HELP! Anyone got a Dell XPS Laptop?

ElectraBlue

This is a weird request... hope someone can help me please!

My 1 year old Dell XPS M1330 charger jack and side hinge got damaged, I'm having trouble getting reassurances from repair places that the memory won't be impacted if I leave it in for repair. I have a lot of valuable documents/photos on the laptop that I need to get back, I just don't trust them. The battery went dead before the back up was completed! :mad: I need to charge up the battery and finish backing-up my system before handing the laptop in for repair.

I'm looking for someone with a new XPS (preferably in Dublin or near enough) slimline battery compartment who will do me the great favour of charging up my battery on their laptop...

ntlbell

buy yourself a caddy for the disk

3/4e on ebay

pop it into any other machine back it up and away you go

ElectraBlue

ntlbell wrote: »

buy yourself a caddy for the disk

3/4e on ebay

pop it into any other machine back it up and away you go

Thanks but it still won't work without power

ntlbell

ElectraBlue wrote: »

Thanks but it still won't work without power

it comes with a usb cable

plug the cable into ANY machine and copy the info over.

ElectraBlue

ntlbell wrote: »

it comes with a usb cable

plug the cable into ANY machine and copy the info over.

Okay - does this mean I have to remove the hard drive from the laptop, insert into the Caddy then hook up to another machine for transfer?

aligator_am

ElectraBlue wrote: »

Okay - does this mean I have to remove the hard drive from the laptop, insert into the Caddy then hook up to another machine for transfer?

Yep, you'll need to remove the hard drive from the machine, is it still under warranty? The crowd I work for repair Dell machines, and what I know of XPS laptops is that the engineers dread when they get a call for one of them but that's usually if a motherboard needs replacing. Have a look at the bottom of the machine, if you can see a panel about 5" x 4" then that's probably the hard drive cover panel, if you don't see one then the entire machine may need to be pulled apart to get the drive out, not good

ElectraBlue

aligator_am wrote: »

Yep, you'll need to remove the hard drive from the machine, is it still under warranty? The crowd I work for repair Dell machines, and what I know of XPS laptops is that the engineers dread when they get a call for one of them but that's usually if a motherboard needs replacing. Have a look at the bottom of the machine, if you can see a panel about 5" x 4" then that's probably the hard drive cover panel, if you don't see one then the entire machine may need to be pulled apart to get the drive out, not good

Thanks for that advice - will have a look later; I'm not a technical/DIY person but will try!

aligator_am

Just double check that the machine is out of warranty before you do anything, otherwise you may invalidate it, check the bottom of the machine for a sticker with an alphanumeric number on it, usually about 6 digits long and almost always ends in the letter "J", take that number and go to the below link, it will give you details of the machine including warranty info

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/my_systems_info/en/details?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

Also, I'm wondering why repair places are saying the "memory" may be impacted when repaired? did they specifically say memory, or hard drive? they may be talking about the random access memory which is completely seperate to the hard drive, so you may want to ask again

I will say though, if the socket where the power plugs in on the laptop is damaged then it's very likely that the entire motherboard will need to be replaced as most places won't bother soldering on a replacement part, it's easier for them to just swap out the entire board, so do a little checking as they may try and swindle you :P

ElectraBlue

Got the Caddy last Friday (€10 eBay) it worked a treat! No need to remove the back, my XPS HD had its own side compartment, just removed the four screws holding it in.

Got quoted €350-375 for the repairs :eek: not going to bother with that... got new laptop for €440, keeping the HD/Caddy for additional storage.

Many thanks for your valuable advice!

aligator_am

Glad you got it sorted

Have a route around and see if anyone wants to buy the XPS for spare parts, assuming you were going to just dump it, those things cost a pretty penny in their day, usually close to the €2000 mark so it would be a shame just to bin it lol.

stevire

aligator_am wrote: »

Glad you got it sorted

Have a route around and see if anyone wants to buy the XPS for spare parts, assuming you were going to just dump it, those things cost a pretty penny in their day, usually close to the €2000 mark so it would be a shame just to bin it lol.

I was looking for this model for parts to fix my dvd drive and keyboard, they've come a long way from 2k!! I paid about 1.5k for mine around two years ago, got a quote of dell to fix the laptop for 465e. You buy them second hand for that:
Link1 Link2 Link3

Not worth fixing it, if I can get a perfectly working one at the same price or could just get a new one for the same price!

ElectraBlue

Thanks... got couple of PMs already!

And.... its sold!