Dell XPS M2010 - a Luggable trying to be a laptop

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Hi all!

I’m new here and I’d like to talk about my new favourite Luggable PC

I bought it broken in the hopes of repairing it but it’s fighting me every step of the way, and sometimes it makes me wish I had bought an HDX9000 instead.

The XPS M2010 was marketed as a Luggable media center and while it was cool unfortunately they did suffer from bad design choices.

For one the Graphics card liked to overheat it’s an ATI Mobility Radeon X1800 and unfortunately fixing it is a hard task as so much conflicting information is out there… I’d like to retrofit another card in there somehow but I’m not a wizard with electronics. Some people claim the GPU was hit by Bumpgate, a phenomon affecting most GPUs from 2006 to 2008. While others claim it’s the VRAM solder joints. And others state it’s just the card overheating.

So many machines like this do still work however many have unfortunately given their lives to save others.

Mine was “Dropped” by it’s previous owner and does not POST. But that’s probably the least of my worries.

The hinges have both sheared clean off, however I can aqquire new ones. The Gear inside the optical drive ejector mechanism (which senses what position the mech is in so it can turn on and off the servo) has cracked apart and I’m missing too many parts to fix it, I could fabricate a new one but without something to model a 3D render it’s futile.

I do hope to restore my Dell back to functional condition but at the moment I don’t know what’s wrong with it … motherboard or GPU issues?..maybe the display cable was damaged?

I hope to hear what others have to say about my incredible endeavour, this thing keeps me up at night worrying if I’ll ever fix it.

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And do you want to hear??? Start working and get some tests done, you have a DVI output, keyboard leds indication if it posts, disassemble the system and clean, clear cmos, test ddr individual modules, see if IC gets hotter when powering up, test voltage points, etc etc… it won’t fix itself like it is or just looking at it as it is.

Dell XPS M2010 MXP061 Repair - iFixit

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You’ve got some good points,

I can confirm the RAM works and the CMOS has been reset.

I don’t know if the DVI adapter on my monitor doesn’t work or what but I’m probably not getting any POST.

I’ll pull the CPU and test in another computer to confirm and buy another spare motherboard to rule that out as a possibility.

Once that’s all done it basically means one thing. the video card, but even that’s technically fixable.

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Well the more “costly” in this recovery will be the mb or the ATI gpu, good luck.