Issue with Alienware M15x

Question

Some time ago I bought an Alienware m15x laptop with an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850 video card.

Several days agothe laptop presented some issues, when shutting down it didn't do it properly, and when starting up it froze before the login screen, leaving me with a black screen. I thought as always "Windows just killed himself" so I proceed to do a clean install.

Everything was great until I tried to install the video card drivers, the laptop started as always and before the login screen it froze again, leaving me with a black screen as it happened before, thinking it was a windows error I made another clean instalation, but the same error was happening all over again.

After several tries and several video driver versions (Dell official drivers, 10.x, 11.x, 12.x, and even 12.7 beta from AMD website) I decided to try if the issue was only with Windows, so I made a clean installation of Open SUSE 12.1, and as soon as I installed the video driver the same thing happened, the laptop froze before the login screen. After this I tried with Fedora Core 17, but the result was the same.

The odd thing is that if I turn the laptop on without the AC adapter plugged, the startup process is normal, but as soon as I plug the AC adapter the computer freezes and "dies", requiring a hard shutdown (alien head button).

The Dell diagnostics shows no hardware error whatsoever, as well as the AlienAutopsy diagnostic tools.

The specs are:

Processor: Intel Core i7 CPU Q740

RAM: 6GB

Hard Disk: 500GB

Video card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850

The laptop has the latest BIOS revision (A09), and the Video card has the latest VBIOS released by Dell (A02, it was installed way before the problems began, and the laptop was working properly with it)

Any help regarding this issue is very valueble.

Regards.

PS: If there were any grammar errors I'm terribly sorry, as english is not my first language

DELL-Chris M · Answer

Shaggy410, Power off. Remove the battery. Make sure the laptop power cord is plugged in. Power on. What happens?

DELL-Chris M · Answer

Is the Dell warranty still current on this system?

Shaggy410 · Answer

The laptop freezes and leaves a black screen at the login of the operating system, I forgot to mention that I've read several forums and followed everything people wrote as a "solution" to the problem but still nothing, including what Chris wrote.

All the diagnostic tools I've used (dell diagnostic, AlienAutopsy, etc) reported no hardware failure whatsoever, even trying to restore with AlienRespawn brings the same issue, and I can't test Windows XP x64 'cause when I'm trying to install it shows the lovely BSOD

Shaggy410 · Answer

Nope, the warranty ended on july 6th i think, like 2 weeks after that the problems with the laptop started... bad luck Shaggy XD

DELL-Chris M · Answer

The port on the motherboard sounds defective. Call Dell Spare Parts 1-800-357-3355 and ask for prices and availability. Provide to them the part number, XDNCP or VT4XJ.

Shaggy410 · Answer

I feared something like that was the problem, I'll give them a call.

Shaggy410 · Answer

Well running out of options I disassembled my laptop in order to check the video card, the thermal paste was a complete mess, and over the GPU of the video card there was a little plastic cover, I removed that and proceeded to clean up and put some new thermal paste over the GPU.

The video card connector and the motherboard slott looked clean, but I used some contact cleaner in order to remove any dust particle from the motherboard video card slot and the video card itself, plugged the video card on it's slot, assembled the laptop and proceeded to see if anything I have done worked, and actually, it did, the problems with the laptop are gone, I believe that the little plastic cover over the GPU was the cause of the issues I was running into

Locked Topics – Alienware General

Issue with Alienware M15x

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