UGH! HAD it with Dell...! (1 Viewer)

[Paul Padilla]

Dell hasn't used re-install or "restore" cd's for several years. All of their machines come with separate XP CDs along with driver disks and application CDs separately. What they have done in the past few months, though, is include a restore partition on the hard drive rather than disks to make it easier for their overseas techs to walk you through restoring your entire machine. If you want the CDs, it's another option and adds $10.

 

[Dave Mack]

Hi again, guys! Been awhile.
We finally got cable DSL. (Dont know how we went without so long..) and the Dell is flying except that it still gets hot and slows down now and again. Can anyone reccomend a good inexpensive laptop cooling pad? I have seen anywhere from $10 to $40.

Thanks! d

 

[Dave Mack]

Well, here we go again!!!! Had about 6 decent months! Even bought a good laptop coolong fan and still it's heating up like crazy, starting to slow down again and the CPU usage is at 100%!!!! I have SO had it with DELL. This model is defective! Swapping out the heatsink thingy is a band-aid!!!!
I don't know what to do! I dread going through the whole call DELL service in India and trying to deal with this again! Last time it took several hours over a several day period to try and deal!!!

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DELL sucks!

 

[Rommel_L]

Do us a favor and do this...

Run the windows task manager (ctrl+alt+del). When the cpu usage is at 100%, how many process are running and which process is eating up the most resources? Even better, list all the resources...

Go to Start > Run. Type msconfig and hit enter. Click on the startup tab. List all the startup items you have in there...

 

[Dave Mack]

Thanks. There are 42 processes going. Firefox, (browser) is eating up the mots. 35,984 K. Thesecond largest is wuauclt.exe, at 6,296K, (have NO idea what that is btw..) Explorer is at 5.784K which is odd because I am using Firefox and my Internet expolorer isn't open. The rest are very small. What happens is, when I first turn on the computer the CPU uasge hovers between 3 and 9% but after a couple of hours, the back of the computer, (heatsink thingy) heats up ALOT, the back becomes physically HOT, not warm and that is right where the power supply cord plugs in. It starts baking the plug! Going on battery helps. I had the computer off for 20 minutes, the CPU usage is currently vacillating ALOT between 3 and 10%...!

Hope I made sense, I am not the most computer literate dude.

 

[Ken Chui]

wuauclt.exe is a process that manages automatic updates for Microsoft Windows. explorer.exe is different than iexplore.exe: the former is actually the Windows Program Manager (Windows Explorer), the latter is Internet Explorer. To find more info on the processes you're running, you can check this website.

You can probably remove or disable some of your processes to free up your memory, but I don't know how comfortable you are with using the msconfig utility.

I wish I could help you with your notebook heat issues, but I have little experience with laptops (more of a desktop guy).

 

[Dave Mack]

Thanks for the help, Ken!

 

[MarkHastings]

I've owned 6 Dell's in my lifetime, I've purchased Dell's for all of my family members and I use them at work (for years). And I've NEVER had the slightest issue with any one.

I've had major issues with many other systems though: SONY, IBM, etc.

 

[Will_B]

I like this cooling pad (below), but I do not believe that a cooling pad can truly provide enough air to compensate for a malfunctioning chip. I suspect these pads are simply meant to let people "overuse" a properly working laptop (i.e. use them for hours and hours on end). Still worth a try I suppose.

Antec laptop cooling pad:
http://tinyurl.com/g2e5k

That pad has two speeds, the slower of which is nearly silent and the faster of which is ok. The only problem with this pad is that it has a super-bright blue LED on the side. I covered it up; you might prefer to try clipping the bulb's wire. You can do that from inside -- after about 6 months I removed the feet from the pad, revealing four screws that held it together, and cracked it open to remove the dust from its two fans. Tons of dust!

Speaking of dust, cleaning the fan gizmo on the chip itself does makes a big difference, as you know. After about 8 months of use, my laptop started to turn itself off randomly - even with this cooling pad running. I spent a day eliminating possible causes, finally realized the only variable affecting it was the heat. I opened it up, and blew air outwards through the vent to the outside world, and I also blew as much dust off the chip's fan as I could.

Before, if I put my hand in front of the vent, I could feel hot air flowing out about 3 inches. After cleaning, I can feel hot air flowing out about 5 or 6 inches. Much better throw when there's no dust caked on the chip's fan. I thought I might need to repaste the heat sink, but the dust removal was all it needed, thank goodness.

 

[Fredster]

We just bought 2 new Dell XPS models for our kids birthdays. One of these wouldn't boot. I called support and "Steve" guided me through attaching the monstrous heat sink properly which had come loose during shipping I guess. From the look of the boxes, Fedex must have been tossing these around in the rain. Anyway "Steve" was right on the money. The system came up and has worked fine.

Just ordered a seventh Dell, a cheap notebook to replace a stolen (sigh) cheap notebook.

Although Dell support can be a challenge at times, the product is top quality. And if you persist, they usually do the right thing to support it.

 

[Scott L]

that's debatable. You can get a system from HP for the same price with a faster AMD setup and a fraction of the junkware that's included with a Dell.

And don't get us started on DIY!

 

[MarkHastings]

While I agree that you can do better, for the average computer consumer, Dell is pretty top notch. While I know what I'm doing, I always buy from Dell because it's just easier. I know they're stuff, I know it works, and I don't have to worry too much.

Again, you can most likely do better, but there's usually a bit more work involved. If you saw my laptop thread, you know I was going out of my mind trying to figure out a great laptop. I went in circles for weeks and whenever I settled on something (other then Dell), I ran into something that turned me off. Finally I said "ENOUGH!" and just went with Dell. I'm very happy with the laptop.

 

[Bryan X]

I'm very pleased with Dell too, Mark.

I had always bought Gateway computers and never had any problems with them. My latest computer, which I bought about 6 months ago, is a Dell-- my first one. I went with Dell because for the relatively high-end configuration I wanted, no one else could touch them on price.

It's been trouble free and, right now, my future purchases will be Dell.

I am very proficient with PCs and their hardware, so DIY doesn't phase me at all. And really, even if you aren't a DIY kinda person, more likely than not you have a buddy or relative who is. My Dad's PC is a Dell and he wouldn't be able to do any DIY. But if the need would arise, he'll call me.

 

[Jimi C]

You cant beat an IBM when its time to upgrade. My 7 year old PII tank of a thinkpad is still chugging along great, the battery still holds a charge and its running windows XP. Still good enough for surfin the web. Theres been 2 Dells in the family, one was a really old 486 33mhz machine that has been passed around and is currently living in a spare bedroom at my grandmothers. The other was a laptop my dad was giving for use at work that he eventually passed down to an engineer when he was offered an upgrade. Not sure we he ended up getting.

I think you have the cause and effect reversed when its coming to your laptop, I think its the fact that the cpu usuage is at 100% that is causing your overheating, NOT the overheating causing your cpu usage to shoot up. You should go to http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ and run there free malware scans. Sounds to me like you have some unwanted process hogging your processing power.

Or, although it may be quite inconvenient, You might want to think about just shutting it down when you feel it getting really warm and giving it some time to cool down. If you are planning on selling, The sooner the better, these things almost never appreciate in value. I know, crazy. If you dont beleive me ill show you the receipt I found for my Commodore 64. Thats if you dont have any issues with charging somebody to deal with your problems.

 

[Fredster]

It's the devil you know I guess... second round of Dells at home plus we're on the 3rd or 4th round of Dell PCs at work where there are over 1000 desktops. You can shop around but you can't go wrong with Dell in my opinion.

 

[Dave Mack]

The lower end Inspiron laptops are FAR from top quality. Do a search for Dell Inspiron overheat and you will be amazed...
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?s...+1150+overheat
or read this...
http://www.officinado.com/new-review...iron-1150.html

Hundreds of owners having the SAME issue! Dell will not acknowledge this. They do a band-aid approach with their abysmal CS. They will send you a replacement part to install YOURSELF and once you are out of warranty you are shit out of luck. Spending hours on the phone with some guy in India who tries to guide you through taking apart your computer is not ideal IMHO. My gf paid extra for the full extended warranty and still they expect her to take apart her computer and install a new heatsink fan and reinstall from scratch all her windows drivers after maybe losing her data? Crap. Would you accept that in a car warranty. "Hey, the engine is'nt running, here are some parts, get ypur own tools and we'll talk you through it ON THE PHONE!" Waste of our time. Who is recompensing us for the wasted hours because they designed a product poorly. If CS "can be a challenge at times" then it is NOT good CS. "persisting" at CS is something you shouldn't have to do. Going through CS rep after CS rep, talking to supervisors, sending emails, waiting for them to get back to you, waiting on replacement parts...
They even suggested buying a laptop cooling pad whcih we did do but shouldn't have to if the design was better. We bought one ourselves, spending $$$ and now the problem is back! What Dell should do is acknowledge the problem and send us a new model. Every time this thing slows down it hinders our work that we do from home and when it crashed, we almost lost all of our data.
Maybe some Dells are top quality but I don't own one. I own this crappy Inspiron that hundreds if not thousands of owners have had the EXACT same problem with. Even Wikipedia has it mentioned!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Inspiron
"...Issues and comments
[edit]
Overheating
Around the year of 2003, Dell released several lines of Inspiron notebooks which were having problems with cooling properly, causing them to overheat many times and may even burn up the video card, motherboard, or cause the laptop to shut down automatically. Some people believe that the systems overheated due to the processors that were used in those laptops - Intel's Pentium 4 chip which went up to 3.2GHz (3,200MHz) for some models. Laptops of those lines also came with Intel's Celeron processor, which would create a little bit less heat, but might still run into the overheating problem. Another reason on why these machines might overheat is due to the fact that they contained the fan on the bottom of the unit, unlike others where they are located on the sides and rear, where air could not flow through the unit when sat on a table or a desk. Affected models include the Dell Inspiron 1100, 1150, 5100, and 5150 and 9100. Many consumers state that refurbished Inspiron machines of those model numbers do not overheat, probably because Dell found a way of fixing that problem. "Dell Inspiron 1150 Review" Dell has yet to admit any problems regarding the design of the affected notebooks.


Argh!!!

 

[Bryan X]

I understand your frustration, Dave. But overseas call centers and DIY fixes are the norm, not the exception. It's not just Dell.

I don't have a Dell laptop, but have read enough about the overheating issue to agree with you that Dell's design in those is f-ed up. And it sounds like they aren't eager to own up to it. But unfortunately its the exception that a company does the right thing. Do an internet search for problems with any of the other large PC companies and you'll find enough stories to sour you on any of them.


The difference is that the PC warranty you bought clearly states that DIY is what you're going to have to do the majority of the time. They didn't hide that fact, then spring it on you later.

I don't mean to sound like I'm picking on you. If I had one of those laptops I'd be pissed too. And I don't blame you for not wanting to do business with them again. But you could have the exact same experience with any of the other top PC companies-- and many have.

 

[Dave Mack]

You're right. I'm sorry I'm just PISSED!

 

[Dave Mack]

TOTAL coincidence! A friend of mine from back east has a website that she blogs on, sells t shirts through and I was just reading some of her entries from the past couple of months and found 2 DELL nitemare stories. Here is one...
http://midgetbigot.easyjournal.com/e...px?eid=2905716
Pretty interesting and WILDLY coincidental imho...

d

 

[Bryan X]

Maybe you can use this information as leverage with Dell.