I bought a Dell Inspiron 5100 some time back and now it is completely dead. It began overheating imtermittently shortly after the warranty ran out, and finally one day it conked out for good. I believe that either the CPU or the mobo or perhaps both have taken damage, and this is evidenced by several forums I have found on the internet. Dell has admitted that it is a flaw in the design of the heatsink that allows the CPU to overheat and that it is therefore their fault, but refuses to do anything about it, especially now that the warranty is out. Instead of recalling it, which is what they should have done, they simply discontinued the model due to "outdated technology".

The Question:

Could the Motherboard be bad? The computer will still power on, the power and battery LED lights still function, the CPU fan, which plugs into the motherboard still operates, but the computer will not boot, POST, or display anything. I have heard people complain about both being bad, and one or the other, but I believe that my motherboard is still good due to the fact that the system will power on, the fan runs, and the lights work. Am I correct or will these still work even with a bad board?

--Benjamin
Johnson Central Help Desk

You can get the behavior you describe with a bad MOBO. You can also get it with other problems... like bad memory or a bad HDD. Your CPU is probably OK ... P4s have thermal protection.

Since it is a laptop, there are no cheap, easy work-arounds for a bad thermal design.

Could be a lot of things but it sounds like the repair is over the average user's ability. Take it in and have an estimate done prior to repair. The estimate sheet will not only list the problem but it will tell you weather or not it's worth repairing.

Think carefully though... if it's a design flaw that may happen again, and Dell is going to be a stick in the mud about it, then I would scrap it and buy anything BUT another DELL.

One hint however, When shopping for a laptop, it is sooooo important to get one that has easy access to the fans, Fans and heatsinks on laptops are quite compact and therefore plug with dust easily. They need to be cleaned more often than people think.

Thanks for the advice, guys. I'd say that it probably is the MOBO since it is possible for these things to happen with a bad board. Badboy, I wasn't sure if it was possible, but thanks for the info. I have tried to boot the system while removing certain parts to try to eliminate them, including both SODIMMs, one at a time, the HDD, the built in modem, the CD Drive, etc. I had heard from one other source that the P4s had pretty good thermal protection, but had also heard that Dell told many people that their CPUs had been damaged. Could have been the same people from Dell that I talked to over the phone though, and I wouldn't believe anything they told me. Blackbill, you're absolutely right. I will probably never buy another Dell, at least not a laptop. A desktop, maybe, because if something goes wrong in it, I can probably fix it pretty easy. I just don't like giving my money to companies that are run by complete idiots. Stubborn idiots are even worse.
As for the dust, that's exactly what everyone on the internet was saying the flaw was. That the heatsinks were too easily caked by dust, but when I took my notebook apart to inspect its innards, the ESD shield was covered, but everything under it, the CPU, the MOBO, video card, EVERYTHING was clean as a whistle. I removed the heatsink and inspected it, and while it was designed very strangely, there was absolutely no dust buildup. This is what really stumped me. It was probably just the poor design of the thing in general that caused it to overheat.
Finally, could anyone suggest a good laptop that is fairly reliable from a company that is willing to back their product up and fess up to their customers it something is wrong with it?

--Benjamin
Johnson Central Help Desk

People have asked that before and it's comes to a matter of opinion.

I have IBM, Toshiba, and HP and I enjoy the HP (z5000 wide screen) the best by far. It's rugged, stylish, and provides easy access to the fans. Mine runs pretty much 24/7 and has for almost 1.5 years without a problem. Once a month or so I shut down to clean fans but that's about it.

Thanks for the advice. I had been considering HP, but had heard good and bad about them. My experience has been pretty good, I have an HP desktop about 6 or 7 years old that still worked as of about a month ago when I completely gutted it. I'll look at the z5000.

--Benjamin
Johnson Central Help Desk

I've bought HP, Dell, Toshiba, and Gateway laptops. Until I read this post, I favored Dell!

One of the most impressive laptops that I've played with recently was an HP with wide screen, an ATI display adapter, and an Athlon64 3200+ CPU. My friend bought it at Sam's for his son to take to college. It came with a printer/scanner and a backpack case for about $1050.

That's an awesome deal on a really good system. I'll definitely be buying a notebook sometime before I go to college next fall. I'll check that out before long, I want to get this laptop as soon as I can. Thanks again.

--Benjamin
Johnson Central Help Desk

Guys, after some time, an investigator for a law firm from Columbus, OH who is investigating this very problem for a class action suit contacted me after she read my post right here on computing.net

She said that the problem lies in the fact that the systen was originally designed to house a Celeron processor, shich runs much cooler than a P4. When Dell decided to upgrade to a P4, they forgot to upgrade the heatsink along with it. It simply couldn't compensate for the added heat of the Pentium 4 processor.

--Benjamin
Johnson Central Help Desk