Alienware 7700 problem

Hello guys,
My 2 year old Aurora (AMD) decided to act weird today.
The symptoms are as follows:
Laptop starts normally, goes through POST, no errors whatsoever, BUT the keyboard lights start blinking, and laptop shuts down automatically after about 15 seconds.
At first look, to me it seems like the CPU cooling block sensor is damaged or something, , i disconnected it and makes no difference, laptop keeps shutting down.
Does anyone have any ideas ? Could somebody disconnect the cooling block wire to see if they get the flashing LEDS

Thanks for any hints...

 

It sounds like it's overheating. Are the fans turning on? Have you cleaned out the intakes and vents?

 

It might also be a problem with the battery and/or the power adapter. Googling isn't particularly efficient, but a number of different systems with similar symptoms have had weak/bad batteries and/or power adapters. A loose cpu requiring new thermal paste and reseating may also be the problem.

Unfortunately, a lot of other systems had bigger problems, mostly requiring replacement of the motherboard , so hopefully cleaning everything out and, if either is weak, replacing the battery and the power adapter will put you right.

 

I would suggest getting a can of compressed air, removing the covers over the CPU & GPU and blowing out the fans and heatsinks. If you feel like you have the skill, you could go as far as to remove the heatsinks and replace the two year old thermal compound with new arctic silver 5 compound.

I've found that in my high dust and pet hair environment, blowing out the fans every few months helps with heat a great deal. I'm not sure what others recommend, but I replace the thermal compound about the 2 year mark.

As far as your lights go, I haven't seen that. I *believe* your m7700 is the same Clevo chassis as my Sager 9750. For comparison sake, mine has an AMD x2/4800 and an nvidia 7800gtx. I've had plenty of heat problems with the video card, but they manifest with self throttling.

 

Thanks for the replies guys. Yeah this is the D900K Clevo chassis.
Things noticed so far:
1. Laptop behaves similar on both battery/charger.
2. Laptop shuts down no matter what you do in ~15 seconds.
3. All fans run (Fn+F2, and I can visually check that they run all indeed)

Things tested so far:
1. I did rebuild the thermal stuff on both cpu/gpu.
2. Cleaned all fans with my air compressor.

Other than the shutdown, system behaves normally, i can load windows (well, whatever it loads in 15 seconds), go into setup (where the hell is the Health Item in BIOS when you need one).

Any other ideeas

 

Not any bright ones - it's probably the motherboard - since you've already opened it up, have you examined the board to see if there are any signs of overheating (bulging capacitors, ashy residue or electrical burn marks, or the like) on it?

 

I only opened the video,cpu and ram covers. There's no visual damage there, there's no funny smell. I'm sure it's a defect on the power management / thermal management. The blinking leds probably mean something, but it's impossible to say without the service manual. Nobody else had this problem ?

 

Update: removed CPU from slot, power-on, and whaddaya know.... same thing, leds blink poweroff. Huh ?
Later update: removed everything: ram, cpu,hdd, video card, pci wireless....same thing.

 

For what it's worth, the Clevo user's manual can be downloaded here: ftp://sftp.clevo.com.tw/USRMANUAL/D900K/D900K_EUM.zip

You might try pm'ng Gophn - he usually has good, detailed solutions to inscrutable Clevo problems.

 

Thanks, I will...

 

I'm not a technician, but with the behavior being identical no matter what you removed, I'd say the motherboard is just about the only culprit that COULD be causing it.

 

Looks like, I took a lens and checked every square inch of it, and nothing wrong, so whatever it is, it's very subtle.

 

your gpu went bad. mine did the exact same thing. sorry.

i sent the gpu in to get it refurbished. cost me $350

edit; i also want to add that the computer is shutting down to prevent any damage because it is recognizing a faulty connection with the gpu. if you take out only the gpu, the computer will keep rebootin without shutting down.

 

ARGH, it does it with or without GPU.
Now i did some studying on the board and the power management/thermal monitoring is done by a hitachi processor. Since there is a way to reprogram the hitachi directly i will try to reflash it with the kbc/ec firmware and see if it will fix it.

 

if you remove the gpu from the motherboard the system will not post at all. you will have no screen and there will be constant reboots.

if your gpu is not bad then the soldering on the motherboard that connects with the gpu is bad itself. this is actually the cheaper fix. sager can fix it for 75$.

 

Well I have flashed the Hitachi to 1.00.03, and system posts (i can hear the beep) and then reboots just like you said. I have no video output, although the gpu is plugged. So I will check around the gpu connectors...

 

Ok, so that was about right, motherboard and/or video card. Any ideea where i can get replacement parts?

 

your best and cheapest bet would be to send it in to sager if you live in the US. they will be able to determine what is wrong with it. your problem is simply way too techical (and a hardware issue) for anyone to provide a remedy over the forums.

 

It's ok. I fixed it. The metal feet holding the screws from the video board are actually soldered to the mainboard. All soldering was cracked. That made the video board not to go all way in the connectors.
I removed the feet, cleaned the pads with solder wick, cleaned the feet, soldered back, screwed back the video. It started just nice.

 

Thanks ARGH but you actually indirectly provided the remedy