[HELP]Dead Alienware 17 (2013) by EVGA Percision X GPU Tool[REQUEST]

Hello,
i have a bricked/ dead alienware 17 from 2013/2014.
The maschine worked fine and i head a modded bios installed for
hackintosh and overclock(4700mq at 4x 3,4ghz).
I had it once bricked but got it working again i dont know how i fixed it
but after that it worked perfect again that was 3 years ago.
Since i have a pretty weak gfx card(nvidia 765m) and the oc cpu worked perfect
for over 3 years i wanted to give the gpu a bit of a performance boost.
One of those tools that gets recommended every where is EVGA Precision x (even over the official
nvidia inspector tool but to that later). I ve tried a few settings in Nvidia Inspector undervoltet the card a bit so the the max voltage will be the same as the factory max voltage and boostet the clock
s by 50 mhz and it gave a good performance boost card was super cool everything worked fine.
Then i tried evga precision x and boosted with the same settings, everything worked fine.
But when i shutdown the laptop and tried to boot it again the next day it beeped only 7 times and stopped at the post. Someone had the sometrouble and fixed this by connecting the laptop to a hdmi monitor and reflashing the edid. So i try the hdmi method which didnt work. Then i went to the Electrical engineers at my university to get help and they ment that its brocken cant do nothing buy a new, so i showed them the thread with the fix. So they dissambled the laptop (broke a cable which connects keyboard to sth else), and now it doesnt even beep anymore.
Since i had the laptop already bricked to the point where it didnt beep and got it working again back 3 years ago i think rhere is still hope,
i would ask for help if there is a way to revive it again since i dont have money for a new one, and i need it for the university.
[EDIT] The laptop doesnt enter post, nor beep, nor boot or fan spin it does nothing when the powerbutton is pressed.
Thanks a lot for your time and thanks in advance.

 

I am completely confused as to wheter or not your notebooks works or not. It doesn't beep anymore but I'm unsure as to how it behaves right now or if it boots but something doesn't work.

So to makes things erasier, lets start asking how does your notebook behave right now, does it boot? If it does whats the problem, if it doesn't what does it do? (fan spinning, which lights turn on which don't etc.)

 

It doesnt even enter post, nor boot up nor does the fan spin.
I had the same problem also 3 years ago but without the 7 beeps(just bricked and didnt even enter post) and a few weeks later i got the laptop fixed and it worked again perfectly.
The problem is i dont know anymore how i repaired it exactly and what made it work again.
If anyone needs pictures of the motherboard etc i can upload them any time.

 

Uploading those pictures would help.

If trying to boot the notebook, does the green light in the power supply turn off?

 

Ok i will upload the picture as fast as i can, is there any area i should take as much picture as possible off?
Yes the powerbrick light turns green.

 

I asked if if you attempt to start the notebook while the PSU is plugged it in the green light dissapears or not.

 

I dont have any screwdrivers at the moment so i can dissassemble the laptop completly,
but as soon as i have the right screwdriver i will completly disassemly the laptop and make a complete picture of the board.

 

Well your notebook doesn't short the PSU which is a very good sign. I assume your ribbon cable of the powerbutton might not be connected properly. Someone here had this exact same issue.

 

Thanks a lot for your help, so as i understand i now should disassmble the whole laptop. Fix the powerbutton ribbon cable and then look if the laptop then hopefully will start to beep again. Do i need to put the complete laptop back together to see if the power button works or can i just test it half opend(no cpu or gpu inserted).

 

Normally it would be enough but Alienware notebooks are kinda fickle, I would just to be safe assemble the whole thing together.

 

Ok,
ive dissambled the Laptop, and you were right the cable that has the sdcard reader text printed on it connets the power button to the motherboard and its damaged.
Good news is that all elecritical components cpu, gpu, ram, wifi seem to be ok.



The daugther board on the left is the powerbutton.
This design is pretty strange, over 4 cables and daughter boards chained toghter.
my guess would be that this cable is pretty hard to find and expensiv.
Would be worth it to get that cable and see if the laptop boots again?
If not i will sell the components and see if i can get at least some money out of that.

 

Couldnt find without board:
Klick

Partnumber is YXVW4

Also its unlikely that something is damaged, as I already asked you to, you confirmed that the mainboard isn't shorted, since the power supply didnt turn the green light off.

Also the "electrial engineers" at your university very likely broke the cable, so you might not want to send anything to them anymore.

 

Thanks a lot for your fast answer and help,
im a noob so i would be pretty much clouless.
Thanks for the advice, youre right the cable worked the laptop beeped before i gave them the laptop.
I will try to get the daughter board and the post the results.

 

Its a generic flat flex cable, measure the pitch, number of pins/contacts and you can buy those at Mouser/Digikey/ebay/etc.

It might be a bit longer, but you can fold those things.

And yes, that flat flex was pinched or someone left it over a screw hole and forced real hard to pass a screw through it..

And its its only for the sd-card reader, the laptop should work without it, or Alienwares are more stingy about missing things?

Powered lots of laptop boards with just cpu and one stick of ram on my bench when doing repair, never found a motherboard that would not boot with missing expansion boards.

 

No, Alienware actually takes the cable meant for an SD reader and slaps it onto the powerbutton daughterboard. I've seen this couple of times. Don't let the label misguide you.

 

It goes indeed to the card reader, but then goes to somewhere else, because there is a much bigger cable going to the card reader and into the mobo, so that cable is for something else, as you said, maybe the power button sub-board.

 

It's AW engineering at its best.

Huehuehuehehuehue

 

The 11-13 inch Sony Vaios where way worse, 20 cables and 12 sub-boards inside a tiny chassis, sure can do, sub-boards made of flex pcb's, like the card reader, that would break over time with use, but they packed some nice tech, core2duo laptop with RAID-ed SSD module witih 256GB, sweet, no so sweet the 20 minutes with a tweezer to take it apart.

Also, isn't that AW model from the Clevo design times?

 

This is getting off the subject here, but if this laptop is so valuable when it comes to your studies, what the hell are you doing screwing around w/it?

If you can, by some miracle of a chance, get the laptop working, I'd leave it alone and not mess around w/it any further. You should be able to find a replacement keyboard, or cable, on eBay as well. Also too, you may simply be able to use an external keyboard via a USB port on it.

Finally, don't let engineers touch it , but instead, bring it to your campus computer tech's. Most campuses have a place for the maintenance of their campus computers.

PS - By the way, you may be able to get a student discount through Dell if you need to replace it.

.

 

Why? aside from giving it to people who don't know what they're doing, he did an excellent job finding out the problem with our guidance. And considering his situation which is he needs a notebook but has no money, this was the best he could do.

 

"but if this laptop is so valuable when it comes to your studies, what the hell are you doing screwing around w/it?" it worked oced for over 3 years without any fault, and the risk for the oc itself would be none i thought since i only overclock+undervolt until i reach the stock voltage limit and temps wont increase since the voltage is the same. But yeah youre right it wasnt smart by me.
"bring it to your campus computer tech's"
The ingeneers who broke the powercable were the campus computer tech guys.
I dont really understand what you meant with getting a new keyboard but my english is also pretty bad.
@Danishblunt
Youre right i mean 20$ for a new powerbutton and then get somehow past the post(which numerous people archived on the same maschine with the same brick in this forum) and reflash the edid vs 1000$ for a new similar capable laptop is always the better choice even if you have the money.

 

I was referring to the Electrical Engineers at his school, and who broke the cable.

Electrical Engineers are not Electronic Engineers, nor are they technicians, who tend to be experienced when it comes to "physically" working on electronics.

Tech's and engineers are not the same. When you mentioned Electrical Engineers, I understood it as just that.

Sometimes the cables are soldered to the keyboard, so if the cable is broken, it would be easier to replace the keyboard assembly. If on the other hand, the cable is a separate piece, then of course, try to replace it if you can find a one.

Good Luck, and once again, if you can get it working again, leave it alone, and quit messing w/it.

.

I'm not criticizing what he did here, and hopefully, he'll get it fixed, thanks to your help here.

Once again, the people who he gave the laptop to, he referred to as Electrical Engineers, and not Electronic, nor as Tech's. They're not the same.

If he does get it fixed, he shouldn't mess around w/it anymore since it is so valuable for his education.

 

The power button arrived but i had an error in my description, the card reader cable is brocken so i need to order that. For people with that trouble its part id is WINXIN E230343 AWM 20624 80C 60V VW-1 Laptop / Computer Ribbon Cable its generic partso you can find it on ebay for cheap. I will post if the laptop beeps again as soon as i have the cable.
@Danishblunt
Is this the right part?
https://www.ebay.de/itm/Alienware-M...436662?hash=item4d73a15cb6:g:ViIAAOSwuLZZ-fUJ ? My has different sticker "VAS00 NBX0001AI00 WINXIN REV10(A00) 13/05/25" but only difference is date as i can tell.


Here the one from ebay

if this is the right part i will buy it today and in 2 days i have it and can repair the laptop.
Thanks in advance.

 

Its the same part number and revision, but the date is not equal, all going well, its only the manufacturing date, if its not TOO expensive, buy it, and swap both cables and the sub board.

 

Ok thanks i will try to get it cheap.

 

It WORKED!!! THE ALIENWARE BEEPS AGAIN!!!!

Thanks a lot for all the advice and help that brought me that far.
Now i would like to ask for help about the EDID Problem.
As i understand from this Thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...levo-lcd-panels.779449/page-158#post-10090770 i need an HDMI Monitor/Device.
Then the EDID for my Laptop monitor and Linux(i have mint 18 on usb).
I have the 1600x900 60hz panel but i cant find the manufacturer+ model name on the cabel which i need to donwload the right EDID. And the rebrick that Mr Fox mentions only happends with the evga bricked drivers so i should clean install windows again or?

 

Yes, or a working panel; boot and hot-swap with the bricked panel and you're good to flash. This is tricky though; pins are 'hot' and quite close together (0.5mm), so it's possible to short some of them and kill the panel.

Yes. Made a bootable image that has all the tools pre-installed plus a whole bunch of known affected edids. You can pull the correct edid from there.

The cable won't have the panel nr., but you might look at the sticker on the back of the panel. However, you might better check the edid dump first (step 09 in the instructions above; ' sudo i2cdump -r 0-127 6 0x50 > EDID/edidexport.txt'). We don't yet know whether it is in fact corrupted and that .txt would be definitive proof. If so then flashing a good edid will fix your system, but if not then you'll have to explore alternative options.

If you have Precision X installed then simply do a safe boot and remove or rename its folder. Could also hook up the drive via usb to a different system and do the rename/delete from there.

 

Thanks a lot, i grabbed the bootable image. I put the laptop complet together and now the strange thing is that it doesnt beep it starts(lights turn on) then fans turn on and after a time (as long as a normal post) the maschine shutsdown. So i booted with the
cmos reset(fn+power) and it beeped 5x times as it should, then rebootet went back on and does the same as before. I couldnt find anything about this error on the forum(only some fn+f7 pressed equals brick on ati cards on older models). I will try to get an hdmi device and boot without gfx card.
EDIT>
When i left the system unplugged and restart it, it will beep 5 times, so something with the cmos
doesnt seem working. I will try to fix this with a paperclip(my guess is something brock off at the repair attempt off the engenners).

 

I solved the problem, by buying a clevo. I got it booting with no beeps, and it still didnt get a signal from hdmi. At the mods can you please close the thread?

 

To be sure, you bought a clevo card and then it worked again?

 

No. i fixed the battery problem with tinfoil and tape then it passed post, windows sound came on. Even with fn cmos reset hdmi out key and plugin in hdmi and starting didnt solve this. And the maschine would always lose power. And now i got a really nice eurocom so i threw the alienware in the trash, which solved the problem ^^ .

 

Serious?

I could use a parts machine, probably would work fine with a panel change.

Bummer. Don't use precision on the clevo or you could relive the same experience.

 

Thanks for the advice every thing i do on this laptop i will check no for edid problems.