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voip1fan
join:2013-04-25

4 edits

voip1fan

Member

Dell XPS M1730 shuts down randomly, code #M1004 , the story

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Box on grass
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Video card before oven
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Card after oven
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Working XPS M1730
Last week I was coming back from metro grocery store an took a turn on a street were a friend of mine used to live, when I saw one nice box on the grass, alienware nice picture on it.
Stopped by habit, touched the box, it was heavy, cracked open and saw a laptop inside, just dumped in the car and went home.

Here begins the XPS M1730 story:
This machine was heavy as a tank, opened to see if memory was still in, yes, 2x2GB was there and two 200 GB HDD! Never have seen a laptop like that before. Power supply was inside of the box, plugged in and it starts to charge. Then tried to power on, the DELL logo shows and after couple of seconds pouf, it turns itself off. Weird, I left-it to continue charging while doing some reading about the power off thing.

Later on, just on battery the power was keeping on, progressing up to windows vista login screen. I have read that a BIOS update was needed to prevent the GPU from overheating, tried to do that, well how to fast update a bios if no windows access (I tried to load up ophcrack or password reset, but on RAID discs, it does nothing!)
Finally I found the Kon-boot disk and booted to the admin user, cool tool, made another admin user and logged in.
Now I was able to remove the original user password, so I booted back there to upgrade the bios to A11 ( see the temporary "working" state XPS 1730 picture with the Vista screen and the original user desktop). I was lucky the shutdown was not going on while bios updating, I could have lost-it.
All bios update is done, but after a while, the battery was going low (kind of weak one), plug in the charger and then pouf, shuts down instantly. Weird. Next step I decided it must be something wrong with the video card, the GEForce 8700M GT, planning for an oven session, see the pictures.
Preheat oven at 430 F. Put some flux around the target chip to be sucked under (dissolve orange flux paste in alcohol and put droplets on the chip sides).
Back from the oven, it survived nicely at 430 F, see the picture with the red circles, I have put a little regular (not ROHS!) solder to “read” the temperature, and about the 9-th minute from the moment I put the board in the preheated oven at 430F, the regular solder started to melt, then I quick turned off the gas and let it all cool down.
The regular solder melts below the temperature of the modern ROHS boards, so it will be safe to heat. The parts under are glued anyway on the PCB, so they will not fall do to the heat. The boards sits on small alum foil rolled as a ball.

After re-install the video board in the XPS, everything seems to be ok, booting and maintaining power even with the power plug in, like for an hour until... pouf, shuts down by itself again…. Felt so disappointed..read more in the next post.
voip1fan

3 edits

voip1fan

Member

Continued..
Tried to completely disassembly, removing CPU and all the parts and put all back together, I was looking to find like a loose contact somewhere, because when I plug the power in the back, most of the times it powers off instantly ( not like any laptop behavior, see ).
Tried to search more info about this problem, most of the shut down issues from others were caused by overheating, because of clogged fins from the heat sink, while mine was turning off even when it was cold, and still it gave that code #M1004, system was turned off because overheating was detected, this was the message in the BIOS after restarting.
Overheating error when it was starting cold made no sense, so I tried to monitor with HW Monitor the temperature readings, everything was perfectly normal, GPU at 50C and CPU at 37C, fans turning smoothly at 2000 rpm, nothing bad.
Again, before the instant turn off was happen, nothing was increasing, temperature or fan speed.

Finally, this morning I ended up while looking for temperature sensors information on the XPS M1730 models, on a post where someone was suggesting a Fn+Z combination to reset an always on high fan condition and erratic temperature readings.

I did try that and despite what seemed like nothing changed, this time the power kept going on continuously, the GPU fan increased the speed to high rpm while the GPU temperature was going in the 54C, this never happen before to hear the fans on high speed.
I did install Win7 64bit to test all out, seems to be stable now, run the 3Dmark tests and it runs very well, no shutdown, fans are kicking in at higher speed, seems to be OK.

So, as a conclusion, no matter of how much cooking skills I have, a simple Fn+Z did the trick.

Lesson learned.

Regards
voip1fan

1 edit

voip1fan

Member


Snejan Bodurov
The final chapter:
I have to say thanks to the original owner of the laptop, Snejan Bodurov, for throwing his broken laptop in my way.
Although because of his face, see the picture, was on the desktop background, I had to ASAP change the background to something more normal, otherwise I could not concentrate to find the problem with the laptop. The beer mug was haunting me.
BTW, I fixed the broken left screen hinge, Snejan, you let it loose until it got the screws poped out, I recovered one from inside the laptop.
Now I understand why he needed such a powerfull machine, to make some animations on it. Some of his files were on the desktop, I erased all, because they were not of a real artistic value, I dare to say..
I suspect this is classic east european style to throw the machine in the garbage instead of recycling, even if it was on my advantage, it's not good for the environment. Kids should learn a good lesson!

Regards
voip1fan

4 edits

voip1fan

Member

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SpeedFan working
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MB cooling down
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solder melted close-up
The epilog,

The beer mug was indeed haunting me, because for some reason the unexpected shutdowns came back, after all I did to try to fix-it.

The most annoying thing is that after the shutdown starts to show up, while being plugged, even after 1 second from power on, shuts down.

I remove the power plug and it boots fine into windows, then, the moment I plug the power it shuts down instantly when is in the "weird" state.
I let it run for a bit, then I start HWMonitor.
The HWMonitor was reporting the fans at 0 RPM, that was weird.

When it's showing something, if I do Fn+Z it's going back to zero.

Update:

I have backed the MB also, just in case the other BGA's like the chipset are having cracked solder issues.
See the "temp reader solder" melted, while the oven was at 430F.

After running for hours the first day without problem, the next day the shutdown happen again, when it was cold, again that message #M1004.

Meanwhile I have updated the Geforce 8700 bios, downgraded the bios to A06, it was still working. After that I could not go back to the A11 or A10 in Windows! there was an error.
I had to go with DOS 6.22 boot CD, after to run the bios update A11 from CD.
All for nothing, could not get rid of the shutdown!
The only card I have not backed is the one on top of the CPU heat sink, not sure if it make sense to do-it.
Conclusion, it is not fixed because I could not find this Fan control error cause.
The "cure" it seems it is not permanent, I wish I know what causes the malfunction in the first place, like some error in the SM Bus that controls and reads the Temp and speeds.

The latest symptoms are interesting: I start HWMonitor and it shows 2000RPM on all fans. Press Fn+Z and RPM goes to 0.
I close HWMonitor and start-it again, still 0 RPM on CPU and GPU.

I remove the connector from mouse pad and keyboard, the RPM are coming back in the HWMonitor!
Other very interesting thing is that even if the power plug is inserted, when I remove the mouse pad connector the power switches to BATTERY!! Very weird. Plug back the mouse pad connector and it switches back to external power!

Really, really interesting connection between the keyboard and mouse controller and the battery system and the RPM control.

Since then I dismantled the mouse pad system and put it back, now I keep open the HWMonitor to see if the if the RPM count goes back to 0.

I wish someone has the schematics to understand this connection between power, shutdown and mouse pad!

Until then, I'll do more testing to see what the 2 backing sessions will do against the one stupid mouse pad connection..
Like now I did lots of posting here and on the other forum to get some help with the schematics, and the XPS works nicely, no shutdowns, cross my fingers.

Post epilog: this will be continued for sure, now that I kid of spotted the failure place, not sure what was actually broken, will see.
voip1fan

voip1fan

Member

Click for full size
Thermal control
Hello,

I still have the shutdowns, less after the machine is warmed up!
I found the schematics and I'm looking for the signal that triggers the Therm_STP# ( thermal stop I think) which comes from ThermTrip 1,2,3 from PPU ( the ageia card I did not bake!) CPU and GPU.
I will try to disconnect the signal and see if the shutdows happen.

attached is the page 20 from the schematic found for free on the elektrotanya schematics site.
voip1fan

4 edits

voip1fan

Member

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SMSC EMC4001
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Thermal trip signals
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Lifted pin nr.3
Hello again.

I think I got-it this time, it’s so useful to have the schematics!
The chip causing the shutdowns is the SMSC EMC4001, the power, fan and thermal controller.

This is a chip you will not find any datasheet for, even on the SMSC website.

I dare someone to get the datasheet! It's under non disclosure agreement, so only Dell can do crappy designs and nobody else should be able to figure out what is the problem.

If you look on the web, the EMC4001 is listed as an 4 port USB chip!, nothing to do with the one on the XPS mother board.

It’s like they never produce-it! Well done Dell for using such crappy components.

It’s location is between the CPU and the chipset (see the pictures).
I had to remove all again to get there. See the pictures attached, lifting pin 3 on those transistors is the easiest solution to stop the instant shutdown coming from those signals.

There must be a design fail, now I understand better, when I was plugging the power cord, it made some of those signals to trip and therefore the instant shutdown, also some other signal noise could trigger those signals.

Because I have no tools to access by software those signals and see which one is at fault, I just removed them all.

After 2 days of testing, my brand old Dell XPS M1730 does NOT shut down randomly or unexpectedly anymore, this interesting story ends now.

That’s it folks.
Ted045
join:2013-07-28
Sumas, WA

Ted045

Member

Can you please email me at tabwon at shaw dot ca
Regarding this issue and it's outcome
Waiting for your reply
Expand your moderator at work