Dell XPS M1530 fails POST.

[vaconcamp]

A few months ago I took my Dell laptop apart for cleaning. I took off the heatsink, took out the CPU (for no reason, I was just curious), applied new thermal paste and then restarted the computer. However, when I restarted it, the computer would not POST. It would show the Dell bootup screen and then get stuck at ~80%. When it got stuck, the CPU fan also stopped. So today I got the idea to take apart the computer and reset CMOS. I took the entire computer apart, took out the CMOS battery (and also replaced it with a different one), and now when I boot up for the first time it tells me:

RTC mode fixed - time & date may be wrong.

This is expected for a computer that lost power. The unexpected thing is that it still gets stuck at ~80% just like before. I thought for sure resetting the CMOS would fix things.

No HDD, CD drive, or any peripherals are connected.

Any help would be appreciated. I am desperate for ideas.

 

[rolli59]

Try with a HDD connected.

 

[vaconcamp]

Just tried with HDD. Nothing's changed.

 

[rolli59]

What does the post message stop on? Can you enter setup and set it to show post if not currently?

 

[vaconcamp]

The loading bar just stops at 80%. If I try to enter the BIOS, it says something along the lines of "entering setup" and then also proceeds to get stuck at 80%. It doesn't give me any error message.

 

[Quixit]

Replace the motherboard (or more realistically the entire thing). Sounds like you damaged it when you took the notebook apart.

 

[rolli59]

The loading bar just stops at 80%. If I try to enter the BIOS, it says something along the lines of "entering setup" and then also proceeds to get stuck at 80%. It doesn't give me any error message.

Then there is nothing we can help with, professional repair but first try reseating everything like keyboard cable add on cards and ram.

 

[vaconcamp]

This first happened when I took out the heatsink (accessed by removing only one panel), not when I disassembled the entire computer. Could the motherboard really have broken just by me doing that?

 

[rolli59]

This first happened when I took out the heatsink (accessed by removing only one panel), not when I disassembled the entire computer. Could the motherboard really have broken just by me doing that?

Everything is possible.