The Nvidia Defect Forum

Excellent forum - extremely informative and has helped me pursue a claim against Currys.

DV9702EA purchase price £475 in May 08. Prone to extreme overheating which has resulted in cracked hinge to the left side of the laptop but it’s still working.

After reading this forum I sent a LBA on 10th Dec 2010 to Currys HO in Hemel Hempsted (recorded delivery). Gave 14 days for a reply but heard nothing so rang HO on 17th Jan for an update. They claimed they had sent a letter and apologised that I had not received it. I was given a case reference number and asked to call an 0844 number. The nominated representative asked me for the serial no. and said they would contact HP to request a repair. If they did not receive a satisfactory response then they would step in to provide remedy / compensation. A week went by and I called them back and they confirmed they hadn't had a reply so I was asked to take it into local PC World with a tech guy facility. I was told to inform PC World staff to call the 0844 number and speak with the representative handling my case. They would assess whether a repair was viable / economical. If not then they would make an offer circa £230/240 (presumably not cash but an in store voucher?).

I will update this thread next week when I hear back but any advice in the meantime would be appreciated e.g. is the ballpark offer they mentioned reasonable? Can I press for cash compensation? Can I expect to keep the existing laptop? To be honest though I rather they did a repair as I don't particularly want to go spending any more on a replacement (17" models in store started at £500 but to be honest some of the 15" widescreen models on display looked just as big!) so any advice on what I should ensure happens next would be great e.g. get written confirmation of the make / part no's of replacement components, what parts as a minimum should they replace etc.

Hello Twok and welcome to our forum.

Sorry to hear that your laptop has failed.

Their offer of £230/£240 is exactly the amount that you would receive as a minimum so it is pretty fair.

If they let you keep the laptop then even better as you would get around £100 in its current condition on Ebay so that will further enhance your refund.

You can certainly press for cash. Just tell them that you have already purchased a laptop elsewhere and so you would like a refund to your bank account.

If you are happy to accept a repair then fine. You should however ask for a written guarantee that the parts will be free from the defect. They will probably refuse to provide you with this as they will if you ask for details of the parts they will use.

It is at that point you have to decide on whether or not to accept their offer.

I hope the above helps.

Good luck for when they call you.

Any questions please let me know.

Best wishes

Paul
The Admin Team

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Thanks for the response Paul.

I received a call from Currys customer services this afternoon. As you can see from the e-mail that I asked them to send me they are denying liability on the grounds that the overheating was due to a dust build-up.

There is little doubt that the GPU (NVidia 8400) is one of the ones affected and that this was the likely reason for the overheating and the resultant damage to the hinge. My inclination is to persuade them to reconsider their initial position by going straight to lodging a claim on-line for £25. I could get an engineers repoirt but that's all extra cost and I think the claim may turn good without it given the circumstancial evidence.

Any advices appreciated.

Regards
Tony

Dear Mr XXX,

Further to our telephone conversation this afternoon, I can confirm that at this time, we have identified that the problems you have experienced have not been caused by an inherent fault, specifically it would appear that the overheating was caused by a dust buildup which our store has now remedied. As such, at this time we will not provide assistance with this laptop.

I understand that you wish to have the laptop inspected by a third party engineer, and can confirm that the laptop is ready to be collected from our store. You may contact me by dialling 0844 800 9090 and quoting case reference XXX.

Although this response may not be the outcome you were looking for, I trust that I have clearly explained our position on this matter.

Yours sincerely,

XXX
Currys Customer Support Team

Hello Tony,

I do not agree that the overheating has caused the hinge to break. There is yet another inherent defect in the DV9??? range of laptops known as the hinge defect. Simply Google "DV9000 hinge defect" and you can read all about it.

As your laptop was only overheating but was still working then it is likely that a dust build up could have caused this but I have an issue with this.

The grilles and fan assembly is in a customer inaccessible place. There is no means of the customer easily cleaning the grilles and fan and there is no removable panel that would allow this to take place.

Compressed air cannot always clean blocked fans and in any event, at not time are customers told to clean the grilles and fan. There is no mention of it in the user guide and there is no warning on the laptop that it can get blocked.

So if the laptop were to fail due to overheating then I would say that this was due to a design defect as the laptop does not lend itself easily to be cleaned by the owner.

You should download the 2 utilities from the download section of this forum. One is a program called GPU-Z, which is a temperature monitoring program and the other, Rtgdribl, is a GPU stress tester. You should run the stress tester in full screen and leave it for about fifteen minutes and make a note of the peak temperature then pop back here and let me know and I will advise further. The downloads can be found here:- tools-to-test-to-see-if-your-nvidia-gpu-is-about-to-fail-t57.html

Regarding the broken hinge, I would get back onto PC World and would tell them that you are not happy with their response and that the hinge problem on your laptop is another well known defect in your model of laptop.

Don't let them fob you off, stand your ground and be persistent.

Good luck and best wishes

Paul
The Admin Team

_________________
=======================================================
Calculate the minimum refund that you would be entitled to.
FAQ's
Why you should not accept a repair
Links to evidence
What is the Nvidia Defect?
Step by step help to getting a refund
Do you need an engineers report?
=======================================================

If you like what you see on this forum and would like to help then please post links to this forum in other forums or blogs. The more people we can help the better.


Please note that I am not legally qualified and I only offer my own personal advice. You are advised to seek professional legal advice for formal clarification of advice I give.

Thanks Paul I wasn't aware that there were two inherent defects with this HP model - talk about being unlucky !

I ran the test and the GPU Load was 90-91% throughout and the temperature hovered at 74-75 celcius (GPU core/memory clock 400 mhz, GPU shader clock 800 mhz, memory used 154-170 mb) fan ran constantly throughout. Casing pretty hot around left rear of the laptop - not sure how the heat compares with what it was before the dust removal - its my daughter's laptop who is in bed so can't ask her at the minute). Idle temperature settled down to 61 celcius with GPU load of 0% after about 10 minutes.

Unsure whether they applied any BIOS updates to keep the fan constantly on (I read on other threads that these were issued by HP at one time) - how can I tell if at all? I enquired when I picked it up but the guy said there was nothing on the engineers report to indicate that there had been any BIOS changes.

I will get back to customer services and keep you posted. Feedback on the GPU temperature appreciated and liklihood of future failure.

Regards
Tony

Booted up this morning & left running in an idle state for around 3 hours and GPU temperature was 59 celcius.

Hello Twok,

With the Rthdribl running full screen what does the temperature rise to?

You should then increase the number of multi samples in Rthdribl and see if that causes the temperature to rise further then please let me know the maximum temperature reached.

I will then be able to advise further.

Best wishes

Paul
The Admin Team

_________________
=======================================================
Calculate the minimum refund that you would be entitled to.
FAQ's
Why you should not accept a repair
Links to evidence
What is the Nvidia Defect?
Step by step help to getting a refund
Do you need an engineers report?
=======================================================

If you like what you see on this forum and would like to help then please post links to this forum in other forums or blogs. The more people we can help the better.


Please note that I am not legally qualified and I only offer my own personal advice. You are advised to seek professional legal advice for formal clarification of advice I give.

Hi Paul, in full in full screen mode the GPU temperature hovers around 74 celcius as per my previous post. What temperature would be considered abnormal?

Hello Twok,

Well 74c is not too bad for under load, though that does not mean that the laptop will definitely not fail.

I would monitor the temps over the next few weeks and see if they start to rise and let me know if they do.

There is not a lot more that you can do at this stage as those temps are within an acceptable range.

Fingers crossed you get years of faithful service out of it.

Best wishes

Paul
The Admin Team

_________________
=======================================================
Calculate the minimum refund that you would be entitled to.
FAQ's
Why you should not accept a repair
Links to evidence
What is the Nvidia Defect?
Step by step help to getting a refund
Do you need an engineers report?
=======================================================

If you like what you see on this forum and would like to help then please post links to this forum in other forums or blogs. The more people we can help the better.


Please note that I am not legally qualified and I only offer my own personal advice. You are advised to seek professional legal advice for formal clarification of advice I give.

Hi Paul, lots of posts from people that have suffered from the hinge defect but none of the links to the HP website relating to their 'Limited Service Enhancement' appear to be valid these days. Do you know where I could find reliable documented evidence that could be used in any small claim that the hinge defect was indeed recognised by HP as an inherent fault with DV9 series notebooks? Thanks