Dell Inspiron 5737—possible motherboard problems

penton

Estimable
Jan 9, 2016
2
0
4,510
Hello guys,

Over the past 3-4 months I've been having many problems with my Dell Inspiron 5737 (that I bought a year and a half ago), which is running Windows 7:

1) This may or may not be linked to the other issues below, but the problems started 3-4 months ago, when I started having battery problems. The battery was no longer detected by neither Windows nor could not be seen in the BIOS. After pulling out the battery and doing lots of power button pushing and trying to diagnose the problem—initially, the battery could be seen by windows, but could not be charged, later it became undetectable by the whole system— the battery problem disappeared in a week, and the battery problems have not returned ever since. The battery works well right now, and hasn't really shown significant problems or wear.

2) 3-4 months ago, I started having slow Windows boot times—normally 30 seconds of boot time turned into 3 minutes, during which I could see the Windows logo, but the hard disk did not have any activity for like 1-1.5 minutes. The slow boot times were sporadic, 1 out of every 4 boots or so
was slow, but whenever the boot time was long, so did the shutdown time, which neared 1.5 minutes to shut down the computer, and even putting it to sleep took considerably longer. A week after that, I started noticing that the DVD-ROM drive disappeared from the Computer window, mostly when the loading boot time was increased. I went to the Event Viewer, and going back through the Warnings and Errors I found this:

Starting on the 2nd of September (out of nowhere) and ever since, whenever I booted windows and the loading time was long (and perhaps sometimes even when they were short), these Errors and warnings that had not been present until then started to show up very regularly:

"The speed of processor 0 in group 0 is being limited by system firmware. The processor has been in this reduced performance state for 71 seconds since the last report."

"The speed of processor 3 in group 0 is being limited by system firmware. The processor has been in this reduced performance state for 71 seconds since the last report."

"The speed of processor 2 in group 0 is being limited by system firmware. The processor has been in this reduced performance state for 71 seconds since the last report."

"The speed of processor 1 in group 0 is being limited by system firmware. The processor has been in this reduced performance state for 71 seconds since the last report."

"The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load: cdrom"

"A fatal hardware error has occurred.
Reported by component: Processor Core
Error Source: Machine Check Exception
Error Type: Cache Hierarchy Error
Processor ID: 0
The details view of this entry contains further information."

"Realtek PCIe FE Family Controller is disconnected from network."

"WLAN Extensibility Module has stopped. Module Path: C:\Windows\System32\IWMSSvc.dll"

"WLAN AutoConfig service has successfully stopped."

I don't know how significant each of the errors may be in relation to the problem at hand. First of all, it is strange that the system reports 4 cores instead of 2 cores (I have an i7-4500U dual core). Since I thought that the DVD-ROM was to blame, I modified a key in the Registry so that Windows
would manually load the cdrom driver, and for a couple of weeks that worked—the boots were fast once again. 3 weeks after that, the problem reappeared, and as of the time of this post, Windows boots in 4-5 minutes, and shuts down in 2 minutes. Even when the screen goes black to change from the Windows loading logo to the logging interface became 1 minute long.

3) About 2-3 times starting 2-3 months ago, after waiting for the slow shutdown of the system, I rebooted the notebook. The POST sequence failed. For 5-10 boots, progressively, the Dell logo did not show up (after pressing the power key, the screen showed only black), then after another couple of boots, the Dell logo appeared but the progress bar filled up to less than 50% and then stopped and the computer froze. After more tries, the progress bar on the POST section filled completely, but Windows did not boot. While this was happening, if I tried to press F2 or F12, the text displaying this option would light up, but neither the BIOS nor the Boot menu would display at all. After a couple more restarts after hard resets from the power key, windows started to boot, but slowly. No error message, nothing appeared in Windows.

This sequence of pre-Windows freezing (no logo up to full bar loading) happened 2-3 times with a couple of weeks in between, and each time I had to keep rebooting and hard-restarting the system for it to progress. This made me think that a motherboard issue was present. Sometimes, the DVD-ROM would appear in the Computer window, but now 3 fourths of the boots are slow, with equally slow shutdowns.

I also tested to see whether the problem would arise when loading Safe Mode, but Windows loaded very slowly even in this case only when I put the DVD-ROM driver loading Registry key back again. I'm considering reinstalling Windows to see if the problem persists. I also want to see how the notebook would react if I loaded a USB Linux. Right now, the DVD-ROM drive does not appear in the BIOS.

Also, as a small detail, the aluminum casing always electrocuted me (small but noticeable current) from the beginning after I bought the notebook, whenever I layed my hand on the casing and my elbow on another metallic surface. I don't know if this odd detail might is relevant or not, or whether it is normal.

As I have extended warranty, I considered handing in the computer for warranty, but I just wanted to see what you guys think of my problem. I'm also worried that the warranty guys might refuse to help me, saying that the problem might have been caused by me.


Thanks for the help!
 

Thanesh s

Estimable
May 10, 2015
8
0
4,510
This sounds like quite a fatal motherboard problem, most likely a manufacture defect i've never heard of anything like this. Have you ever dropped the notebook. Ask dell and see what they say giving it's only a year and half old they should get you a replacement. They extended warrenty should cover this, have you ever taken the notebook apart?




Thanesh
 

penton

Estimable
Jan 9, 2016
2
0
4,510
No, these things happened insidously. I never dropped the laptop, never took it apart and when windows loads (after 5 minutes), it works normally and never goes into bsod. Everything else works normally.

Just today I noticed that the USB ports have started to more rarely detect USB memory sticks.

Windows loading and shutting down slowly is merely an inconvenience and I don't really need the DVD drive. I just wanted to prevent further damage to the laptop.

I bought the laptop and an extra year of warranty from a local reseller, so they should do something either to fix it or to replace it, at any rate—that's what I'm hoping.
 

Thanesh s

Estimable
May 10, 2015
8
0
4,510


Before a replacement dell will check it at their service centers, tell them about the electricution its probabaly short circuit somewhere. That battery error and all of those hardware errors shouldn't be happending for a one year old laptop. Giving you have a warrenty take it back to the store and take it from their they should replace it. Back up all of your data before giving it in.