Will not power on!

Hey guys..

My wife's laptop just decided it wasn't going to turn on anymore. No indication that it is receiving any power what so ever. Push the power button and absolutely nothing happens. The night before she was using it and powered down like normal and unplugged it from the AC adapter. Next day ... just nothing.

We've tried:

Different RAM (swapped with my identical laptop)
unseating and reseating most everything inside
swapping our battery packs (hers works fine in my identical laptop)
Tried booting it without a battery pack at all and just using the AC adapter
tried both AC adapters

We called Dell Tech support and they told us to do everything we already did. Then tried to sell us an extended warranty to get it fixed by them. The warranty was $350 and a new motherboard is $649 apparently.

From other posts I've read I fear it is the motherboard. Any thoughts?

Any idea's would be appreciated

This is what it came with when we bought it.. so I am not sure what motherboard we would have to buy to replace it ourselves if we chose to.
The part number they gave us was X1H7V.. but nothing comes up when you search for it.

Intel Core2 Quad Q9000 2.0GHz (6MB Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz 2 x 2048MB
1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M (NB10E-GT1)
128GB Solid State Drive

 

Do the fans start to spin or do the status lights (Caps Lock, etc.) flash?

 

Nothing at all. Not a single sound.. which is why we are thinking the motherboard must be dead.

 

You have tried booting using just battery, correct? If so that rules out a bad power jack and leaves a bad motherboard as the culprit.

Take out the coin cell battery and the regular battery and hold the power button for ~60 seconds. If that doesn't fix it I have no clue any other possible solutions.

 

Try power drain

 

Okay.. tried the power drain. I took out the Battery and the CMOS Battery.. held the button for 60 seconds.. then put the CMOS back in.. and plugged it into the AC adapter. There was no response still.

If it is the motherboard.. is there somewhere we can get a new one for less than $650? I haven't found any on ebay with the product code of X1H7V.. but it does look a lot like the F415N.

 

According to the parts list, the mobo part number is F415N for the 17x R1/R2....if it is a faulty mobo, you should be ok to pick one up off Ebay fairly cheap....well, cheaper than $649 or $350 that's for sure. There's one on there now that's $135 free shiping with 60 days warranty.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/548447-m17x-r1-r2-part-numbers.html

 

I say if it's going to run you close to $300, why not just opt for the warranty and have Dell replace it?

 

Is there a chance that it could be the CPU? I didn't want to have to swap out the one from this laptop to hers if it couldn't possibly be the CPU anyways.

 

I am pretty sure that with a dead CPU the fans would kick in and some lights would show.

 

mobo is my guess for sure, with a faulty cpu your bios will atleast load and beep to tell you your cpu is no good

 

Okay sounds good.. thanks guys. I will probably just pick up a board off of one of the ebay stores or something and put it in myself.

Can you guys tell me the difference between the part# 14M8C and the F415N system boards? They both look the same and say they fit the M17X R2. I am just wondering if there is a part # we should be looking for over another.

 

F415N has the onboard 9400M GS, while 14M8C does not.

 

Over the past 35 years, I had three computers with similar symptoms. All three had motherboard gone bad.

 

Thanks guys, for all the help. .. I really appreciate it!

Update:

So I called Upper Edge Tech who is the company selling the MB for $140. I spoke with the tech there and he had me describe everything that is going on. He is suspicous of the power button and the ribbon that connects it. He said the R2 power button is designed rather poorly and that sometimes it breaks. He did say that part was cheaper than a MB however it was also really hard to find. He advised me to check out the power button before bothering to order a new MB.

I am going to check it out when I get home tonight but does anyone have any thoughts around that? Or any insight on where to find that particular part?

Thanks

 

He's probably referring to the ribbon that connects the power button and the motherboard.
After lifting the media bar and removing this ribbon, check the pins for any damage.

Actually, F415N is the M17x motherboard part number while 14M8C is the M17x R2 motherboard part number.

 

We took apart the media bar.. and the ribbon inside looks fine. I took the media bar off the working M17X and put it on the broken laptop to see if it would work .. and it still didn't work.
The ribbon that leads from the media bar to the motherboard looked in perfect shape. We didn't try taking the ribbon out of the working M17X.. but that's because the ribbon really does look fine. Can a ribbon that doesn't appear to have any damaged pins still malfunction? I get a little nervous when we start taking parts out of the laptop that still works.

 

Did you actually remove the cable from the broken laptop to fully inspect the entire cable and to check for any kinks?

 

Yeah.. we took it out completely just in case there was something wrong with the pins on either side. The cable looks good. *shrug*

 

Did you reseat the cable and try to power on the laptop again?

 

I saw that actually after looking at both motherboards. They look very similar, minus the socket being mPGA479 (Core 2) on the R1.

 

Yeah.. sadly.. nothing still

This is Clumsy's wife hijacking his login for a minute

Is there a for sure way to figure out exactly which alienware M17 we have. I "think" it's the R2 ..

I guess I will order the MB today and see how that goes. If it doesn't work then I'll return it and pick up the extended warranty and let DELL deal with it. Or maybe I'll talk Mr. Clumsy into a new laptop hehe

 

It's a R1 I had the exact same model Here's a link to the part you need http://www.parts-people.com/index.php?action=item&id=8460

 

I was planning to order it from Upper Edge Tech. They had a lot of reviews with positive feedback on Ebay. I actually called there yesterday to order and the tech asked me to describe everything to him and suggested I check out the media power and power button before spending money on a MB (which I thought was pretty cool of him). He could have just sold me a MB lol. They are selling that same MB for $149.95.

Upper Edge Technology - Dell Alienware M17X Motherboard F415N Nvidia Geforce 9400m G 256MB

Has anyone had any experience ordering parts from them?

 

Hate to quote myself....but......^^^^

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DELL-Alie...therboards&hash=item337235c43c#ht_3026wt_1026 - $135 + Free Delivery + 60 days Warranty.

 

Soooo new motherboard arrived and after installing we get the exact same result. No power .. no noise .. no fan .. no lights .. no nothing

The company we ordered the MB from does repair diagnostics for $50. Thinking about just sending everything back to them and letting them deal with it.

We also tried exchanging the media bar and the ribbon that goes from the power button to the MB and mine worked fine in my husbands laptop. Could the cheaper board the one that runs about $30 (I don't even honestly know what it does) cause absolutely no power up if it was faulty?

Don't really know what else to do at this point

 

Try to turn it on without the battery inside.
Does the blue ring around the charger's plug light on when plugged?

 

Yeah .. we've tried no battery. We tried just battery. We tried swapping batters and swapping AC adapters. Neither of our AC adapters have had the blue ring light up in over a year but our laptops were working fine.

 

Just got people's knowledge. I used our second laptop and replaced each part one at a time in the broken one.. and it ended up being the GPU that wasn't working. So apparently that can cause your computer to have no power at all.

 

I would opt for the Warranty. What happens if you buy the motherboard and it still doesnt work? Plus you will be safe from future problems as well and they will cover the ENTIRE system. Just my 2 cents.

edit: oops didnt read the entire thread, so its the GPU, thats not a bad problem to have because you can upgrade to a better card.

 

It is almost definitely the mobo...Only other thing is maybe the gpu's went bad. Best to just get the warranty and let Dell figure it out and fix it.

 

It is definitely not the motherboard since we already tried replacing that. It definitely IS the GPU hehe. We swapped GPU's and my laptop boots fine with my husbands. Also when completely removing the GPU from laptop it boots fine with onboard video.

Now my decision is what GPU to replace my broken one with!! Any suggestions?

 

You could try this: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...r-your-dead-graphics-card-your-alienware.html - (I accept no responsibility for any damages this technique may cause so use at your discretion).

 

Steviejones133 that is an interesting read and I might as well give it a try LOL.

However if I DO have to buy a new GPU should I spend $50 more and get the 285M over the 260M? Other option is also to get the ATI 4870 1GB.

260M is $250
285M is $300
ATI 4870 1GB is $250

Any recommendations?

 

What have you got at the moment? - just thinking that you might need a different heatsink if swapping, thus increasing the total cost......the 260m is the lower of the three in terms of performance. I think the other two are closely matched but with the 285m, you get the benefit of PhysX and Cuda.....wether that's worth $50 to you, I dont know!

 

Oh geez .. you lost me with the PhysX and Cuda I guess those are good things to have? LOL

I currently have the 260M. The technician suggested that getting 2X260M would be a much greater performance boost rather than getting a 285M to replace the 260M however that is also way way more expensive to do lol.

I have a friend (that I know via online games only) that I've known for around 10 years that works for DELL in a relatively high ranking position. We kind of lost touch over the last couple of years however he did just respond to a post I made on an old gaming forum that we both frequent and I think he is looking into options for possibly helping me out with new part(s).

However I already spent the money on the MB (that wasn't the issue) and unless I get more parts from the people I bought it from I'll have to eat a 15% restocking fee so I guess I might end up getting more than a GPU upgrade.

I guess I'll wait and see what he comes though with before I decide on a GPU.