Fans on, lights on, no BIOS. What next?

So, for the past few months I've been having issues off and on with my M15x booting up.
I got it back in summer of 2011 for a graduation gift from my parents. It was refurbished when I got it, and the warranty on it expired a while ago.
Since I've got it, I've replaced the hard drive with a SSD and upgraded to 8 gigs of RAM. I also had to buy a replacement battery due to the old one going bad. However, over the time I've had this laptop, I've also experienced 3 recurring issues, 2 of which have led to failed startups and random shutdowns:
Issue 1:
When I first got the computer, there were some graphical artifacts that would appear on the screen -- lime, sometimes magenta pixels appearing on the display. Admittedly, I should have sent it back when it was still under warranty, but they always seemed to go away after a few moments and wouldn't appear for another couple months so I figured it was due to the GPU getting hot. Blowing out the dust that had collected on the heatsink fans seemed to solve the issue, for the most part.

Issue 2:
Starting about January of this year (after my warranty was dead and gone, and about a month after moving to my SSD), sometimes the BIOS would fail to come on. The fans would spin up (very loudly), the Num, Caps, and Scroll Lock keys would flash, but there was no Alienhead or BIOS. No buttons are responsive; F2, F12, etc. have no effect. The power button doesn't turn it back off and I have to pull the battery to make the fans spin down again and the lights turn off.
I was unsure what effect removing the CMOS battery would have (I didn't realize that it was glued to the frame and didn't want to risk breaking it), so I would reseat the heatsinks for the GPU/CPU and clear the dust out from the vents/fan. Usually, this worked, and the computer would work fine for a couple months afterward. Later, I would check to see if the CMOS battery was okay through the BIOS and it reported it was functioning properly.

Issue 3:
Last week I began having more issues. The computer would turn off randomly and without warning: no bluescreen, no nothing. It would do it in the middle of a session, and oftentimes when I tried to restart it it would shutdown in the middle of the Windows startup sequence. Occasionally, when it shut down, it would bring me back to the problem I mentioned earlier -- no BIOS, with flashing Scroll, Num, and Caps Lock keys. However, a few attempts later, the BIOS would randomly decide to work again and let me into Safe Mode.
I loaded a restore point and everything was fixed for one boot. The next boot, it failed again. From Safe Mode, I scheduled a chkdsk, which found nothing but made my computer work for another week.

Today's problem:
Today it failed again and I'm back with lights + fans, but no BIOS. Also of note is that every now and again I'm getting it to give me lights + fans but NOT the Caps, Num, and Scroll Lock keys, which is new.
I have:

• Done several power drains

• Attempted unsuccessfully to get into the BIOS setup

• Attempted unsuccessfully to get it to boot without the SSD

• Reseated the heatsinks + GPU

• Unplugged the CMOS for 20+ minutes, done a power drain with it out

• Tried to plug in an external monitor, to no avail

• Tried one stick of RAM at a time

• Tried to unplug the AC adapter while the computer starts up

• Tried to boot on battery

• Tried to boot without battery

The only thing left to try is reseating the CPU, but I'm not sure if that's going to help.
I'm not sure if all three of these problems are related, or if there are 2-3 separate issues. I think this is the GPU having issues, but that wouldn't explain the random restarts, I don't think. I'm also unsure why this would seem to happen randomly, nor why only reseating heatsinks would fix it for some reason. It could also be a failing motherboard, but I haven't done enough research to know for sure, and I'm not sure how it could work sometimes but not others.
Is there anything left to try? Does anyone know what could be wrong? I'm a man of modest means; this was a gift and I'm not sure I can afford the $300-$400 it would be for a new warranty.

tl;dr: Laptop isn't getting into BIOS. Listed steps taken to try to get it to start; none have worked. Seeking suggestions for what else to try or how to fix the problem.

 

Take a look here Alienware M17x R1, R2 and M15x LED Behavior Prior to Proceeding with No POST troubleshooting | Dell US
The flashing lights mean something. In your case it could be your motherboard.

One thing to try is removing your SSD. That could be causing problems. See if you can get to BIOS without it installed.

If it is the motherboard then you can buy replacements inexpensively but unless you could install it yourself then it'll cost $$$ to get someone to install it for you.

 

Thanks for the response. All three are flashing, so it's saying a motherboard component is bad, but I don't get why it would work occasionally if that were the case. Is there a reason why it would fail sometimes, but not others?

E: Interesting. Changing out the SSD for a standard HDD gave me a code indicating a faulty processor. Still no BIOS, but never had that code before. Will reseat the processor and try again to make sure.

EE: Opened up the CPU heatsink; found out I'd never broken the thermal paste seal from when I got it. Guess I've never reseated the CPU before.
I took out the CPU, and noticed some blackish gunk in the very corner, by the battery compartment. It's in the corner of the processor and the contacts holding it.


What could this be? Battery acid? I've had a bad battery before; but you'd think it would've shown in the battery compartment as well, right? I don't understand how any other kinds of liquid could get into that small area and nowhere else, especially seeing how the thermal paste that had been applied to the heatsink is still pristine.

Furthermore, do you think this stuff can be scraped off and everything will work fine, or is my processor + motherboard going to need replacement?

 

Holy crap! Man that looks terminal! That looks like the MXM slot and your gfx card are covered in that liquid. Is there any of that stuff around the cpu? Does it wipe off easily?
You'll probably need a new motherboard, graphics card and maybe cpu depending on if any of the pins or socket have been damaged.
Probably going to be expensive unfortunately

 

The video card is fine; this is the CPU. (E: Never mind, this is the GPU. For some reason I've always thought they were the other way around.)
I'm not even sure what the liquid could be. I've never spilled anything on it, and it appears limited to just the area around where the GPU meets the pins (and only a corner of it at that). It's only on the GPU itself at the contacts, and that all seemed to scrape off fairly easily. Hopefully there's no internal damage and it'll still work okay; it's been working fine for a while, so hopefully it's just a contact issue.
Sucks to hear the motherboard probably needs replacement, though. I'll have to order a new one once my paycheck gets in.

 

That is not the cpu, that is the MXM module GPU. DO NOT try to remove anything.

Goto your local electronics parts shop and get circuit board cleaner (make sure you get the spray kind). Get the GPU and motherboard outside, lay them flat on few layers of paper towels, blast them with the circuit board cleaner and keep spraying with few breaks in between, you need the breaks because if you keep spraying the cleaner on, then it will almost freeze the circuit board, making components shrink and causing few cold solder joints (ie. cracked solder joints). This is the easiest and safest way to clean the motherboard & gpu and trying to recover the laptop. While you are doing that, also clean the heat sink, if there is any liquid on the heat sink.

I cannot tell you how many times, a can of spray costing $9.95 has saved a whole laptop which would otherwise need motherboard and few other parts replaced.

The biggest issue I can see there is, the liquid is on the voltage rails (7-20V upto 10A) which can cause some serious damage depending on the conductivity and capacitance of the liquid

EDIT: Just looked carefully at the image and looks like quite a few pins have liquid inside them, seems like there was quite a spill inside the laptop, also on the bottom right of the image, it shows some liquid contact there aswell. Just try the circuit cleaner trick and go easy on the boards, don't rush and use more than 1 can if you have to.

 

Oh, you're totally correct. The entire time I've had this for some reason my brain had the locations for the CPU and GPU inverted. My apologies.
I'll stop by a supply store and try to see if I can pick up some circuit board cleaner, then report back.

That being said, that's happening on the GPU. The status light is indicating there's something wrong with the processor (the error code has changed so the only flashing light is the Scroll Lock light on the far left; the troubleshooting article says this means "The microcontroller is handing control of the system to the processor. This code persists if no processor is detected"). Reseating the CPU had no effect, so this might be the board acting up or a sign that something is wrong with the CPU as well.
If it's a board issue, I'm out about $200ish. Board + GPU and that number doubles to about $400 in replaced parts. While I don't see any damage to the CPU, if that needs to be replaced as well for whatever reason, I'd be better off buying a new laptop.

Another idea is to try to put it back under warranty. I'm not sure if opening up the laptop after your warranty is already out counts towards voiding it, but it would be $450 to put it under warranty for another year, and even then there's no guarantee the Dell techs will get the problem resolved.

A third option may be to cut my losses and move onto another laptop. A replacement M15x will be about $700-$800. Looking about the web today found me the HP Envy dv6z-7200, which is about $525 -- cheap for its power and hopefully within my likely budget -- but would still benchmark below what the M15x can do on the GPU side, although it can support 16 GB of RAM to the M15x's 8.
Another option would be the Asus N56DP-DH11 would run a little more expensive than a replacement M15x ($850), but slightly outperforms it on the GPU end. I haven't done a ton of research on either of these other than spending a couple hours comparing stats

I'm leaning towards trying to put it back under warranty; the Accidental Damage Service is a little vague as to what is and is not covered, but sounds like it would be able to take care of the problem. If the board just needs replacement then I'd be out a few hundred bucks, but with one obvious problem and one potential problem I think it might be the safest route in the end. There is a risk that they can't/won't replace it, but hopefully that won't happen (especially if I renewed my warranty specifically to get them to fix it).

Should I ultimately be unable to get this working again and end up having to take a look at other options, which choice do you guys suggest?

 

I am not sure where your located but once warranty finishes, in australia dell sends out a tech to check the system whether its working as intended, if any issues, then warranty is not extended. But that is Dell australia, not sure about other countries.

I will suggest give circuit board cleaner a try, I have recovered many liquid/spill damaged laptops this way, only obvious things that cannot be recovered are keyboard/webcams/speakers/lcd etc. But anything that is plastic/metal/circuit board can be restored fairly quickly. Only issue I see in your case is, that laptop had battery/charger plugged in and you tried to turn on the laptop, which depending on the capacitive and conductive properties of the liquid could have done irreparable damage. But in the end spending $20ish on circuit board cleaner spray is well worth a shot compared to new board/gpu/cpu or a new laptop.

Also about the error codes/beeps, I find them misbehaving when something external is in play, for example faulty IO board on M11x (my pet example and hate) gives same error as missing cpu which is in turn same error as faulty cpu, and in M17xR4 no so-dimm can give same error code as faulty so-dimm, and in m15x I have had a recent error code of no flashing/no solid lights (caps-num-scroll) and laptop restarting in a loop till adapter unplugged or battery discharging, actual issue was no cpu present.

So at this stage, I would suggest ignoring the error codes/beeps and just give the above a go, at worse you loose an hour or so of your time and $20ish, at best you have a working laptop. Just make sure board is completely dry before you reassemble the laptop (should be dry within 2-3 minutes as circuit cleaner spray vaporises very quickly).

I hope you get your baby up and running, M15x is truly an amazing piece of hardware

 

I am really curious if you got the laptop working ?

 

Not quite yet. Circuit Board Cleaner is on the way; should get here tomorrow, hopefully. I'll keep you guys posted once I try it.

 

Okay. Attempted to clean off the GPU and motherboard with the cleaner. Some of the greyish-blue stuff came off and it looks better overall, but the laptop is reporting the same error code.

I also noticed -- and I don't believe this was the case before -- the CPU fan didn't start when I started the computer. Considering I'm still getting the "Bad CPU" error code, I think something has gone wrong with the CPU/Motherboard. I didn't spray it with the contact cleaner because I don't see any liquid or corrosion around the CPU.
Is there any additional action I could take?

If no, replacing the motherboard is the cheapest solution, but it becomes as expensive as a replacement laptop if I have to replace the motherboard, CPU, and/or GPU.
Dell would put me back under warranty for $450, but I'm not sure what their policy is for things that weren't under warranty when they failed -- surely they must have something against it, otherwise everyone would let their warranties expire and renew them only when things go bad.
Alternatively -- and I'm loathe to consider this -- the entire laptop could be replaced, as sad as it makes me. I don't know how long it'd be before I could afford to take this step, however. :/

What do you guys think?

 

You have nothing to loose at this moment, if you consider to clean near CPU where you can see corrosion. Circuit board cleaner should remove surface rust and other contaminant though.

 

Same thing happened to me all the light were on but I had no bios. I thought it was gone so I took out the harddrive to transfer the data to my desktop and I found out that my harddrive was dead. I searched for an old harddrive lying around plugged it into my laptop and it started working and the bios showed up. so hopefully this helped and just try using a new harddrive to see if it works.

 

Nope, the hard drive's fine. I'm in the middle of moving to a new laptop, and I have the hard drive connected as an external right now transferring my important files over. All the data is on it and is working fine. I'm declaring the laptop dead at the moment, but maybe one day I'll see if I can get it running again.