Alienware M15x power button and touch buttons dont light up

I bought my laptop 5 years ago and was working fine until yesterday when I powered it up. The power button and touch buttons appear fine when I power it up but when i try to login into windows I notice that the keys are unresponsive and need to be pressed several times when entering my password. AlienFX doesn't work sometimes (i try to turn off all the lights with the Go Dark button but nothing happens). Also as soon as I press one of the touch buttons the power buttons, all the touch buttons and the caps, scr and num locks indicators turn their lights off. Some of the touch buttons still work even with no light, some of them dont. Sometimes i can hear a faint beeping sound when pressing some of the touch buttons and other times i can hear the beeping sound without pressing anything while my laptop is very sluggish and unresponsive which leads me to believe that stealth mode is turning itself on and off constantly and thats where the beeping sound comes from

I tried the power drain trick as well as taking off the front cover to unplug and plug again the connectors for the touch button but nothing has fixed the problem.

My system specs are:
Alienware M15x
Windows 7, 64 bit
Intel core i5-430M 2.26 GHz
4 GB RAM (2x 2GB DDR3)
ATI Radeon Mobility HD 5730 1GB

 

Have you tried completely removing Command Center and reinstalling it?

Are the keys unresponsive when using windows also? or just at the start?

Consider backing up and doing a Alien Respawn factory reset. You may just have something corrupt somewhere that needs a rehashing.

This is speculative, but it could otherwise be a motherboard issue. As you know by taking off the front cover, the touch buttons and keyboard attach separately to the motherboard, leaving it as the common denominator.

 

First, check to make sure you don't have any viruses on your system. Since you say these problems start ocurring at login, and since your system is sluggish overall, it may be some malware. Check that first. You may want to reinstall command center as well. If it's not a software issue, it may be simply a loose ribbon cable from your keyboard or power board, or both.

 

Hello and thanks for the responses.

The problem has changed a bit after I took out the cover one more time to unplug and plug back in the connectors for the touch buttons etc.
Now when I turn on the laptop the touch buttons don't have light and don't work from the moment I power it up however the power button now has light until a point where it randomly turns off by itself but it still works even with no light. Stealth mode also no longer turns on by itself and my pc is not sluggish anymore. So the only problem is that the touch buttons are not working and have no light, I have tried reinstalling/updating the command center and re plugging the connectors several times but it wasn't fixed which leads me to believe that it is a motherboard issue.

Thanks for your help.

 

Before you replace the motherboard, inspect the ribbon cable going from the motherboard to the power panel. It may have a broken contact. This happened to me and I had similar things happening with mine. The best way to inspect it is to simply remove it from the laptop and hold it up to a light to check for broken traces, while at the same time bending the cable a bit near the connectors (where they usually break). If there are broken traces you will see them. Sometimes these breaks are small enough that the traces barely make contact, causing all sorts of weird issues.

You may also want to look at the second ribbon cable that's on the power board itself. This ones is less likely to break because of less stress on it, but take a look at it anyway. You may also want to try replacing the power board before buying a motherboard. I doubt it's the actual motherboard. I bet it's the ribbon cable or the power board itself.

 

I have tried as you suggested and took out the ribbon cable one more time to inspect it. I put it back in and now the power button doesn't work either (it worked before taking it out). I unplugged it and plugged it back in several times but still doesn't work and now my laptop won't turn on.

 

It's almost certainly a bad ribbon cable then. Just to make sure we're on the same page, I'm talking about the white ribbon cable that connects the power board to the motherboard. It probably has several cuts at the point where it bends which is why it worked sporadically before. Chances are all the 16 pins are cut and not making contact. It's hard to see with the bare eye, but a magnifying glass will show where the breaks are. I had this happen to me once on the power board, and strangely enough, this happened to me just the other day on my touchpad cable after I took the system apart to replace the thermal paste. It's quite common, especially when you take the laptop apart several times.

If you want to test this, you can remove the touchpad ribbon cable and try it on the power board. I'm talking about the one that connects the touchpad to the motherboard. It is the same size and pin amount, just a bit longer in length.

For reference, the power board cable is:

16 pins on the SAME side, 0.5mm pitch pin spacing, 8.5mm width, and 55mm in length (my memory is a little hazy on the length of the cable but you can always measure it.) The most important specs are the 16 pins (same side on both ends) and the .5mm pitch which is the distance from one pin to the next.

The touchpad cable is the same except about 90mm in length.

You can do a search on e-bay with those specs and you'll get a bunch of results. If the laptop is still under warranty, call Dell. They won't replace just the ribbon cable, nor do they offer just the ribbon cable for sale. They'll end up replacing the entire motherboard if it's under warranty. I know because this is what they told me the first time it broke, and I convinced the tech that came to just give me the ribbon cable and leave the motherboard alone. This is also the 3rd touchpad ribbon cable that crapped out on me. I ordered this one to replace it from an e-bay seller in Spain:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/181811014072?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

Let us know how it goes, but it definitely sounds like a broken ribbon cable.

 

I replaced the power board cable with the touchpad one as you suggested and everything is working fine now, so yeah definitely a broken cable.
I have ordered a replacement one however it will probably take more than a week to arrive.
In the meantime is it alright if I leave the touchpad cable onto the power board? As you said it's slightly longer in length and doesn't seem to fit perfectly so my question is will that cause harm to the cable or some other part?
The number for the power board cable is:
HAMBURG- W E235863 AWM 20798 80C 60V VW-1
The number for the touchpad cable is:
HAMBURG- SH E235863 AWM 20798 80C 60V VW-1
I would like to leave it there for the moment until the replacement arrives in about a week or so, I just hope it doesnt break due to stress or something since its a bit longer and doesn't fit properly

Thank you very much for you responses and your help, really helped me alot.

 

Glad to hear it. If you don't feel comfortable with leaving it in, then remove it and wait for the replacement part. I advised you to try it so that you can confirm that it was indeed a broken ribbon cable. Be glad that it wasn't a bad motherboard .