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My laptop—a Dell 1747 i7 laptop—fell from my desk to the concrete floor of my basement office when my son tripped on its cord. As would expect, that was it for the hard disk. Luckily, though, the screen survived and shows no signs of damage. Yet, I have been experiencing a strange performance problem ever since the incident.
After replacing the hard disk, I have been unable to reinstall an OS. I tried reinstalling the Windows 7 it came with, and I also tried installing Ubuntu. Neither install crashes—but both take hours and hours to load / install. Even when I run the built-in memory test, a test which the diagnostic software claims will take 30 minutes, it took overnight to finish.
So far, I have completely broken down the system, including removing the heat sinks, and re-seating the CPU. Then, I reassembled it and tried again. It doesn't appear to be running any better now.
While I was disassembling it, I inspected each component and found no other evidence of physical damage. No sign of flexing or cracking In the circuit boards. Do discoloration sign of overheating. The only thing unusual I found was a bit of foreign matter—like clear plastic wrap—covering the base of 3-4 pins of the CPU—near the square void at the center of the chip.
Does anyone have ideas on what may be wrong or what I might try next?
So you were able to to reinstall the OS? Or not? How would you run the tests? My guess is it could be the hard drive itself. – JakeGould – 2014-12-06T23:07:22.123
Diagnostics are built-in to BIOS and run without reporting any errors. as I interrupted the win7 install after 6.5 hours. OS copied files to hard drive and without complaining. Was still "extracting" files when I decided to stop the install. – CyberspaceCadet – 2014-12-06T23:34:25.447
This plastic was on the CPU itself or on the motherbaord? If you have a laptop it's odd you have a socket CPU – Ramhound – 2014-12-06T23:37:51.150
I’m not a Windows expert, but I would recommend that you download and burn a “live” boot CD with diagnostic tools such as “Ultimate Boot CD” and then running some more system checks on the unit that way. Best of luck!
– JakeGould – 2014-12-06T23:38:00.330Cpu itself. Used uses plastic toothpick to scrape away as much as I cold b4 reseating – CyberspaceCadet – 2014-12-06T23:53:39.687
I am running install progs from DVD. The win7 install copied its files to hard drive without complaining. But, it was still "extracting" files when I decided to stop the install. For Ubuntu, it took 90 minutes just to load the desktop from DVD. I never launched the install program once the desktop was up because it took so long to get that far. For those that are familiar with Linux kernel, I was also seeing the following errors over and over: "BUG: Soft lockup CPU#x hung for 22s" (The CPU # varies between 0 and 7. ) – CyberspaceCadet – 2014-12-06T23:59:53.343
RE: Socket CPU. Ramhound noted this was atypical. While Dell is still selling the 1747 with the i7, I purchased mine in '10. I think Dell first came out with it in Fall of '09. My unit has history of random, hw related reboots. Though, not persistent or consistent enough to justify replacement under warranty. Symptoms telling me something more serious is now going on with hardware. Would be nice if it is a simple as more thorough cleaning of CPU pins an/or socket. Suggestions on product or methods? Or forget it; too much risk of damage? After that? Try replacing CPU then Motherboard, perhaps? – CyberspaceCadet – 2014-12-07T13:14:15.187
One question, have you tried resetting BIOS to default, or maybe check to update BIOS? – None – 2014-12-08T16:51:09.593
BIOS is already most current version available according to Dell support page for my Service Tag. Also, the procedure, to access and remove the CPU, requires nearly everything that isn't soldered on to be disconnected or removed from the motherboard including the button battery that preserves the BIOS settings. I am fairly certain this reset everything to "factory defaults." – CyberspaceCadet – 2014-12-08T18:01:37.683