M17x R1 won't boot or POST

(Problem fixed as of 10 minutes ago. But I don't know what the problem was.)

Sequence of events:
While traveling last week, I booted on battery and it started up on internal graphics. Later I switched this and restarted. Got to the windows screen and then saw all-Red, Blue Green, White screens - (R,G,B,White) flashing. I have a video of this. (It went through one sleep/hibernate when it was on and wouldn't come out of it.)

Went back to BIOS, enabled internal graphics, it worked. Went back to discrete same issue. Took out the battery to switch it off.

Next day, no boot. With battery + power, only power and only battery - no boot. No BIOS, no POST. Fan on one graphics card moved momentarily like it does on initial power on. But no other fans. If the lights weren't on, you wouldn't know that it had powered up.

Today (4 days later) opened it up. Swapped out the RAM because I'd previously bought 8 GB to upgrade it. Cleaned the fan vents with some compressed air.

Decided to "try" to boot up and it worked. Now, either my RAM was bad or my fans were so clogged up with dirt (and then moisture from rainy weather) that it wouldn't even POST or go to BIOS.

When I plug in the battery and connect the power, the alienhead goes green. (my theme is blue/purple and orange, no green for the alienhead)

Any idea what I should try next to find out the cause? Put old (original) RAM back? I'm running the A03 bios btw.

I plan on doing a proper clean up session by tomorrow, so I'm gonna open up the unit.

 

If you can boot it up again you might want to try running a diagnostics test on the machine.
I had a similar issue with funny screen colours and lines last time. It turned out my LCD had problems; well the LCD invertor part was the culprit anyway. So yeh just to double check and see if its one of your hardware parts causing you grief. They can be hard to pinpoint especially if its an intemmitent problem.

When you boot up the notebook keep hitting F12 and then that will bring up the boot menu. Select diagnostics then that will run a series of tests on your notebooks hardware and parts. Actually it will run a complete mem check on your ram sticks too. The initial test will take a little while where you only need to press Y once to confirm you see the colours on the screen properly; then after that 1st part of the test is completed it will ask you if you want to continue and run the complete memory test. I suggest if you have the time to run the complete test. It will take quite a long time though but should be able to give you a good indication to any errors.

Also have fun opening it up and giving the insides a clean. You could also check on the thermal pads and paste on the cpu and gpus. Replace them if you wish too. For better cooling and temps.
Cheers.

 

Thanks, that's good info. +rep. Will try the diagnostic before I sleep. I hope it's from BIOS and doesn't require that first 20 MB partition that comes with the default install.

Did you have the issue where it doesn't go to POST at all? If it is a intermittent issue I can't resolve, then maybe I should send it back to Dell to fix so whatever part it is, I don't have to go hunting RAM, hard disk, graphics cards - testing beyond that would be a headache. I presume the CPU works

Now gonna go look for Moo's/Mandrake's/ButterBiscuits photos about SLI card replacement...should be the same for cleaning.

 

I haven't had the no post issue yet. However normally in that situation one of the first things you could try to do is shutdown the notebook or turn it completely off by holding the alien head down. Then unplug the system and take out the battery. Next you hold down the Alien head again for about 30 secs or so. This will drain the power out of the machine and the capacitors. Once this is done put the battery back in and plug the power back in and try to boot.

See how that goes if still nothing then you want to do the same thing but this time also take out the CMOS battery. Which is under the bottom vent. Then try the whole process again. Just to try and see if you can POST anything on the screen.

Yeh for cleaning you can take the bottom vent off and get really fast simple access to the CPU middle fan. With access to the other 2 side GPU fans you will need to take out the battery and then bottom vent. There will be 2 screws holding the power strip alien head button down. take them out and then you can flip the notebook over to take off the power strip and keyboard.

Be careful when you pull the parts up and off as they have little ribbon like cables that are attached to the notebook still. They will need to be detached. Next you will need to take out the GPUs to gain access to the GPU fans. They are located directly below the GPU cards. Cheers.

Cheers.

 

Did that but it didn't help.

I didn't try removing CMOS battery. Will keep that in mind if I have the issue again.

I haven't opened it up yet for the full clean up. I'll keep that in mind, hopefully the sequence of things (screws) will be clear - at least up till the RAM it is. Now, if only I could coincide the cleanup with a GPU upgrade

 

ah eheheh welcome back to this thread of yours. ehehe long time no see.

Yeh for the GPU upgrade a pair of 4870s would be your best bet. However you do already have the 280m's which aren't no slouch either. The 4870s are supposed to be better however they probably won't be that much better and depending on the price you can get them for probably not that worth it.

Perhaps give the 280ms a OC and also theres new drivers out at Nvidia.

NVIDIA DRIVERS 260.63 BETA

Cheers.

 

I OC'ed the GPUs before with one of the laptopvideo2go drivers (can't recall which). But those power settings are only available on the modded desktop drivers, right? I think I'd used timings similar to: 650 / 1050 / 1600 (can't recall). They do run hotter but the performance increase is noticeable.

I was j/k about the upgrade - the only cards I'd consider would be nv 3xx/4xx when they finally do become available for notebooks - and not as a rehash of a previous gen desktop gpu (the GTX 280M is based on the 8800 GTS but smaller die). But that might never happen.

Downloading the 260.63 BETAs now. I also just finished downloading the 3D vision betas which include the 259.x drivers. Haven't installed those so will just try the beta instead.

Perhaps you should start a thread for it...

 

I had a no-post problem on my HP and figured the reason would be the extra statics buildup on the mobo. Occasional power drains solved the problem in my case.

 

@reborn2003: Posted about the BETA drivers - http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/518483-nvidia-260-63-beta-drivers.html. We can continue there.

SLI isn't working :-/