OK, I've been out of the loop for a while when it comes to these newfangled gadgets... But a simple question: When a computer says that it's got an Intel Core Duo processor, with the following sticker: Does that mean that there are TWO separate processors, on TWO separate sockets? Or is it TWO processors snuggled together on one wafer board, with a single socket?
OK, so on this laptop... A Dell Inspiron e1705, it looks like the heat sink pipe goes from the fan, stretches over from the main 2GHz CPU, and stops at another chip, the same size. I'm assuming it's a processor for the video?
Reason I'm asking, I think I overheated my laptop today after having it running on AC power for a day or more (on top of a cooling pad with two extra fans, though) - I went to play something in WMP, it gave me the 'has encountered an error and has to quit, send/don't send error report' message - but still played the album. So, I played the rest of the album, then went to quit WMP, and when it came to the 'error reporting log' and the "more info" option, I clicked on it, and it started to open IE7 - then shut down. I tried to restart it a few times, and it would always turn itself off. Tried replacing the RAM, HDD, and a combination of both, and neither helped. Now, I can't even get it to give me the option to setup or select boot mode. It'll try to turn on, then quit. I'm thinking I overheated the processor. Can't even boot from CD/DVD anymore. Ideas?
What OS are you running? If its vista, I would try installing XP on it for a while, it can handle up to 4 cores. Heat is usually a temporary problem, unless you go extremely high, it will start to work again after the CPU has dropped below 50*C, around 30*C is a safe level. Other than that, not really sure, as I dont like laptops much, they usually need to be returned to shop/manufacturer to fix them. Can you get into the BIOS at all? or is it making any beeping sounds, which suggests a hardware failure (on normal PC's anyway)
It's XP MCE, and I don't get any beeps at all. It strictly shuts off before even the BIOS loads, It seems...
Dell is notorious for bad boards. Sometimes you can see the capacitors swell, or even pop, when they get over heated. You can check with Joe, he used to work for them and can give you the skinny on the Dell issues. I use nothing but Dells here at work, if a D600, or 610 board will work I can try hooking you up with one. If you're not even getting to the post screen I would lean towards the board, have you tried another AC power supply, or is the battery charged enough where you can start it on battery alone? Did you buy one of those cheap batteries??? There are a couple of possible deals that could cause that, but the system would post if the HDD was bad, if the RAM was bad it should still POST, or give you an error.
Since I cant edit, I have to re-post, does the power light turn amber when you try to power it up? The PCs I have here will do that when the board goes, instead of being green they will turn amber and kind of fade in and out.
The power light starts green, then shuts off completely. The HDD used to start to spin, then shut off after less than a second. Now, it doesn't even do that. Before, I could boot into safe mode, or any other option, and the moment I started something, a program, M$ Update, etc., it would shut off. After I couldn't get into Windows anymore, I went to booting from the DVD, and it worked for a little while, then after giving me the option to go into recovery console, it shut off. Now, I don't even get the Dell screen at startup. I read that this particular model is programmed to let the processor heat up to "X degrees" before turning on the fan, because they wanted the PC to run quiet, as opposed to, say, running at all, later on down the line. One person posted that his ran for 20 minutes before the CPU fan kicked in. I've searched ebay and google for core duo processors @ 2GHz, but all that seem to show up are Core 2 Duo...
Lomo I'm not sure how much of this is relevant today. The Bios should have a thermal log feature. Sometimes you would be surprised that there are hidden bios features meant for the engineers to see only. But generally I believe the thermal logging feature was on by default. When troubleshooting always remember to take it to the minimal post standard and test there. So remove the battery, hdd, cd-rom, video card (if separate) modem card, memory. And anything else I missed out. True it will not post entirely but test this. With nothing else but motherboard, processor, and power. Make sure that the ac adapter is showing green and that when you plug it in and if you wiggle the connector the light stays solid green. It will generally test out to Something like 20v if you have a meter. Then power on the board and you should see a "flea indicator" led on the board indicating the chipset just received power. After this the way it will behave is different by model. They can flash specific diagnostic codes. Go to support.dell.com and get the tech manual for the system. IM me for more detail than that. I could give you hundreds of different t/s scenarios but its to damn troublesome to type out here.
I'll do that probably in the next day or two - I honestly haven't even tried to boot it up since I started this thread.
