DELL 17R SE 7720 no longer booting

Hello,

Since about a week or two, my laptop has been having issues.

- It started with a random shutdown: I was playing a simple browser game and suddenly I heard the click like you hear if you keep the power-button pressed to force the laptop to shutdown. The laptop completely stopped working but as I rebooted it, nothing peculair was found by me.
- Two days later, this shutdown occurred again, but it happened when the laptop was in standby mode (flashing power-button). Still nothing major.
- However, after the second shutdown, I couldn't power it back on: I could hear the HDD spinning and the DVD drive clicking, but no lights were lit on the keyboard, not even the powerbutton or the 3 icons on the right hand side (these always flash when you boot the laptop). I managed to 'fix' this by using the screen test (hold D + press power) and then the laptop booted normally again.
- Once again it failed to boot. Now I tried it with hold Fn + press power (diagnostic built-in scan). The laptop rebooted again, just fine, after tunning the hardware diagnostics which did not find any errors.
- A couple days later it again refused to boot. I contacted Dell about it and they said the motherboard needs replacing and it would cost 374.15. Yes just that number. Not even a currency or anything. By the way, buying a new mobo would be approx. 1/3 of the price they mentioned. I'm just trying to make sure that it is in fact the motherboard, before spending money on a new one.
- The day after I thought "Yolo" and I tried booting. It worked just fine, like the laptop never knew what misery he was causing before.
- Now it's 'bricked' again: if I try to boot it with the power supply in (doesn't matter with or without battery), I hear the HDD and DVD but I see no lights and the screen stays black. If I power it on with only the battery, the power button lights up, one of the 3 icons on the right hand side and then *click* complete shutdown again.

My hardware: i7-3610QM, 6GB RAM, 750GB HDD, nVidia Geforce GT650M.

If anyone has experienced this before OR knows a different solution than a new mobo OR you know a new mobo will fix my problem, I will be in your debt.

Thanks in advance!

 

Were you on outlet power at the time it did this or battery?

I had issues with overclocking programs and this laptop, that required a reinstall to fix. On battery the laptop would just go "click" and power off. Some times it was random, other times it was when I opened Media Player Classis. Dell couldn't replicate the issue and said "nothing is wrong", and even reverting clocks to normal and uninstalling the overclocking applications did not fix the issue.

 

I am now in the same boat you are in, no LED for power button or front, but when I hit the power button I hear a fan and the HDD spin up. No display or any other kind of power/LED's though.

Time to hunt for a new laptop I guess.