Hello all, my $2,000 dell xps m1210 became useless some days ago, showing no video at all on the main lcd sceen, neither on an external display when I try to power it on. I can see all the leds in the chassis behaving normally and I can also feel and hear the hard drive operating normally. This began a very long time ago, the screen would randomly freeze with some green vertical or horizantal lines followed by a blue screen of death, but would be fine after reboot for a week or a month before it happening again, it mostly happend whie viewing video content.
Now that theres no image at all (making the laptop useless), I searched online for similar problems and fixes, and I found many people were having the same issues, and discovered that there is in fact, a problem with defective nvidia graphics cards for which dell had given an extra year of warranty to fix this problem, however, at no point did I receive a notoficacion from dell about the existence of an extended warranty, (they have my info on record) which I would have used and appreciated as a loyal customer that I have been for dell computers. On a side note, my Lexus dealer calls and E-mail me every time a recall affects or might affect me and thats the kind of service that keeps me coming back.
I spent about three hours talking to the tech support to see If I could get any help which kept transferring me to other people and supervisors who required me to explain the situation over and over, and every single one of them started denying there was a problem with these computers, or gpu's to be more specific, then after telling them that the previous tech aknoleged the problem, they woul beging aknoledging it too, but then used the excuse that i was out of the extended warranty (for wich I was never notified).
Frustrated with tech support for not being able to help me with something that has nothing to do with normal tear and wear and which looks more like defective units sold to people, I decide to talk to the out-of-warranty repair techs just to see how much it would be and the tech estimated the repair at (about) $550.00 which is totally unacceptable for something that has to do with a defecticve product.
Not only have I been a loyal dell customer, but as a computer technician, I have recomended dell products many many times, well, I gues we live in an unfair world where I give you business and you give me the finger, good thing I can always change my product brand preferences and recomendations.
Now that we know that dell is not going to help us, can anyone help me and all the other people that are going through the same situation, and share an inexpensive fix that we can do ourselfs even if it requires soldering (because the gpu is soldered to the motherboard)?