Tyler Scholz

When the computer tells you that the hard drive is going to fail, that it is defective, crashes when you boot up, or does not recognize the hard drive as the "C:" in your "my computer" file then most likely your hard drive is dysfunctional/broken. You can refer to Dell XPS M1530 Troubleshooting and see if any of your issues correspond to one of our guides. Personally, you should look at the Hard Drive as well as RAM, both of which seem to correspond to your issue. See our guides attached to both for steps to replace them. Additionally, look into our Hard Drive upgrades at Dell XPS M1530 Device Page which will give you the needed specs for a new hard drive.

The Dell XPS M1530 has had several documented issues with it's installed GPU as stated by Jason, and there is not a way to fix the issues regarding the GPU without replacing the motherboard as stated. However, there are a few options for fixing overheating issues regarding the laptop. Refer to our Dell XPS M1530 Trouble Shooting for different options regarding your problem. I will address two options I think may be causing your issue if it is not the GPU. First, clean out the fan and the inside of the computer removing all dust residue that has accumulated. Though cleaning the fan is likely not your problem, but should help with cooling later on. To conduct a complete cleaning of the fan refer to Fan Replacement. You will be able to access the entire fan component and clean the PC of dust very effectively. Your second option for fixing your overheating problem is replacing the thermal paste that is between the heat-sink and the GPU and CPU. Use the fan replacement guide to remove the heat-sink, then you...