Myriad of issues with M17x R4

Question

My computer was running just fine for about 2 years, and now it is having a lot of issues all at once.

The computer will refuse to let the AC adapter charge the battery after 5-10 minutes of being on. It will revert to battery power and when I plug the adapter in, the popup will say it is on AC POWER, but the battery icon remains the same and continues to discharge until empty, where it will shut down. The alien logo on the keyboard will continue to display solid red which shows it is seeing the AC adapter, but no charging or even maintaining charge is being done.

When the computer is powered off, the battery will charge just fine.

The Cooling fans do not work properly. I ran the BIOS diagnostics and they pass the test and I can hear/see them turning. Once the test completes, the fans stop all together and will not turn on regardless of how hot the computer gets. I used HWiNFO to try to manually control the fans and they work fine. Once control of the fans is returned to the BIOS, they fail to work. I made sure to dust out the fans, but that did not help.

I flashed the BIOS too, no change with either issue.

Any help would be appreciated.

Milena M458 · Answer

Have you tried to perform a power drain, removing the battery completely out of the system?

coolal99 · Answer

Yes, as stated I have had the AC adapted attached but it would not charge the battery - rather the battery would empty out shutting down the system. I will try draining it without the adapter in, and see what happens...

coolal99 · Answer

Didnt work.

Milena M458 · Answer

What is the battery wear level?

coolal99 · Answer

The battery is still in good condition - over 3 hours of idle time and an hour and 20 minutes using high power applications. May I also state that when I have the battery disconnected and use only the AC adapter, after 10-20 minutes of usage the computer will reject the AC power immediately turning off. The issues with battery and fans seem to be related... computer gets too hot from the fans not running and so it rejects AC power. However, even with a manual fan control running the fans at high RPMs, the AC power is still rejected after a few hours.

Milena M458 · Answer

Which are the system temperatures? So when you use the system only with the ac adapter it will shut down at some point?

coolal99 · Answer

Apologies: Even WITH the battery removed, it will at some point not accept the AC power.

coolal99 · Answer

CPU core average: 34 C

GPU average 27.4 C

Intel PCH: 43.5C

They were running at this temperature when it switched to battery just a few minutes ago. Those seem well under overheated so the fact that it doesn't charge is strange. I had the fans under manual control, too. Without manual control they will be off and it will switch to battery much faster, of course.

Yes, even without the battery removed, and the cooling fans are off/under manual control, it will at some point not accept the AC power.

raysz · Answer

If I may throw something out there. It sounds like there's something wrong with the adapter not the battery. The adapter not only keep your laptop running it also charges the battery, try replacing that and see what happens

coolal99 · Answer

Forgot to add - when i first start the computer, the battery will charge as normal with the adapter plugged in. With the fans not under manual control it will last about 10 minutes before not accepting AC. With the fans on 7k RPMs, it can last up to 2 days before rejecting the AC. So it definitely does seem related to the fans not working. I wish I could figure out why the system wasnt controlling the fans on its own because they work completely fine with HWiNFO.

coolal99 · Answer

Unfortunately that is not the case, because first off it is a new adapter (3 mos old, so I HOPE it isn't already bad [:P]) and secondly the adapter doesn't have anything to do with the cooling fans not running under system control (which is causing the system to switch to battery after a certain time). Unless those two problems are completely separate and they just happened to occur at the same time, in which case the adapter could be one issue of multiple.

Milena M458 · Answer

Could you please send me a PM with your service tag and a brief description of the problem so I can check further?

Locked Topics – Alienware General

Myriad of issues with M17x R4

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