m11x won't post, just turns on for two seconds and turns off?

Hey guys,

Has anyone run into this situation. I've got a ~ six month old alienware m11x refurb purchase directly from Dell's refurb shop. There is a warranty, but I've had bad luck with Dell techs in the past and so I wanted to ask here first in case it's something simple. I've never moded the laptop, except to upgrade the RAM and HD, and that's been about five months ago with no problems. The machine won't start today. The lights and fan come on for about 2 seconds at power button press, but nothing appears on the screen and there is no beep codes or anything, then the machine turns back off. This repeats everytime you push the power button. The battery indicates full charge -- all lights lit up on the internal battery charge indicator.

One thing to note was that when I removed the bottom cover I noticed that the black lead of the WLAN card was disconnected and floating free, however, the laptops wifi has always worked even as recently as yesterday, so that my have occurred when I undid the cover this evening.

I tried
1) Removing the battery pushing power button, replacing battery
2) Removing hard-drive and trying to start it up
3) Replacing hard-drive with a second HD known to be good - put back original HD
4) Removing RAM and trying to start it up - replaced RAM
5) Removing WLAN card and trying to start it up - replaced WLAN

Through all of these steps there was no change in the laptop's manners. It simply starts for 2 seconds --- alll lights and fans come on, and then it powers off. No display, no beep code, no change for any of the aforementioned steps. It sounds like some sort of hardware failure, but I don't know what. Any suggestions?

 

I just called Alienware support, they suspect a bad motherboard and asked me to send the laptop back in for service. They will pay postage both ways because it is still under warranty.

The question he asked right before he suggested the motherboard was the problem was regarding the alien head power button. Did it light up? I said no, he said it's a bad motherboard then.

So apparently that's a give away? All the other lights work, I didn't even notice the alien head button's eyes weren't lit up until he asked.

 

I would have them send a tech out and replace it, its WAY faster and you can see what they are doing vs having they depot repair it. They overnight the tech the part and that same day or the day after they come over and replace the part. vs them sending you a box then you sending the laptop waiting a week then getting it back. (and in my case with more issues, I just hate their depot, they destroyed my laptop and now they are sending me a completely different unit)