The technician’s view was to replace not just the graphics card but also the motherboard (given the risk of repeated repairs dragging on). Who am I to argue. Advised that a repair could be performed on site the day after tomorrow (not quite next day, however my machine was still usable) between the usual tiny window of 9-5.30pm. Shortly after leaving the chat, I received emails including the chat transcript, then an email with the wrong service tag and laptop model, confirming the date of repair.

The next day, I received a call from the technician re-confirming the date and address. The following day, as planned, the technician turns up at about 2.30pm; to my surprise on a motor bike (not much room for equipment), and settles down to work.

Another scare when he notices that the laptop in question is an Inspiron 9400 not the Latitude described on the document. Fortunately the correct parts were ordered and supplied.

Interestingly the technician appeared to use his smart phone as a reference for specific guidelines to disassemble the laptop. After removing dozens of screws, two at a time, with the precision and proud efficiency of experience, the wireless adapter and memory were swapped to the alternative motherboard. Next: some more panels a popping, complete removal of the screen, keyboard and the removal of the unusual (by desktop standards) heatsinks of the gpu and cpu. Then replace the problematic gpu and the motherboards were finally ready to exchange places.

Now simply reverse the hundred and one steps just performed with equal efficiency and you’re done!

Flip the switch ~ streak free.

Oddly the intel proset wireless software seemed to have issues. Nothing a quick uninstall couldn’t fix.

Conclusion

• Without an extended warranty I’d probably be looking for a new laptop or paying through the nose for some parts and servicing ~ almost always worthwhile to extend laptop support
• Research your issue as much as possible in case you spin ‘bullet’ on the roulette wheel of support
• Having even slightly empowered support personnel is preferred to strict adherence to process
• Even presumably strict processes have to work around numerous incorrect details
• Partial points awarded to graphics card manufacturers for fault tolerance that allows some functionality
• I think there’s a certain fascination associated with any task when it is carried out with a high degree of proud efficiency
• Points to Dell for adequate support