M11xr2 Power Issue - Advice Needed Please!

Hi All,

I'm onto my third motherboard now, the first one died, the second one had the power issue below, and now the third one has it.

Basically, my laptop wont turn on at all when i press the power button. Even when its plugged in, it doesn't show as charging. I can occasionally get it to work by unplugging the battery and after about 3/4 attempts it will turn on. Once its on, it works absolutely fine, and i can close the lid and resume from standby without any issues at all, and it charges fine too.

I cant figure out whether or not i have another defective motherboard, or if its another issue with the laptop. Surely if the motherboard was at fault, it wouldn't turn on at all?

Now, obviously Alienware will fix it, but im pretty sick of having to wait for their engineers to come and fix problems, for them to occur again as soon as they leave! Im also onto my third LCD screen, and second touch pad since June

Any advice would be appreciated! My guess is that Alienware will just replace the motherboard again, but the chances in this happening to two motherboards seem quite slim. Could it be anything else? I've also had a new battery!

Thanks,

Ryan

 

Have you always had the same AC adapter? Any chance that the power at your place has issues? Spikes, poor grounding, etc.

I agree that the likelihood that you'd have this same issue on 2 motherboards is pretty slim. That's why I'd start looking at your power or anything having to do with power such as the adapter.

 

Hi Slickie,

Yeah i've always had the same power adapter but it's spent around 50% of its time plugged into a power surge adapter, so its difficult to say. My guess would be that if there was a power surge, and the mb was damaged, it would be completely dead?

The adapter seems to work fine for charging the laptop once i can get it to turn on though

 

In addition, all UK AC power plugs have built-in overcurrent protection (ie/a fuse). So unlikely to be due to a power surge. However, it could be the power adapter itself - maybe it's the cable/plug that leads to the laptop?

 

Hi, did you get to the bottom of this (or has anyone else).
I've had the same problem a few times now and will contact Dell tomorrow, though from your experience, it's not looking very promising

Sometimes I do wonder if buying such an expensive and seemingling unreliable laptop was such a good idea

 

Hi jc74, i ended up getting a 4th motherboard replacement and a new power switch fitted at the same time, which fixed the issue for me. I would deffinitely give them a call though as its probably the mb.

 

Thanks I'll do that today, I'll report back here once the engineer has been. I assume he will have spare parts!
My worry is I couldn't get the problem to happen this morning so worried may not be able to reproduce the problem when the engineer is there