Solved! Dell Precision M6500 - Random Lock-Up's & System will Power On without pressing Power Button?

[peteboot64]

Hi - I have a Precision M6500 notebook, late 2009 with a quad-core i7 and Quadro FX2800M graphics, and would really appreciate some advice with this problem. Am running Win7 Ultimate SP1 - x64 bit, with all up to date patches, and as far as I'm aware drivers Avast, and SAS scans have found no problems malware wise.

I haven't been able to determine the cause of seemingly random total machine lock-ups - will not respond to any keyboard combinations, and I have to switch off at the mains.Sometimes it will run for 5-6 hours with no problem, other times it locks-up within 10 minutes. (It does this even in Safe Mode - with either Networking or Cmd Prompt enabled as well)

Having lost the original battery years ago, I always shut down, and then switch off at the mains - A few weeks ago - without any significant system changes I noticed that as soon as I powered on at the mains the system would power on and boot into Windows - without me having to press the power on button.
As Windows then ran OK without any problems I only checked that the button wasn't physically stuck down, but then, at least 2 weeks after this started, the lock-up problem did also.

I have:- Checked that Device Mgr shows no problems, run Chkdsk - which found no problems, but when I run SFC - even booting from Windows Repair Disk and "Offline" it reports that WRP found corrupt files, but was unable to repair some of them.
Unfortunately I've never had to get to grips with the CBS.log and can't really follow it - other than it fails to upload the log - "Warning: Failed to upload all unsent reports. [HRESULT = 0x80004005 - E_FAIL]" Searching online seems to indicate this is related to a problem with Windows Update - but as WU runs OK, and has updated recently I don't know if this is relevant or not!

There seems to be very little support from Dell for the M6500 anymore - I have run the Dell Support Assistant - which, apart from insisting that there were 3 driver updates - which were actually all already installed - was no help. The hardware diagnostics all test OK - but am assuming they cannot test a possible intermittent short in the power button board - if this is even an issue?

Any advice as to what to do next - inc' any other logs or Event Viewer ID's etc to check -would be most appreciated!

Thanks
Pete

 

[hang-the-9]

Most likely issue is a failing motherboard, not a lot of things cause issues like what you see, but a bad motherboard will do all of that.

Did you try a clean Windows setup already?

 

[peteboot64]

Hi Hang - Thanks for your quick response - I was kinda dreading the Mobo as being the possible cause, guess it was mainly the fact that the laptop booted everytime that was possibly misleading me.

I found a Dell Extended Diagnostics download, which after burning the.ISO to disk, then runs outside of Windows, and includes a specific section on System Lock ups. When I ran this with the Samsung SSD as the primary drive, it ran & "Passed" all tests until it was on the SSD the surface scan - at which point the laptop locked up.

To try and eliminate the lock-ups being caused by either the SSD being faulty or Windows being corrupt, I dug out the original Seagate drive and swapped out the Samsung SSD. The 1st thing I noticed was that the bizarre Power On button behaviour stopped as soon as the original drive was installed - When the power is now On at the mains, the Button LED stays Off, until it's pressed to start the system.

I realise that I'm fishing for a possible cause which doesn’t end up with me buying another laptop! Anyways I am running the same Diagnostics package with the original drive in - Not sure what it goes onto after the Disk test, but will be interested to see -Assuming it gets that far this time.

I've replaced desktop MOBO's, CPU's, RAM, etc before - but never had to strip down a laptop - Not that it's likely to be an option - Dell don't make the boards any more, and I am guessing that it may well be time to take the "Economically not viable" route and look for a another, newer machine

Any good suggestions for a replacement will also be most welcome - I basically have used it as an alternative to a desktop,and realise that the Tech - RAM, CPU'S etc has moved since 2009!

Cheers

Pete

 

[hang-the-9]

So does the system work OK on that original drive or are you just running diagnostics with it but it still crashes.

I would not bother replacing the motherboard on an older system, but really depends on your budget. To get the same level of performance for modern times you will need to spend about $800 on a decent system. If you are not too worried about gaming or rendering speeds, you can get something in the $500 range that is still good. The biggest catch to replacing the motherboard is that it does not always fix the issue, the motherboard would have to be used so you are taking a chance at it being good, and the chance of damaging something else while installing it.