Screwed XPS? Not Quite!

I have had a 15" 9550 from new for a few years and recently got myself a second hand 13" 9350.

I love the 13" for how portable it is. However when it arrived some base screws were missing and no hard drive was detected. I opened it up and the SSD was loose inside. with no mounting screw to be found. I reset the SSD with a new borrowed wide head battery screw and it booted fine.

However, when I later went to replace the battery screw with normal sized head to hold the SSD down it would not boot. I replaced the SSD with another and same thing, it would not power on at all. The front light blinked twice orange then four time white, telling me something was wrong.

I sat back and thought about thing and decided to try putting the temporary battery screw back in the hold the SSD as that was the only thing I had done different, and sure enough It booted fine. I also tried the other SSD with the borrowed battery screw and that too booted fine.

Conclusion:
Fitting a normal looking screw to hold the SSD down appeared to kill my XPS 13, whereas re-fitting a slightly shorter one resurrected it.

Not sure of the science behind it but that is surely a story worth retelling on this forum at least?

 

I'm guessing it was grounding out somehow. Awesome that it works however.

 

I guessed it must either have been grounding or shorting out onto something to have that effect - even though is wasn't a particularly long screw. Anyway, that is the last time I nauchiently use an old laptop case screw to hold a SSD down!

And, yeah, it really is awesome it works. I took a calculated risk and picked it up really cheap on ebay and yet it is in very good condition, better than I imagined, so well pleased with the outcome.

My mistake was so very easy to make I thought it well worth sharing here, as it may help others.