Alienware 17 power button issue - Help needed ASAP

Hello everyone

I received my Alienware 17 on the second week of October and have been very happy with it so far. Newegg.com was running some fantastic black friday deals on solid state memory so I purchased a 256 GB mSata card and a 500 GB Samsung Evo 870 SSD 2.5 inch drive.
I got them on Wednesday and last night had the chance to install them due to my work schedule.
I downloaded the PDF manual to my iPad and got to work. I removed the base cover, battery, the two mechanical drives and the optical drive. I decided to do the mSata card first so I removed the 22 screws and then lifted off the palm rest/keyboard.
I found the mSata card and removed the single screw from it and lifted it out and installed the new card. Very easy system to work on.
After putting the palm rest and screws back in place I decided I would test for compatibility of the mSata card so I put all three drives back into place and the battery and then replaced the base cover.
I plugged the system back in and pressed the power button. Nothing
It depresses like it should but it will not power on. I have no idea why. I did not do any damage to my system and followed the standard static discharge procedures.
I also never unscrewed or disconnected the power switch I was also very careful not to damage the ribbon running from the base to the keyboard. And I was equally careful to place it carefully back on and make sure the copper pins had contact.

I think the problem lies in the power button being pressed and for some reason not kicking over the system.

I left it alone last night due to it being 2:00 am and having been awake since 4:30. I took it back apart this afternoon and could not locate the issue. I put it back together again and still have the same issue.

I leave for a business trip on Tuesday early afternoon and my laptop is vital to for my work as well as entertainment.

Does anyone have any ideas at all? My level of tech understanding is pretty advanced so throw anything you want at me and I will try it.

And in advance, thank you everyone for any potential help or just reading this thread. At this point I am pretty desperate for ideas. I am already behind in my work and really need to get my system working by tomorrow evening.
Thanks again

 

Reseat the power button cable, maybe it got pulled out. Test with only ac (no battery) and only battery. Test with only the bare minimum for boot (no hdd, one stick of ram, no wireless etc). If all this produces nothing I think it's RMA time.

 

I will try those. I did not know you could start the laptop without the battery.

 

I've torn my two systems apart at least a dozen times, and have improperly seated a ribbon cable once or twice over the years. I would suggest pulling it back apart and re-seating all ribbon cables, even the ones you did not disconnect but instead just flipped up out of the way (could have kicked one loose).

 

That's a great advice. It usually works. If the system is still in warranty you could have it sent to our depot for us to check it as suggested by Meaker.

 

I got it fixed as of Friday. It turned out to be my fault. When I pulled off the palm rest, I had unattached the main ribbon. There is actually another much much smaller ribbon in the upper right hand portion on the underside of the palm rest. The power button has a long ribbon from the underside of the button over to the other side of the palm rest where the AC plug in goes. That then has a tiny connection on the front (by front I mean facing towards the touch pad) It is about 1/8 of an inch wide and is the only connection for the power from the power button to the motherboard. The ribbon actually says 'media card' on it which confused the hell out of me. I did a lot more research online and found that in fact that ribbon actually is the only connection between the power button and the MOBO.
Turns out that when I lifted off the palm rest I actually tore it loose and did not even realize it. I called up Dell and of course they would not just send me the part. They had to have a technician order the part and then meet me somewhere to get it installed. She got it done but it was a giant PITA when I could have done it myself. The whole system had to be pulled apart yet again.

I did manage to get the mSata card installed and have noticed a performance improvement.

I am going to open another thread about getting the 2.5" SSD drive installed. The only bay I have left is the bay where the optical drive is installed. It looks like I will have to purchase some sort of mount to use but I have no idea what to even begin to look for.
And the cable going to the optical drive is not a Sata cable. I am not sure exactly what it is, but it wont work for the drive I have. It looks like I will either need to run another cable or buy some sort of Sata converter.

But the system is working now, thanks to everyone for their help.

I had to borrow a work notebook for the last week and I missed my system greatly. I had to use a Lenovo 11 inch notebook with a first generation i3 and 3 GB of ram. It was portable but for the kind of work I do it caused a lot of frustration.

 

Glad you got it fixed