m18x R1 - Not detecting Power Supply

I picked up an R1 off of Ebay that was non-working for cheap and decided to use it as a training tool to learn how to work on these machines. (and possibly for spare parts for my R2 in case it needed them down the road)

Person I bought it from said that "it just stopped working one day with no video" and that he took it in for service and they told him it needed a new motherboard and video card.

After getting the laptop I could tell that the tech in the shop he took it to (Microcenter in NY) had never even opened the laptop up and after removing the Nvidia 460s I got it to POST with the integrated card.



Once I get an OS back onto the machine (The previous owner kept his HD) I will work on testing each of the 460's to figure out where the problem was.

The only odd thing now is that the laptop isn't recognizing any Dell power supply as being plugged in at boot up and is giving me the warning that unless I plug in a Dell PS of at least 180w that performance may be compromised, the battery may not charge, Etc.

This despite the fact that I have tried two different 330w power supplies that I verified were working correctly with my m18x R2.

Is this a Bios issue or is there a cable or connection that I may have missed re-attaching when I put the R1 back together?

 

If you need a R1 motherboard, I have one for sale in the parts section here. I would need to know ASAP because I am going to be away for the month of February.

 

Well so far I have tried..

~ Different (confirmed working) Dell Power Supplies.
~ Removing the battery, unplugging the laptop and holding down the power switch for 10 seconds.
~ Pulling the system battery and reconnecting it after 40 seconds.

The laptop still doesn't recognize the 180w, 240w or 330w power supplies when they are connected (but will still power up and run off of them).

It's currently on the A03 bios so I am considering flashing it to the A05 to see if that fixes the issue.

 

Its probably the jack is damaged. Perhaps the laptop got dropped while plugged in. Its not a good sign.

 

i had this exact same problem with an m17x r2 motherboard , i tested it with 3 different power supply units with no luck , either you have to get a new board or find someone that have tools / experience to resolder the power supply jack

 

Weird thing is, when I first got it to POST, it didn't do this.

When I took it apart and removed the 460ms, I reconnected the monitor and keyboard and booted it with the laptop still partially disassembled.

First power up, I got eight beeps then it re-booted off the integrated card and went to bios without the power supply notification.

I saved the bios update, shut it down, powered it back up again (twice) and both times it went through the start up normally and reported no boot drive found (hadn't put the HDD back in yet) with no PS error.

After that, I reconnected the rest of the parts (Wifi cables, HDD caddy/bay, etc.) screwed everything back together and that is when I started having the power supply notification on boot-up.

Which is why I have been trying to figure out if I missed something during re-assembly.

And no, I did not drop the laptop or give it any drops, shocks or stress during or after the reassembly process.

 

Any signs of water intrusion under the keyboard or anywhere? Not now but in the past perhaps? Probably a good reason it was sold so cheap.

 

No signs of water damage/spills. The only "issues" that I saw after opening it were:

~ A fair bit of dust build up in the fan vents. Not enough to block them but enough to show that the previous owner probably never blew them out. Battery came wrapped up separately in the box with the laptop fully charged so it was definitely charging the battery before it got here.

~ Paste on the video cards was completely dry/crusted which is probably why one or both of them failed. I haven't tried putting them back in to test if they are both totally dead yet though as I wanted to see if I could get the machine up running normally with no other issues before adding in any other variables.

I'll probably update the bios to A05 tonight and if that doesn't clear the error then I'll open it up again and see if I can spot any obvious faults in the jack on the MB or oddities which could be grounding/shorting something in or around that connection.

 

I didnt think those GTX460Ms gave much trouble. Not like the HD6900s.

 

Which is why at least the secondary might still work even if the original problem was a burnout on the primary due to bad paste and overheating.