Alienware M7700 (Clevo D900T) help please

Hi there,
I was giving my spare laptop a clean yesterday, and applying some new thermal paste. Everything seemed to go OK, but now I've put it all back together it won't post. The button lights up, and the HDD access indicator turns on, but the screen stays blank. I've tried reseating the GPU and RAM, still no joy. The laptop posts FF on a test card, so according to that it's OK. Have I killed something? Anything I could do to sort it out? If I have killed the mobo/gpu, are there any places I can get them reliatively cheap?

Specs:
P4 3.2Ghz HT
3GB RAM
1x60GB HDD
Ati mobility radeon X800 XT

It has never been overclocked.

Thanks

 

bump - no ideas then?

 

Do you have any overclocking settings enabled in the bios? If so, did you try pulling out cmos battery to reset all settings?

 

You did plug the cooling fan/fans back in correctly, right?

 

I definetly did - I double checked just now. I had no overclocking settings in the BIOS enabled, and I can't get into it now anyway

 

That is why i said pull the cmos battery. this would cause it to reset it..

any beeps or just the fans spinning up?

 

Start removing hardware piece by piece until it boots.

 

I've just removed the CMOS battery - will update you. No beeps or fans spinning up, but I can't remember if it does normally anyway.
Thanks

 

Just re-set the CMOS - still not posting

 

There are a number of different parts you can test/check.

1) you should make sure that their are no shorts generated by loose wires, etc.
I once installed my D900K chassis, and in the process I sheared a speaker cable.

2) make sure the keyboard and touchpad ribbon cables are firmly connected. The connectors are electronic sensitive. When the cable is not connected properly the metal piece which the plastic tab pushes against will not come into contact with the inner part of the connector. To check, disconnect the ribbon cables and make sure they are connected 100% before going to the next part. You should also check that the cables for the Audio DJ are connected as are the auxillary power connectors for the audio, subwoofer, media card reader, and the main power strip.

3) if the above fails to turn on, unplug the optical drives. If an optical drive is defective, the system will fail to boot.

4) if the above fails, try removing the SATA/PATA harddisks from the system. You can simply remove the connector for both drives.

5) check that the LCD cables are connected properly. There are three cables which run up into the screen:
1) main LCD cable for RGB color - etc (Its a 20+ pin cable)
2) the 11 pin inverter cable
3) the 4 pin USB cable for the webcam
There are also wireless cables, bluetooth cables, but they do not effect startup unless they are shorting on something

6) also check that the thermal probe for the processor is connected to the motherboard. If it is not connected, the system auto shuts off. At least it does that on my D900K

I hope I have helped. If not shoot back and I will try to give you more ideas

K-TRON

 

I had Alienware m7700 which was dead, bought from ebay. It had Ver.6.2 mobo with GF 7800GTX card. On switching on only 2 lights used to come up.

I opened the system and upon careful examination I found one of the processor socket pins had bent in opp direction and was totally flat. Maybe the previous owner must have ruined it while swapping CPU. Anyways with a lot of patience I was able to set it right.

After switching on the laptop would begin to read cd's and that was it. If left any longer the System Fans used to start up spinning. but there was no display, not even on the external monitor.

It always used to bother me seeing one of the bush/screw hole on the mobo where the graphics card used to be screwed on was broken. Also it appeared someone had used glue to stick them back. So I took the laptop to uni and tried to resolder three broken screw sockets that were stuck with glue.

I switched it on, display on, POST then ''OS not found'' After banging my head all around I came to know the ty HDD controller was the issue. The workaround for this was a HDD caddy inside the CD ROM. Man, that mobo had all the known problems of D900T. Eventually I sold it on ebay with Windows Live disc, showing it was loading windows but not from HDD.

Now, I have Rock branded D900T with me, with guesss what? - dead mobo.LoL. I checked inside and the SM1040D1 voltage rectifier is all busted on the V.5.2 mobo. First I thought of replacing the chip and also ordered a few similar spec ones, but I bought another d900t dead mobo from ebay and this is the one I have issue with. Here goes--

Switch it on, lights blink, powers up, Cd spins, no display, after a while FAN's kick in, fans speed up(as it heats), graphics card gets heated up but its fan doesnt work, cpu fans at full rpm, graphic card is burning hot but the fan doesnt come on...? thats it.

What could be the problem? Graphic card shud be fine cos its heating up. Is this also known mobo problem? Is there a workaround?

Please help mates.

 

The first part is quite common. Over tightening the graphics card screws will cause the standoffs to break off of the motherboard. They can easily be resoldered on. If you are careful, you can replace it with a modified desktop motherboard style standoff, with a washer and nut on the other side of the motherboard.
You can also try the jamming a piece of plastic/cardboard between the top of the graphics card and the plastic cover, so the plastic cover pushed and holds the graphics card in the slot.

For the second part, its not the harddrive controller which is the problem. It is usually the case that the dual SATA/PATA adaptor goes bad. It has a poor design, where the plastic hoop to pull the riser off is attached right to the wires, so you can break them pretty easily. A new cable usually fixes this problem. It did for M1Screation - I sold him a new cable.

Which lights blink, there are three on the LID?
A loose power connector ribbon cable, a loose speaker cable etc, can cause a boot failure.
You may want to try isolating the problem by trying known good memory in the system.
A corrupt or bad memory card will cause the system to fail to boot.

The graphics fan comes on at 60C if I recall correctly,
Does the processor get hot?
Can you feel warm air coming out of the back?

Try powering it up with the optical drives and that optical drive standoff/breakout board removed.
I have heard many people having similar problems, which were related to the optical drive board piece.


If thats not the case, take the system completely apart, and try powering it up outside of the case.
All you need to boot are:
the motherboard
processor
one memory card
graphics card
power supply
keyboard
and the lcd connector

disconnect all others like the mini pci cards, harddrives (remove harddrive cable), optical drive (remove optical drive breakout board), extra memory, sound card, audio card, modem, speakers, etc.


K-TRON

 

Once switched on, the 5 LEDS (status indicators -hdd, capslock,etc.) flash and go out. Then the power led on lid turns green and the battery indicator turns amber, the power button turns blue. These continue staying on.
The CD (win XP bootable) starts running and appears as if its reading(its reaches full read speed)

The CPU gets warm and the fans start spinning after the CPU has reached some temp. The GPU gets warmer and warmer but the fan does not kick in (I tested the fan and it works)

I am only using tested memory.(tested it in my current XPS1530)

--Yup!

--Yup!

Will try removing the optical drive adaptar.
But I did remove optical drives before.

does slot matter??

K-TRON[/QUOTE]

Will do it now and update.

 

Testing, a single good memory card in each slot individually can rule out the problem caused if one memory slot was actually bad.

The LED indicators are at least a partial sign of it working. When my motherboard died, my wireless light became the power light, and nothing else came on properly. Also the fans on mine didnt kick in. Yours do, so at least yours isnt completely dead yet.

Have you tried resetting the BIOS?
Pull the power plug, battery, memory, than proceed to removing the BIOS battery. Its the small circular battery on the motherboard. Its under the keyboard area.

Also, it may be a good time to check connectors, like ethernet ports, usb ports, interface ports for metal shards. If you have any, your system can fail to boot.

I cut metal in my room quite often, and once some metal got into the ethernet port on my E1505, and it refused to boot. After cleaning the ports, everything was fine.


By the way, do your keyboard commands work?
If you Press FN+F2, do your fans come on at full speed?

K-TRON

 

I removed the battery to check if it has power and yea the battery was good. Actually you have to wait for like 10 minutes for the BIOs to reset itself, which I didnt. Will get to it.

Thats the thing! I really dont know if its bios was updated or not for the Fan control. Besides I am not even sure if the keyboard works. I connected the connector fine. So I was using an external keyboard and was able to turn the light for nums lock key to turn on and off as long as the computer was switched on. And on the external keyboad there is no fn key. Do u know what the code for the fn+f2 combination is (alt+some no.) so that I can try that out with the external keyboard?

 

Your keyboard doesnt work?
When you press numlock, capslock or scroll lock, do the lights come on?

If they do not, it is possible your keyboard bios is corrupt. That has happened to me before. I had to reinstall the keyboard Bios 1.00.05 through a USB floppy drive.
I do not think any external keyboard can control the fans, since the keyboard BIOS on the D900 is system specific, so it will only do shortcuts on the onboard keyboard.

I could send you a keyboard, I have a few extra. I have some D900K/D900T parts. Look in my for sale thread - link in signature.

K-TRON