Repaste boot failure 15r3-no ram detected

Appreciate any direction you all could provide.

I repasted the 15r3. No problems occurred other than minor issues with the brass edp connector behind the monitor splitting open and the locking bar falling off. The connector felt firm into place.

After complete assembly, boot failure. Two red blinks followed by 3 blue-no RAM or memory detected.

So far: disassembled and re secured all connectors, removed ram sticks and tried all different configurations, power drain, clrp1 reset.

Does anyone have any insight or direction? I’ve googled the forum here with no major hits and google as well.

 

during the disassembly (2nd time around), did you disconnect/remove the cmos battery?

 

I did not disconnect the cmos, at least to my awareness.

 

Do that, and remove the ram, and system battery, hold power button for 10~ seconds.

Also, for clarity ... the end of the cable that you were having trouble with was the end that plugs into the motherboard?

 

Will try this tomorrow. Yes it plugs into mobo, is located behind monitor.

 

HI. have the same problem. Where two red blinks followed by 3 blue.
I tried removing all ram and hard drives and still the same. No bleeps as well.
I don't know what to do.
All I was doing was changing ram and testing it with memtest86.
@Papusan @rinneh @Vasudev got any idea so you can help both of us.
Edited:
I have also tried power drain like pressing power button for a long time and also shorting clrp in motherboard.
Is the motherboard shorted or something with this symptoms?

Edited:
Correction. Now I am seeing 3 red blinks and 1 blue. It seems like a CMOS not detected. I will open the laptop and try reseting it.

 

tried reseting cmos battery and still the same.. 3red blinks and 1 blue.. Help please..

 

And you're sure reseting cmos battery clear out Nvram on your model? We couldn't do that with AW17R1. Needed more steps.

For AW17R1. After power drain, resetting Cmos battery and out with all ram sticks. Start up without sticks and let it beep. Right before new boot cycle (the machine will ty once again after failed boot) then be very fast put in one of the memory sticks. Not sure how it works with the BGA models.

 

its a alienware 15 r3 from my cousin. Currently i have disconnected the cmos battery and did a power drain.. short clrp.. ill put all of them back in after 10mins.. I will create a new thread later as I am hijacking this thread.. sry OP.. I thought ky problem might be relevant to your and we will have a fix together..

 

Completed. Now I am getting a cmos battery failure. this is strange.

 

fixed my rtc failure by doing a power drain. and clearing cmos via clrp pins. I removed the battery cable. Pressed power button for 1 minute holding it.
I cleaned/wiped the gold/cooper contacts with Alcohol.
Shorted/put a jumper to connect the pins to reset/clear cmos. I did this for 1 minute. Then i left the laptop and had a shower. Came back did the same steps. Connected everything including ram like all that is supposes to be connected. connected the psu then turned on the laptop. The sign that cmos is really cleared is the laptop will turn on led lights on no screen. will auto turn off and do this cycle twice. after that it will display a screen RTC clock not set. All done and sorted. Hope this helps. Im using a monile phone and english is not my first language so bare with me.
@Papusan
Miraculously fixed it.. Thank god. I did this process earlier and maybe i was rushing which is why cmos was not cleared properly.

 

Thank you much for the post. I was reading your posts through a search and appreciate the follow up.
I will add this to my list.

it would be helpful to understand if I have a catastrophic problem or not.

 

I tried this with no luck.
I am getting two errors by watching the lights:no ram detected and cmos battery failure.

 

I had that as well earlier. First light indicator was
2 red and 4 blue which means RAM FAILURE then after that 3 red and 1 blue which means RTC power failure/CMOS battery failure.
What follows next is just the CMOS battery failure light indicators and no more for RAM.
One of the step I did which I did not mentioned as I don't know if it is relevant for the fix was - Removing the battery cable - Remove RAM - Clear CLRP - Plug the battery cable again - Turned on Laptop - Let the light indicator for the RAM FAILURE do it thing - Suddenly after that I PUT 1 RAM Stick in.
This steps did not fixed the entire problem but it fixed the RAM FAILURE because after that no more light codes for RAM FAILURE.
Next thing I did is what I mentioned previous post but I failed to mention something which again I thought was not relevant.
I also did remove the CMOS cable which is next to the 1st SSD slot by using a plastic clipper. Did the power drain steps again. Left the laptop for approx 30mins. Came back and did the same process where pressing the power button for 1 minute draining power. Then also shorting the CLRP pins for 1 minute. After that I put everything back in and power it on with the PSU connected as well.
This is the whole steps that I think I did. Sorry for less information earlier as I was using my mobile phone and also you did not mention or I missed the RAM FAILURE lights you had as well.
I really hope this will fix your problem.
RTC power failure as far as I am aware is fixable compared to a beep code CPU/GPU failure.
Also I am not an expert. I am just sharing what I know and hope this will help.
Edited:
Place I got to know the error light codes.
https://www.dell.com/community/Alie...y/6-blinking-led-ALIENWARE-15-R3/td-p/5547947

 

Errors defeated with tips from 0lok.

However now when it boots, nothing populates on the screen and it sits and runs for about 2 min then shuts off. The fans run higher and eventually shuts off. I tried booting holding Fn with no luck.

 

I think I mentioned it earlier that it is normal. It is a sign that cmos has been cleared properly. All you have to do is be patient and really wait until it finish its cycle on and off until you will have a screen display. Mine did it twice or three times the cycle on and off after that a screen display.
edited:
reread and it seems 2 minute is quite a long time l. mine was approx. seconds only like 5 to 10 max then shuts off and repeated the cycle twice or three times then had a screen displayed.
I don't know to fix tge problem now. more googling and wait for other members to help.

 

It’s definitely not restarting. It’s pausing.
I greatly appreciate your assistance. It appears you tackled the first two problems for me.

 

Does anyone have any feedback on no boot, no display, fan running for a couple minutes and then turning off?

 

You have to disconnect the CMOS battery for a long time and then CLRP trick works or you can flash full SPI dump of working BIOS to revert to factory defaults.

 

I have a new EPS cable being delivered next week. Will follow up.

 

@Papusan @rinneh @Vasudev
Hi again. My cousin laptop is playing up again. Randomly it is now showing 2 red blink light and 2 blue blink light. Which means BIOS ROM failure - System board failure (included BIOS corruption or ROM error). How to fix this issue?
Edited:
All I can think of is clear Cmos via CLRP pins. If it won't work then worst case is via manually clearing and loading new bios using a programmer. Is that correct or there is another procedure to do?
Thanks

 

SOmeone posted a tutorial somewhere on this forum how to restore an ALienware bios on these models without a programmer. But i dont know exactly where.

 

Is this the guide that you meant?
*OFFICIAL* Alienware 13 R3 Owner's Lounge

 

I think it was.If it is truly just a corrupted flash this might be a fix. If it is something else then I cant say what it would be.

 

@rinneh Thanks for the reply.
We fixed it by clearing cmos via clrp1 and power drain. We think that the problem was caused by changing new ram sticks which he bought on black friday sale + his old bios. His laptop came with bios 1.1.8 which is not even on dell website anymore and we think caused the problem. Earlier we were able to boot the laptop again and this time updated his bios to 1.1.9. We decided to just observed how thinks go and hopefully no more issues. We also want to get more information about updating the bios to the latest and which ones to avoid. I'll ask in the lounge thread as this is derailing OP's thread.

 

Received and installed the EPS cable with no problems. Problem persists.

keyboard and tron lights come on, fan runs, black screen. It sits for a few minutes and then shuts itself off.

 

Completed an additional power drain and am getting 3 red blinks with no blue light blinks.

there is no code for this light sequence in the diagnostics book. Any ideas?

 

I’ve tried everything. I am back to a cmos error which went away for some time. I replaced the cmos battery today, with no luck.
I think this thing is done.

 

Sorry mate. I cant help anymore. Also it seems the people in the forum has no idea how to fix your problem. It seems like a motherboard repalcement.