Alienware M17X R3 sudden shutdown and wont turn on

Hello. I was playing LoL on my Alienware M17X when suddenly my laptop suddenly turned off. When I pressed the power button to turn it back on, the laptop wont start. The weird thing is, if I press the power button, the alien head on the lid lghts up and if i connect my razer mouse, the mouse is also lit up. There are no signs of life except for a small clicking sound when I press and release the power button, then the alien head on the lid lights up and turns off.

I tried doing starting the laptop on battery and the alienhead on the lid didn't light up. It seems that the alienhead would only light up if the laptop was plugged into the AC Power.

Can anybody PLEASE help? Thank you!

 

I tried turning on the coputer again this morning and it booted up!! I what's up with that? But after shutting it down then I tried to restart it, it couldnt boot this tme,

 

Hi, You could try resetting the BIOS by removing the coin cell, hold down the power button then put it back. If it then starts it will probably do it again, but it sounds like something serious is failing - not a lot of help I'm afraid

 

The computer has started again without me resetting the BIOS, is there any program that I can run to diagnose what is wrong with my computer? Thanks!

 

The bios based one will test out the hardware. F12 (if I remember right) on the alienhead screen then a menu. Good starting point.

 

When I first started the diagnostics test I forgot that I haven't put the battery in yet and so an error came out, something about an interval timer error...is this normal if I ran the test without the battery?

So I ran the test again with the battery plugged in and it has passed all the preliminary tests, it's undergoing the thorough testing at the moment. What should I do next? Thank you so much!

 

Dunno about it without the battery. I would expect errors since the battery is also tested. Scratch that, that error could be pointing to the cause maybe?

After that I have no good idea. If it was a warranty claim then this would probably get a new MB It's unlikely the PSU since it's random but can't say for sure where the problem lies

You could try the latest bios from dell, even if it's the same version, but since it sometimes won't start it could just as easily cause it to happen, and it does sound like one piece of the hardware is failing before it even gets to POST.

 

The thoroigh test is finished and therre were no problems detected...the next step?

 

Now it gets harder. The only thing I can offer is to strip it down and carefully assemble hoping it's a poor connection that is going bad. You should be able to find some good strip down videos and I believe even dell have them.

 

Have you checked your temperatures while playing games? It could be a bad case of overheating

Alienware Laptops: Computer Overheats, Shuts Down When Running Intensive Applications

 

But shouldn't the computer still be able to start after shutting down? Or am I wrong? Thanks for the reply!

 

Does me installing Windows 8 have anything to do with the problem? I've installed Windows 8 about a month ago.

 

Maybe but it seems like some hardware issue. Speaking of Windows 8, Its no good for gamers, occasional fps drops, I would suggest you to roll back to Win 7 if you want good fps