Dell XPS M2010 Starting Problems

Ok. Here is the thing. I hope everybody sold their problem, but I will just post for others who may experience the same thing.

1st believe it or not : there is nothing wrong with motherboard, as when you press the power button, computer will shut down. with defective motherboard it will just continue running untill you will unplug it.

2nd believe it or not : it can not be battery issue or hard drive issue, because it does not make any scenes in any way. I have to agree that hard drive on the right is semi-correct answer.

REASON:

IT is video card that messing up everything. And it is located right under right hard drive. That's why when somebody removed hard drive he/she accidentally corrected the cooling system of video card , which returned M2010 to live.

CONFIRMATION:

1. First remove the top cover from the computer. There are 2 sides the plastic things. If you look at the back of your laptop you will see 2 small holes , one on every edge of the back. You stick something there it will loose the front cover.
2. unscrew all the screws hat have ">" or "<" signs next to them. there are something about 15-16 screws in total: this will allow you to open the cover under wich you can find the motherboard and stuff. When you open the cover pry to start the computer, and you will see that fans will not start even after 1-2 minutes after you hit the power button.
3. Remove the right hard drive and under it you will find screws A, B, C, D (silver) and also 1,2,3,4 (black) unscrew the black ones first, them remove video card with the cooling mechanism. now try to turn on the machine. you can see that after like 20-30 seconds fans start working which means that motherboard is fine and it was the video card that was giving problems.

SOLUTION:

1. I am not sure what causes the issue but I have fixed it this way:
uscrew silver screws and disconnect cooling part from the actual video card.

2. clean both, video card and cooling system not touching sky blue foam ICs. That staff is needed to cool the chips on the video card.

3. let them dry for an hour or so after cleening, than apply some Thermal compound, thermal paste and re assemble the video card with the cooling staff. (mek sure no screw is loose or something)

4. put it back and turn on the computer. If it works , whell .. it works now :)

if not then either you levae some liquid on the video card or screws are loose. try to play a bit with screws. but my personal suggestion is just to wait for a minute or two until video card gets hot and fixes liquid problems itself :)

Try it. It worked for me perfectly ...

Let fill a lawsuit against Dell. May together we can solve the **** that dell sold us!!! I bought two, what a maroon!

If the problem is bad caps on the motherboard you can probably get your computer to start again. Plug into ac power. Turn on computer and if you get the bluethooth and power light only just leave it sit this way for a while 15 to 30 minutes. Now press the power button and it will shut off, turn it back on and repaet until it loads. It may partially load a couple times until the caps get warm enough that their voltages return to close to normal so it will load all the way. This is not a repair but a way to get back into the computer so you can backup your data before having the board repaired or replaced. This has worked several times on the computer I am working on for a customer, the motherboard needs replacing and that is going to be the best solution for my customer.

I have a dell xps m2010... I've had problems with this system since the day I bought it. I have spoken with dell and Have found out that this system has been discontinued due to unfix able malfunctions... from monitors to bluetooth. I have faught with dell for two years. Sent it in many times. Had tecs to my home many times. Finally dell is replacing my system with a better one. So my advice is to just keep calling and speak with their supervisors. They will exchange it because they knew of the problems when they first started selling this system. They will not replace any extras like travel cases.

Not really solve it but I found a Computer shop on line that promised the a mother board problem can be fix for around $150.00 Dollars. Buying a new one for a computer that is out of warranty is not bad. I replaced the video card, upgraded the RAM and nothing worked.
Sent the XPS M2010 to them and it's been working fine since. There were some capacitors and other things that had to be re-solder on the mother board. Compared to what I paid for the laptop, $150.00 not bad at all.
As a matter of fact I'm typing this reply on the very same Laptop. The Company is Called, LaptopOnCall.com.

My M2010 wouldn't boot either. They sent new parts & a dell tech installed them today. She hadn't seen an M2010 before, so a little coaching & we made the repair together

I powered my computer back on from standby. It went to ribbon screen saver which later froze. I came back to my frozen computer, crashed the power button for 8 sec. Tried to reboot. nothing. a black screen. no bios. Battery Light, Power Light & Blue Tooth light are on. Nothing else. just sits there.. the Blue Dell Emblem lights up on the back of the screen. I tried plugging in an external monitor, & the monitor responded in that it was getting a signal, but nothing showed up on the screen.

TechSupport had me pull some basic stuff to try to create a CODE on the LED's under the volume & speaker controls which would indicate the problem. She claims the lack of an error code when just the WLan card was removed indicates that it's a motherboard. What about those folks who got this machine WITHOUT a WLan card. Doesn't make sense, whatever. Also lots of fun CLUELESS tech support comments asking me to do things with the BlueTooth wireless keyboard right after they had me unplug the bluetooth module! my tech support transcript at this link. drewandtracey.com/WebProjects/M2010WontBoot/DellTechSupport.htm

how to disassemble your M2010
support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xpsm2010/en/SM_en/

My tech arrived 24 hrs later w/three boxes containing the motherboard, I/O board from left side for USB & headphones, along with new video card, & 2 power supplies to replace the power supplies I bought. They sent me everything that could possibly cause the problem. But now I don't know which part was the problem as we swapped everything.

Techs don't see m2010’s often so supervise closely. Pull your battery out & press power button for 30 sec to try to clear power from the system. Stuff we learned.

Step 1. pull the bottom panel, your RAM, the WLan Card (leave the antenna attached) & disconnect the 3 cables from bottom of mainboard.

Step 2. work gently to remove your decorative plates to the left & right of the cd. 2nd, carefully finesse the CD. Don't force it. Don't lift it too high until you pull the ribbon cable off the back (a magnet on the screwdriver will keep you from losing screw) & until you remove the small ribbon cable from the front (do this last). Remove all the screws with arrows from top cover. Pay attention to which screws go back where, or just leave them in the frame and don’t tip it upside down. With the screws out, detach the cable in the center of the back without losing the screws.

Make sure your tech is gentle with all the cables. Pull by the connector & not the wire itself. She ripped 1 wire out of my microphone array by accident so we have to order another 1 & she'll be back tomorrow to put that in. Her Rep on the phone had a hard time finding the part number for that, & is actually sending a full mother board kit again because its "supposed" to be in there. Make notes as you go about any ports that DON"T have something connected to them so that you'll know if you forget something later on.

Pull the 6 screws from the base which hold your Handle right after you have the hard drive & fans out, so you aren't juggling a lot of loose parts. Pay attention to which cables go over vs under the frame. You have to pull the hard drives & fans off the frame 1st before removing the frame.

If you can twist the release screw on your processor chip before removing it, you might save the silicon heat glue. If not, make sure they put more silicon heat transfer glue back on before reassembling the chip on the new board or your heat sink may not work as efficiently.

Get the frame out, then the board (taking the audio board & main board out at same time. You have to gently pry the plastic case away from your DVI port to get the board out.) Compare the 2 boards. My new board did not come with a modem chip or the associated jumper wire. Make sure you transfer these across & yes, I had to pull the other chip next to it, which was included on the new board, in order to route the jumper wire properly.

Put the new motherboard & audio card back. Get the the microphone array wire goes in early. Connect the small black wire with 2 white connectors to your Audio board & the MotherBoard. Check that you put all the correct screws back on the new boards. Transfer the modem across if you haven't already. Tighten up the frame leaving out the 6 screws for your handle arm hinge assembly. Get your processor & video card into the new board. Don't forget the heat sync glue. They go on before the Left Hard Drive. Encourage your tech to start all 4 screws & just like a tire on the car, tighten each 1 a little bit so you don’t damage any pins.

Reconnect screen, being sure not to pinch wires & feeding the 1 wire back across to where it connects underneath the right side fan. Keep in mind that your WLan card is now flopping around underneath so it might be a good time to plug it back in & while you are down there, reconnect the three jumpers that live down there. Stick your RAM back. Dropping the hard drives back in & reconnecting jumpers. Check at each step to make sure you have all the screws & jumpers in where they belong.

Bring your top cover back, reconnect jumper,& see if it the power button responds. You might have to hold the CD Retractor to a point short of it's extreme low to make it happy. I got a black screen saying press FN+X & that memory may have changed. Shut it off & continued reassembly. When we turned it on for real, that black screen stayed up for 2 minutes before it took us into the bios & re-enter the Service Tag. She also changed some presents in the BIOS. It booted Bios A05 and no info on A55 which came on CD, so we did not upgrade bios. --Drew--

I had the same problem, and it turns out (believe it or not), It was one of the hard drives.
The number 2 drive, the one on the right.
I am using that m2010 right now while I am typing this, Most of the BIOS lives on the hard drives
If it is a mirrored set the mirror must be broken, if you get lucky enough to get back into it long enough to hit Ctrl-i while trying to boot.
I am only using one drive right now. Be careful NOT to let the intel Matrix RAID utility rebuild the drive before you get the bad drive out.
If you have a bad left drive, Im not sure what to tell you. Just play around with the config until you can get one of them to boot to the RAID config screen (CTRL-i)
I hope this will help. I also hope mine does not screw up again

I have the exaxt same issue with my xps m2010 it had been working fine most of the day i left it for around 2 hours came back to find a black screen both the power light and bluetooth light were lit however when i touched the mouse or key board nothing so i rebooted nothing just the same lights and black screen had a quick look online and then took the power and battery out pressed and held the power button for around 30 seconds then connect the power and it booted into windows then powered down connected battery all seemed fine booted back up the rebooted and nothing same lights and no display looked on dell supoport completed all the task but still not working i could really do with some help on this one so if you have a fix please let me know [email protected]

Not much left to check with everything that has been changed out. The only things left that could be casing the problem are the battery, power supply, and processor (if the processor wasn't changed with the system board). Check the power supply with an ohm meter for the proper output. Then try starting without the battery. Then change out the processor, if it hasn't been already. If these don't work, the only other suggestion I have is taking all the components off, CD drive, keyboard, screen, etc... and starting. If it seems to start, then put the components back on one at a time, restarting after each, until the machine won't start. Then you have found the bad component.