Alienware M11X won't post, just turns on for two seconds and turns off?

Hey guys,

Has anyone run into this situation. I've got a ~ six month old alienware m11x refurb purchase directly from Dell's refurb shop. There is a warranty, but I've had bad luck with Dell techs in the past and so I wanted to ask here first in case it's something simple. I've never moded the laptop, except to upgrade the RAM and HD, and that's been about five months ago with no problems. The machine won't start today. The lights and fan come on for about 2 seconds at power button press, but nothing appears on the screen and there is no beep codes or anything, then the machine turns back off. This repeats everytime you push the power button. The battery indicates full charge -- all lights lit up on the internal battery charge indicator.

One thing to note was that when I removed the bottom cover I noticed that the black lead of the WLAN card was disconnected and floating free, however, the laptops wifi has always worked even as recently as yesterday, so that my have occurred when I undid the cover this evening.

I tried
1) Removing the battery pushing power button, replacing battery
2) Removing hard-drive and trying to start it up
3) Replacing hard-drive with a second HD known to be good - put back original HD
4) Removing RAM and trying to start it up - replaced RAM
5) Removing WLAN card and trying to start it up - replaced WLAN

Through all of these steps there was no change in the laptop's manners. It simply starts for 2 seconds --- alll lights and fans come on, and then it powers off. No display, no beep code, no change for any of the aforementioned steps. It sounds like some sort of hardware failure, but I don't know what. Any suggestions?

Have you tried running it directly off the AC adapter with the battery removed?

yeah, I did that with Alienware support tech after posting this --- same result.

Alienware support suggests the motherboard probably died, so they say to send it in and will send me a pre-paid box to return it with. I'm glad it's still under warranty!

The giveaway question where this seemed to lead the tech to this resolution was that the alien head no longer lights up. All the other lights work, but the alien head power button doesn't light up no matter what --- battery, or AC powered. Apparently that and the other symptoms seem to indicate a failed motherboard to the level 2 tech I spoke with?!?!

This may be the first piece of electronics that I've ever owned that truly bellied up for no known reason months into ownership. Usually everything I've ever purchased either dies up front withing a few days or couple weeks (within about 30 days or less) -- or otherwise it lasts forever (or at least until I decide to mod it or something and blow it up in the process).

Archaea said:

yeah, I did that with Alienware support after posting this.

Alienware support suggests the motherboard probably died, so they say to send it in and will send me a pre-paid box to return it with. I'm glad it's still under warranty.

The giveaway question where this seemed to be the answer was that the alienhead no longer lights up. All the other lights work, but the alienhead power button doesn't light up no matter what. Apparently that and the other symptoms seem to indicate a failed motherboard?

This may be the first piece of electronics that I've ever owned that truly bellied up for no reason only months into ownership. Usually everything I've ever purchased either dies up front withing a few days or couple weeks -- or otherwise it lasts forever (or at least until I decide to mod it or something and blow it up in the process).

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hey, Archaea! I eventually sold my third m11x , after I got fed up with the quality of these machines between the two (third was a replacement), I had 4 major service calls to replace broken HW (admittedly, two of those had to do with the hinge...). AW support is good, but I'd rather not ever have to contact a corporate support in general.

Did you do a power drain? I see this recommended a lot in the AW section of the NBR forums (and was told to do so by a Dell rep when my first R2's battery died after a month).

Basically, no battery, no power, and hold the power button for 1 min. That shoud reset the mobo or whatever it actually does, and see if it works then.

jeremyshaw said:

hey, Archaea! I eventually sold my third m11x , after I got fed up with the quality of these machines between the two (third was a replacement), I had 4 major service calls to replace broken HW (admittedly, two of those had to do with the hinge...). AW support is good, but I'd rather not ever have to contact a corporate support in general.

Did you do a power drain? I see this recommended a lot in the AW section of the NBR forums (and was told to do so by a Dell rep when my first R2's battery died after a month).

Basically, no battery, no power, and hold the power button for 1 min. That shoud reset the mobo or whatever it actually does, and see if it works then.

Click to expand...

Last night the Alienware support had me disconnect the battery and hold the power button for 45 seconds as one of their troubleshooting effects. It had no different effect. Other than the initial issues I encountered with both one of the lights not working and the failed hinge, the machine has been good to me. I've treated it really good though and the hinge failure was unexcusable, because I never did any rough handling at all and had probably only opened it less than 50 times when it failed.

What laptop are you sporting now?

Egh, a Vaio SC till I figure out what I want in a laptop. I still have the repaired m11xR2, but I just don't use it as my primary machine, anymore. That, and it still draws looks at work/clients, so I figured a Vaio would be the best way to blend in.

I'm sorry to hear the power drain didn't work