Very strange problem with Dell Laptop

[crabig]

I have a strange issue going on with a Dell Latitude E5540. The motherboard was replaced Thursday, under warranty, by a Dell Field Technician. Board was replaced due to not recognizing the charger or the battery.

I had a spare hard drive in the machine in case the tech reformatted the drive, my customer would not lose everything. After the repair, everything seemed to be working fine.

Yesterday afternoon, I put the customer's hard drive back in the machine,and booted up. The Windows startup logo came up, and as soon as it went into Windows, the back light on the screen shut off. You can see the desktop using a flashlight. 2-3 minutes later, the machine shuts down.

Boot into safe mode, and it will run for hours with no problems at all.

Put my hard drive back into it, and it works fine. Had it running all night last night.

I think I've eliminated any hardware issues that may be causing this. Anybody have any idea what I might be looking at? Trying to avoid a reload, due to some very weird proprietary software that's on the machine.

If I have to, I have to. But I'd like to find a solution.

Thanks all.

Chris Rabig
PC Professionals

 

[NviGate Systems]

It could be a newer revision board and some of the software/drivers might not like it. I would try and startup in normal mode but with most non essential services/startups disabled. See if that fixes it. Then it's just determining what service caused the issue.

If it still does it, it could be a driver, in which case in safe mode you can uninstall (and remove the driver file when prompted) so that you can later re-install drivers.

What OS is it running? If it's 10 with a digital entitlement it will require activation.

 

[crabig]

Running Win7 Pro. Disabled all startups, but not services. Removed and re-installed video drivers with no effect. Currently trying to do an in place upgrade with a Dell Re-install disc. I cloned the original drive, and am trying this on the clone. Will update later today with the results.

 

[Markverhyden]

What did your HD have on it? Did the tech flash the BIOS? Did you try re-flashing the BIOS?

 

[Altster]

What did your HD have on it? Did the tech flash the BIOS? Did you try re-flashing the BIOS?

+1

That's the first thing I thought of. I'd make sure it has the latest (BIOS) revision installed.

 

[GTP]

+1 for BIOS reflash.

 

[coffee]

I have not heard this suggestion yet but it has worked for me in the past:

Go into device manager and uninstall everything under "Batteries". Then shut down the computer and turn it back on.

 

[NETWizz]

I would just uninstall all drivers that are available under Remove Programs and Features, Uninstall a Program, or Add/Remove Programs.

Either way I would then run Windows update to update all the drivers to the WHQL certified ones. After that point the computer will probably be stable.

 

[TurricanII]

You might also check what does the weird software has some weird anti piracy measures that involve checking serial numbers and Mac addresses that will now have changed.

Before deleting drivers I would have a quick scan through the list of services in safe mode. A lot of them of course will not have started in safe mode but will be set to start automatically. Run through those and consider whether any of them might be causing the weird behaviour in normal mode