Might be cursed, M18x Won't Turn On, Died Again.

Will run through story quick so I was scared now for awhile like hey my laptops gonna die again probably just because how much I didn't trust it after first time it died, so I managed to get some buffer money together and ordered a superior 1,000$ gaming PC, like how I had before. (only got alienware cuz I thought I was going to go work up north at oil rigs, sold my 6950 trifire, 2600k desktop for it) Anyway So I purchased that Last night finally, and was definitely a sigh of relief thinking I'm safe now and can sell my laptop and let it die for someone else in 6 months and it be their problem ( I know I'm terrible but better then a 1750$ paperweight I have right now)

Heres what happened today, I had EVE running, There was No signs of crashes, driver issues nothing, no temp issues, nothing to indicate problems. I shut the computer down nightly and when I'm away, and it is on a 17" laptop cooler. And without warning about 3 hours ago, it just blacked out and died outright, No artifacts, No flickers, Nothing just went stone cold dead, hit power. Nothing, unplugged tried dedicated on battery nothing, and vise versa nothing. Won't show lights Absolutely Zero response. Have tried on the hour since, tried holding it down nothing.

This computer was in repair 7 months ago under warranty, after Extremely disappointingly dieing once before but was able to boot at least but the display was having issues, There was major issues with the motherboard and had damaged CPU and GPU's everything had to be replaced, I had a tech here and he replaced 1/2 of it intially but the computer was broken as soon as he walked out the door I was infuriated since I waited 2 weeks for the tech to get out to my house, to replace the GPU's and Motherboard, and he got it configured didn't test booting to windows and it defaulted to CPU video and VGA would crash within 10 seconds of boot there was no way to turn the PCI cards on. Anyway So sent to Dell's Repair and it was fixed, with about 1 month left on warranty. Had it running since.

There is no warranty now, and am wondering What should I do? This laptop was basically Never moved jarred, hit or anything specifically even recently near the incident. There was no signs of Electrical smoke or damage was first thing I checked with scent, but haven't taken it apart to inspect yet.


Specs:

M18xR1
i7 2670QM
16GB 1600mhz
6990M CF
750Gb Raid 0

Absolutely stumped whats gone on, and any help would be appreciated

 

If its been under 3 months since your MB was replaced you should be covered just for that even though you are officially out of warranty. If its been longer you might be in poo creek without a paddle.

 

Did it turn off by itself? It was connected to the AC adapter? Is your battery working? Does the battery have any charge?

 

All I can say is, remove the back cover, battery and power cord and also remove the coin battery from the back (after you remove the cover). Leave it like that for a while (an hour also); if that does not help, then you have to make sure your charger is actually charging the unit (you can also see if there is juice in your battery and if it shows fully charged that means there is nothing wrong with your adapter). If this also doesn't help, then is your motherboard that failed on you...

 

Battery is full, Powerbrick is good as far as I know it.

It Was powered by AC adapter of course, And yes it did power off by itself instantly, There was no warning it was instant screen shut off and detire system went dead 100%, no power through USB nothing.

Have the CMOS battery disconnected now. Like I said system wasn't jarred battery is full, and it instantly died. Imo. Never buying one again but I obviously don't wanna lose all money on this.

I noticed you can get a upgrade warranty or something for 220$? Does that include parts and labour if theres issues?

 

Maybe your laptop got fried or something. I have my laptop connected to a voltage regulator to be safe.

 

The powerlockr is a voltage regulator and protects the laptop from browns outs, Which there wans't, there was no power flickers nothing.


I didn't notice this before, but the DC power from the Powerblock and or Battery, both cause a SIGNIFICANT spark out of the back section, the meshed section with no heatsink, I managed to catch it on video, it doesn't usually repeat when power is plugged in, has to wait like 10-15 seconds but happens on both connections

M18xR1 Failure - YouTube

So... ya Somethings terribly Terribly wrong. Thank you Dell for another absolutely horrendous Computer, Hardware failure on this scope shouldn't happen. Period. There is a reason why just about every component on any real computer has 3+ year warranties because of the quality.


Still begs my last question that went ignored to this point, ok So theres a problem far beyond my scope of repair, What is the best solution to getting this laptop working again?

 

Wow! That spark was intense!

 

Houston..we have a problem!!!

Sorry to see that you have an issue like that.

 

Wow I didn't expect that, your laptops probably fried I've never seen that happen!

 

Buddy, I would try and get your warranty happening again. That $220 bucks you mentioned to reinstate will save your bacon.

 

I'm definitely gonna be calling up Dell and ranting them out on this is this blatant hardware failure, and fault is with their motherboard, parts labour warranty aside this is the kinda reputation to make me never buy a Dell monitor again, or Dell anything. LG use the exact same panels, so why should I pay a premium even if their are high quality if I don't respect the company simple.

 

New computer is setup saddly case won't be here for another week, but I GOT a motherboard box so all is good!




(There is a H60 too, just not installed for obvious reasons)

Called Dells tech Support this morning after a very frusterating like 9 different numbers I tried to call and all ended up with a "This number is no longer in service" after working through a telephone tree. Ended up finding a tech support number and ranted to him a bit, sounds like he created a case for the out of warranty department and I'm selling myself on that because if this ends with their inability to stand behind their product. I will never buy a Dell product again in my life, simple hardware failure like this is simply unacceptable. If it was a 5 year old motherboard sure, but this motherboard was just replaced 6 months ago, literally the computer may have been out of warranty but was damn near new almost all the components were since its last failure.