Problems with Inspiron 9300

[Diomedou]

Spec:

Pentium M770 2133
Dell Motherboard OC5668
2048 MBytes DDR2 PC2-4300

1. The laptop overheats
2. Charger will not work unless held tight and jiggled about in the laptop it then must be held there tight.

Any ideas how to fix? Is it worth fixing? only use laptop for FM 2009, Word/Excel and Internet.

However computer goes to 100%usage when playing Football Manager 2009 or buring a DVD.

[Andrew Moore]

Have you tried cleaning out the vents on it? removing the bottom cover and rubbing it with a brush whilst using a can of compressed air? That should sort the heat issue. Its very similar to the 6000 I once had. m770 cpu, 2gb of pc2-5300 and an x300 128mb pci-e gpu.

It was a nightmare for gathering dust!

A fresh instal of the operating system, drivers and the software you use should speed it up and clear it of rubbish which in turn would mean it wouldnt have to work as hard so in theory shouldnt get as hot if not as hot as quick.

As for the charger issue. Mine did this too! there is sadly very little you can do other than buying the charge socket off of ebay and attempting to fit it. (may require soldering etc). Another issue that mine faced was the centre pin in the charging connector was forced inward over the years so never made a proper connection. This would explain you having to exert force on the chrging port to get it to work.

sorry this is probably not what you want to hear but its just one of the things that sadly happens with time,.

Andy

[xpress]

Spec:

Pentium M770 2133
Dell Motherboard OC5668
2048 MBytes DDR2 PC2-4300

1. The laptop overheats
2. Charger will not work unless held tight and jiggled about in the laptop it then must be held there tight.

Any ideas how to fix? Is it worth fixing? only use laptop for FM 2009, Word/Excel and Internet.

However computer goes to 100%usage when playing Football Manager 2009 or buring a DVD.

Im sorry to say, but dell dont make very good laptops in my experience. Ive owned several and currently own 2, which im gona put up on a certain auction site.

Overheating is a very common fault on dell laptops. Try leaving a gap between the table surface and the bottom of the laptop to help cooling or get a laptop cooler. Charger problems are also very common on dell's. Ive lost count on the number of ac adaptors ive purchased for me & friends. You having to jiggle the plug to get charge is down to the mobo connector being poor quality / badly connected. On certain models, the motherboards tend to fail quite often from overheating and the screen cable will fail sooner or latter making your screen go dimm then bright in a cycle. Sometimes you wont be able to see anything at all.

I put all the probs down to cheap components.

I owned alot of dell stuff in the past but I started avoiding anything dell a while back (apart from my tft monitors, they seem ok), plus there support is not the best. Everytime i called them with a problem, it was more hassle than it was worth + spending hours n hours on the phone.

As for the 100% usage, maybe the hardware is not powerfull enough, maybe you need a re-install of OS or maybe its the heat? Instead of a complete re-install you might be able to restore your system to factory settings as dell's tend to have this feature, but remember to backup all your docs and important stuff

[Diomedou]

Thanks guys dc socket replaced and system now fine.

[IainK]

glad to hear it, the 100% usage might have been down to thermal throttling?