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Hello, i have a problem with Alienware 17 R4 laptop. I was browsing web and suddenly the fans kicked in, the laptop froze and turned off. Now it is completely dead, no lights, nothing. When you plug in the charger into the wall socket its end lights up, but as soon as i plug it into the laptop the light cuts off (removing the charger from a wall socket and replugging it back in the light on the charger tip appears once again, but as soon as i plug it into the machine it cuts off again). I have disconnected the battery, held power button for 30 seconds and tried turning it on to no avail. It has been repasted with Kryonaut previously and had no problems with temperatures or anything. It is out of warranty (2016 model). What are my options?What could be causing this?
Did you also disconnect the CMOS battery? I think its connector is near the wifi card. If the EC reset still doesn't help then I would try booting with various components disconnected. You could also pull the motherboard and inspect it for damage.
The exact same thing happened to my R4 too a few weeks ago. Unfortuantely it is bad news. With my system it just cut out and I thought that I had accidently unplugged the cable and it had been running on the battery until it drained. After a bit of experimenting I noticed the same thing when the PSU was unplugged the green light came on, but when I plugged it back into the R4 the green light would turn off.
The reason the green light turns off is because some internal safety protocol in the laptop is telling the PSU that it is unsafe to pass current to the laptop. The dell engineer said this is usually the result of a short in the motherboard.
They tried to replace the motherboard twice in my case, and each time the motherboard shorted out and smoke started coming out of the board. Bizarrely it appeared to be the sound chip that was burning out, likely because it was the weakest component near the battery.
They wanted to take the laptop in for some tests but I'm going to get refund as the laptop is fairly new and still in warranty and that was the 3rd time they had to change the motherboard since I bought it.
Since the motherboard houses most of the components it was difficult to understand what was causing the short. Logically it wasn't the PSU since it works fine when not plugged in, nor could it have been the motherboard since new ones were put (unless there was a design fault in that batch - very unlikely apparently). The next likely thing is the battery was causing the short, maybe the circuitry inside had gone bad. The only other component not on the motherboard that I could see at the time were the speakers. It was all pretty bizarre really.
If you're lucky replacing the battery might fix it. Could be another problem though. I guess you could unplug the battery and plug the cable in to test if that works. Be careful though, we only saw the wisps of smoke becuause the enginner had stripped it back to the board. Other than that it was pretty much a mystery to both of us what was going on. Hope that helps.
Perhaps a shorted capacitor on the motherboard somewhere. Maybe have a close look at the motherboard for burned components or take some high resolution shots and post them up here so others can look.
Another R4 owner here has similar issue and Dell is going to fix it even though theres no warranty. Maybe find out who he talked to or call Dell and beg them to help you. They have lots of money.
Thank you all for the help. I brought the laptop to a local repair shop and they diagnosed that the cpu has died. Turns out the laptop has been repasted with liquid metal by the previous owner and most likely a leak occured since it was not a professional who did the repasting. Im wondering whether i could find a 6700HQ and just have someone resoldering it. Will see how it goes.
Yep. Worst descision Dell made with these models. It must cost them a fortune in the long run. One motherboard change would out even outstrip 3 years extended warranty because the cpu, gpu and any motherboard component issue can only be be solved by replacing the whole thing. Unless they get MoBs dirt chip from somewhere. The engineers also hate it because it takes so long to replace the whole MoB as opposed to removable components.
This could be solved by training. The biggest problem with 95% of the techs that show up to work on a system such as these is they have no idea what they are doing and so have to learn as they go and hope they don't mess it up. A few of them have had the brains to google a teardown guide and follow that but it adds time. If they were trained on the systems and at least got to handle them before being sent out to rip one apart it would cut down significantly on the amount of time they would need to spend on them.
I can tear down my R4 and have the mainboard out in 10-15 minutes easily with time to spare, they are not THAT bad, it's just a matter of knowing what to do which most of the techs that are shipped out don't.
Better and proper training filters down to so many of Dell/Alienware's issues. The tech support staff, order staff and onsite support all need better training / policies, it would reduce so many issues and complaints.
this! And would like to add, some love for the systems of others. Because even some took a long time, they did okay. Others with lack of experience and no care just trashed laptops. Luckily dell offers a full replacement for those after 3 tries.
The problem is , from my understanding , they get paid a set amount per repair so they don't want to spend any more time then they have to. More repairs = more money so they have no desire to want to take their time and they know Dell will replace or send more parts if they break something. Even the times I had a tech butcher my system it was clear he simply didn't give a ****.
To be fair, not every tech is like that, some really do care and those are the ones you want. I have read stories of techs using their own better paste vs the stock stuff without even being asked too because they know that aftermarket paste will perform better.
Well the thing is, an MXM board these days is more expensive than the whole laptop motherboard......
It also saves time for analyzing a problem so in the end for Dell it is cheaper.
You are bringing up a good point. in NL they seem to have time slots, so they cant take more on the same day. But in other countries, your projected situation might be the case.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
