Starting pricing motherboards when I ran across this site. I read the threads from Sam and Jeremy about replacing the CMOS battery and thought I would give it a try since the laptop was doing me no good sitting here anyway. I followed the service manual as instructed (on the Dell website) and spent an afternoon on a snow day dismantaling my laptop (it was painstaking and tedious). I am happy and ecstatic to say that my laptop is back to life while costing me less than 4 bucks!

Thanks Sam & Jeremy for the great advice! :)

As many have said here…DELL is DEAD to ME. I WILL NEVER buy another product made by this company.

Shame on YOU Dell once for selling and not standing by your prouduct. ..But, I thought, just maybe this new 1526 design had changed and things would be better….Guess what..NOPE. And, Shame on me if I ever even think about purchasing another DELL product again. Good Riddens.

I have had many of the same issues, when under warranty, sent to Dell, replaced motherboard, hard drive, and a couple other parts. As soon as it went out of warrant, started having more problems.

One issue not mentioned much here but on other boards is the LCD screen blinking or going very dim – not black. If you plug the laptop in, the screen goes dark. If you unplug it and have it on power saver, you can get a dim screen, enough to see most things.

Dell told me that the entire LCD would have to be replaced, and the cost would be in the 100′s. After searching the web, I found a few places mentioning this issue, and one of them mentioned the LCD Power Inverter It is a small chip that connects to the bottom of the LCD screen I bought a new one for 6 bucks shipped on ebay. It was not the easiest thing to replace, and the Dell manual does not have instructions for it specifically, but i did it in about an hour, and the screen worked like new, bright as day plugged in or not. 6 bucks saved me from trashing this thing.

The overheating issue, Jay is spot on. I found the same crappy thermal paste excess on my CPU, bought an Arctic Silver compound kit which included the removal solution and purifier on ebay for 10 bucks, and redid the thermal compounding on both chips. Even if you don’t want to deal with that, just opening that section in the back blowing out the fan and the heatsink to get all the crap out. That combined with a good cooling pad, will make a huge difference.

I may never buy a Dell laptop again, but at least I can keep this one running at minimal cost. Despite all the issues, all I have put out in the year after warranty is that 16 bucks.

I think the issue with the damaged CPUs is that the laptop can’t handle the CPU heat at full power and if somehow the laptop freezes and CPU stays at 100% for some time, the CPU gets cooked.

I thought this could be fixed with a new BIOS, but… the dell bios updater won’t let me update the BIOS with a discharged battery, which gets me to point one, this piece of manure doesn’t charge its (new) battery (pulls hair). Truly a piece of crap.

is all. and my laptop is runing again as well as always.

If you have doubt does not hesitate to contact me.

amm_leon@hotmail.com

The DELL 1526 is not a piece of crap. But it’s also not a laptop one can expect to run without a little maintenance from time to time either.

Here’s some REAL tips to help most of you with your DELL 1526 problems.

The black screen problem. System may turn on but the screen stays black.
The problem here is caused more than likely by a dead CMOS battery (CR2032 battery) which will need to be replaced. Go and buy a new one of the same type and replace it. You may find yourself surprised when your laptop turns on again without a problem after doing this.

Yes, it may a be a pain to open your laptop just to get to the CMOS battery. But its either you or DELL and their bullshit price tag for helping you replace a simple battery.

Then when its replaced, go to your bios (usually by pressing the Delete key or F2 upon turning on your computer until you hit the BIOs screen) and simply correct the time/date and whatever else if need be.

So make sure if youre getting no boot but everything else turns on, to carefully open your laptop, get to the motherboard and change the CMOS coin battery.
If you have a digital camera, TAKE PICTURES as your taking the laptop apart so you can see how to put it back again!!!

This should help your system boot up perfectly. :)

Problem number 2. Overheating.

No matter what the processor is used, Intel or AMD, if they constantly overheat and your computer shuts off, eventually, they’re going to die and cease to work. That’s computer nerd fact.

Now, I do own one of these laptops. The version with no webcam. After about a year of usage, i noticed its been overheating and shutting off. In fact, only after a few minutes of watching a movie or playing a game, my laptop would hit 90c!

SO, I went ahead and opened it from the bottom to inspect the heat sink because I knew something wasn’t right..

You know what I found?

Well, after unscrewing the heat sink from the processor (the one with the copper pipe running to the back of the lap top), i found something so alarming and stupid, I truly believe DELL had monkeys put these things together.
The Dell technician had placed a small barcode sticker half ways over the CPU with cheap grade thermal paste sloppily splattered all over the cpu chip. This totally compromised the heat conduction from CPU to heat sink!!!

Thats why my CPU heated even in idle state.

I peeled the stupid thing off, cleaned out the crappy thermal paste (gray colored toothpaste looking stuff) they used which was sloppily splattered all over the cpu chip itself, which is a big no no (you don’t need to add too much thermal paste on a CPU. The idea of adding more to lower heat temp does not apply here. In fact, less is more. Just enough so that the paste and surface touch. If you add too much, it may compromise the heat transfer to the heat sink.)
I used a thermal remover and surface purifier. You can buy it on Newegg or any other Computer store online for cheap.

Do not use water. Alcohol wont exactly penetrate dried thermal paste. But if you have nothing else and dont want to buy thermal remover, then alcohol should be fine.
Make sure when you clean the surface that there’s no fabric left behind from the wipes or soft non abrasive paper towel.

There is also another smaller chip with different thermal compound over it found in within the same vicinity of the CPU chip. That was a mess too.
Cleaned it up, used ARCTIC 5 thermal paste on both chips. Placed back the cleaned up heat sink with copper pipe.

OH, and the very end of the copper pipe, you need to check the steel block because mine was chalked full of dust from one end. Which also explains why my laptop overheated so fast.

Now, my laptop runs at a cool 45c-49c while using it for internet and no higher than 65c when running games.

BTW!! I do use a cooling mat. The ones that have fans on it and you place it underneath the laptop. EVERY lap top owner should own one. Theyre very cheap and work well to help keep your laptop cooled. Especially those of you who use it over your bed.

If you don’t want to use a mat, then at least be smart and use a book or something flat under neath it so that air can still flow through the machine.

Playing movies, DVDs, Winamp with visuals, Photoshop CS2, does not overheat my laptop anymore. =]

So before you pull your hair out, please be advised that you may have to do some maintenance before dialing that unholy DELL help number.

If you continue to use your laptop as its constantly overheating, it will die on you. So stop, open it, and at least blow out the dust from the heat sink block that runs towards the end of the laptop.

This laptop is very decent. I had mine for over 1 year. Aside from the overheating issues which could have killed my system, everything is running nominally.

A lot of people complain because we’re lead to believe once we buy something, it should work forever without having to clean it or tweak it around.
I can agree with those sentiments. But in this case, whether its a laptop or desktop, cleaning it should be a part of package deal, no questions.

Hope this helped some of you! Dont throw them out yet! :D

I had the same issue, and tripped accross this site. Now, although I spent three hours of my life and $1.99 for the battery, my lovely wife has a working Dell Inspiron 1526.

Here is the Article from Dell that I used: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins1525/en/SM/coinbatt.htm#wp1179839

Good luck, everyone!

Again, Thanks Sam and Jeremy!