on the other hand, if you can take really good care of your laptop and make 100% sure no harm will come to it, then the 3 years cover extra $ you paid for will go down the drain. what a dilema.. im a risk adverse person, that's why i "invest" in the warranty program.

besides, from my experience as an engineer, i know for one that things are not made to last nowadays. in fact, most electronic components are made with a pre-determined life span. why made things last when it will become obsolete in 1 year time and u still have to upgrade? (making things dont last save manufacturers costs too, because materials dont have to be extremely high quality) so even if accidents dont get you, the internal time bomb will.

i guess asians (including malaysians) are too "foxy" and can always find ways around the system..

dont think it works for vista, unless im not getting it right.

i remembered seeing this statistics report a while ago, from microsoft stating that nvidia forceware caused (if im not mistaken) more then 70% of all vista crashes last year alone. as for your problem, what driver version are u using? if you dont play company of heroes, u can try dell's latest 174.31 release, otherwise there are lots of new ones to choose from, ranging from 175 series to 177 series. im pretty sure a clean uninstall and driver update will fix your problem.

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Added on June 23, 2008, 2:18 amwhat colour on top are u talking about? the inside grey/dull silver plastic or the multicoloured lid outside? the lid will almost never fade because of the superior microsatin finish and magnesium alloy material. the inside however, is a different story. the grey plastic will fade over time, and it most likely will start from the corner and the palm rest.

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Added on June 23, 2008, 2:22 amto be frank, inspiron 1520 is an obselete model. it has already been replaced by 1525, and now the new studio 1536 soon to be released series. however, 1525 is not a worthy 1520 replacement because of the lack of graphics card. 1536 is rumoured to harbour a powerful midrange nvidia or ati graphics card, so it's pretty exciting.

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Jun 23 2008, 02:22 AM

my inspiron 1520 is still serving me well, especially with the super clocked 8600M GT. the only real game that i had problem playing at high settings is crysis. but if there is an option to upgrade my graphics card, i'll definately take it, because that's the only determining part that is standing between my laptop and 2 years into the future.

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Added on June 23, 2008, 8:17 pmstandy by mode?

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Jun 23 2008, 08:17 PM

overheating is quite a low probability event on 1520 (assuming the thermal compound is working properly). the massive heatsinks and heat pipes in 1520 makes it arguably one of the coolest laptop with dedicated graphics ever built. either way, if your laptop does power up, try to check the temperature with hardware monitoring software. the simplest one u can try is called HWMonitor. also, even if it's overheat issue, u can power up in less than 5min because the system cools off very quickly due to the magnesium alloy metal case.

i would suspect something else, like faulty motherboard?

well, what can i say? sh*t happens. sorry about ur case. so is there any improvement now?

nope, inspiron 1520, 1420, 1720 and corresponding vostro series are all made with magnesium alloy metal chasis (and lid). xps series however, are made with aluminium to save weight and thickness. that's why the body of the 1520 is built like a TANK, and im not joking. i've seen the inside before, the chasis armor is really that thick and durable.

try holding a competitor laptop like acer 5290G series with one hand on the sides. u'll notice flex and creaks going on because of the cheap material used. try the same on inspiron. no visible flex, no creaks. the downside is the overall weight and thickness

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Added on June 24, 2008, 5:07 amdont worry, they will sort it out for u. true time is wasted, but look on the bright side, they come to u. u dont have to go to them. where else can u find service like that for notebooks??

let us know when the problem is fixed and the cause.

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Jun 24 2008, 05:07 AM

u r absolutely right. the inner parts (everything silver/grey colour) for all those inspiron and vostro series are all made with plastic, so colour might fade away and crack or scratches will easily happen. a tank has strong outer layer armour, but inside does not necessarily needs to be as strong as the outer layer.

i am really curious, how does that crack happen on ur laptop? i've seen people dropped their laptop onto tar rocky road surface and the laptop is still fine with a little bit of scratches on the magnesium alloy body. i guess u must have dropped your laptop when the lid is open.

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Added on June 24, 2008, 7:24 pmas long as ur hdd is ok, no harm will come to your data. but it will help for u to remind the technician not to do that "extra work" for u.

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Jun 24 2008, 07:28 PM

the quickest way is to restore the factory partition hidden in your system. press F8 when computer starts and go to restore options. follow the on-screen instructions.
if your system is still screwed up after restore to factory preinstalled windows, then there is a high probability it has something to do with ur hardware. i would check the RAM first if i were u, and then move on to investigate thermal problems by monitoring temperature. if all those checks out, the next thing is going to be hard drive, display card and finally motherboard. cpu failure is an extremely unlikely case. well, i would take a wild guess that ur motherboard is defective. how long has this been going on?

if u have deleted your restore partition, well, it's going to be more complicated. installing sp3 will definately rule out windows problem, so it is recommended. also, try to install all the latest drivers from dell's website for 6400. to make sure ur usb ports are detectable, install the latest intel chipset driver.

worse come to worst, call up dell malaysia, tell them u want to extend your 6400 warranty to 3 years COMPLETE COVER, and use ur credit card or get your relatives to pay the remaining balance for u, then perform an international warranty transfer (which will take 1-2weeks), and you are covered in UK. you should be looking at somewhere RM600+- which is worth every sen if your mobo is really defective. repair costs will cost u a couple of hundred pounds.

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Added on June 25, 2008, 3:38 amare u in malaysia? because it's 3.30am and u r still awake! haha..

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Jun 25 2008, 03:42 AM

im not sure what is the minimum year warranty that covers international, so i assume it's 3 years complete cover because im on that now. u r right, it's not worth it for an old laptop, but still, it'll be a lot cheaper than the repair costs if anything goes wrong with his hardware.

when this thread reach 100 pages, i will start a v2 inspiron 1520, so hang in there guys. keep contributing to the 1520 community!

Glad you noticed that! absolute brilliant laptop built quality, only gripe is the relatively "weak" and aging 8600M GT card. if upgradable to 8800M GTX or 9600MGT i will make me happy alex!

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Added on June 26, 2008, 2:34 amohh.. i didnt realize it's 125 page standard. first time starting a thread, so no experience. thanks for the heads up. 125 pages it is

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Added on June 26, 2008, 2:36 amif you consider yourself a noob, then it's better to keep your recovery partition. easiest way of recovering to factory default state, takes less than 30min for a fresh vista installation with all the drivers loaded up. the way to recover it is as explained as raymannlucas. i myself got rid of the recovery partition because it's filled with dell's crapware and outdated drivers, so better do a fresh install (more time consuming of course and requires vista/xp dvd with u)

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Jun 26 2008, 02:40 AM

wow, that's really bold of you. i was under the impression that they will slap a bill for all those things if you dont return those, because when i had my laptop replaced, they asked for all those back, especially adaptor and battery. darn, should have kept them.

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Jun 26 2008, 04:30 PM

well, it's not that hard to believe. when i opened up my laptop, the first thing i do is to replace all the thermal pad and paste dell used. some of them are already hardened and cracked! (serious, rock solid). obviously heat cannot be efficiently transfered from the core to the heatsink, causing a meltdown. i had to scrap off the low quality thermal pad/paste and use a high performance one. now my laptop is cool as ice. no over heating, and achieving super clocked GPU speed.

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Added on June 26, 2008, 7:18 pmby the way guys, inspiron studio is now official and online. available at the UK and customisable.

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products...s=ukdhs1&~ck=bt

bad news for 15" fans, the highest GF card customisable is only ati radeon 3450. but 17" can go as high as radeon 3650 which is ok. i suspect the 3650 used in studio 17 is again based on DDR2 RAM (which explains the poor 3DMark06 score), which bottlenecks the performance. expect it to churn out somewhere the same or lower FPS compared to a standard clocked 8700MGT.

Looks like 1520 is not that obselete afterall! my 8600MGT (650/550) still outperforms radeon 3650 by a considerable margin!
check out the 3DMark06 score of 3650 studio 17. http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4471

This post has been edited by alexnvidia: Jun 26 2008, 07:33 PM

this is indeed a happy day for all proud 1520 owners!!

my idle temp for both CPU and GPU is 46C. Full load can go up to CPU:69C and GPU:65C. i would assume this is quite cool after all the hard work and effort i put into my laptop.

yup, that is a good one to start with. simple and clean. if u want slightly more complicated ones, you can program your rivatuner to monitor cpu temp too. and the ultimate one will be everest, which is what im using now.

hihihehe, your CM infinite definately works. the temperature i post just now are the ones without any active external cooling. just plain old internal fan. without all those thermal paste replacement and tweaking i did, my idle would be hovering around 52C for CPU, 48C for GPU. full load was about 73C for CPU and 70C for GPU. and furthermore, i gain system stability from it, because less heat, more stable core at high frequency (speed)

mmm... looks like T7250 is much cooler than T7500..

how bout ur T7300? wat's ur idle and full load temp without any external active cooling?