17 R4, CPU failure

Hi @Bond Yen,

You can try a power drain: unplug every external device from the system (including the AC Adapter), then open the system and disconnect the battery cable, then hold the power button for one minute to drain all the power out. 

Alienware 17 R4 & Alienware 15 R3: Battery Disassembly check this video to see how to disconnect the battery cable. 

I have the same problem. The drain doesn’t seemed to fixed it.

Is this laptop just a giant chunk of....? I have the same one. Only had it six months now I can't turn it on without it locking up.

Hii i am Shantanu Jukar i also have a Alienware 17R4 and while i was working on it and went out for dinner and came back it was just showing 2 red and 1 bule light.I tried the 30sec process of battery drain but there was no result.In my college there are 5-6 people who have received this problem and are struggling with it.I hope you guys understand my problem as it a very expensive laptop.Pls help me to solve this problem fast and my warranty has also expired. I think this problem only happens after the update and when the warranty expired.Its only one year and 1 month since i have purchased my laptop.I hope dell understands our problem as it is a very serious issue going in our college (5 alienware laptops).

Thank You,  

Hi @shantanujukar

You can try a power drain.

Also, try opening the system an resetting some of the components. 

If the issue persists, you can call our out of warranty department at 866 287 6727 opt#4 for more options.

I know this is an old thread , however wanted to share what happened to me aswell...

last night i went to sleep and left my alienware 17 R4 on , but idle , no heavy load no nothing , woke up this morning and i found my alienware off , i pressed the button , nothing , no lights , no keyboard light , no nothing !

i did the battery discharge etc.. i tried everything , nope still nothing !

everytime i plug in the charger cable , the led of charger cable turns off .

there's a bit of burnt smell in the power input of the laptop !!

i took it to a technician , he dismantled it and tested stuff , then comes to me saying my cpu has burnt ! and some components near the cpu also shorted or died!!

i had this laptop for 4 years , i mainly do some web programming on it , maybe once a month i game on it for about 6 hours max !

the cpu and gpu are not replaceable , they are built into the mother board !

so yeah , the tech guy tells me we need to buy a new mother board and it's gonna be expensive , i don't know how much exactly , but roughly i searched online it's gonna be at least 1800 US dollars !!

i am really disappointed for such expensive laptop , i have expected more than this !

i used to have a dell vostro 1015 , it lasted for 15 years !! till the display was acting out , and everything was almost dead ! still 15 years ! it was ok , i used to game on that dell every night ! 

but 4 years with an ALIEN WARE 17  R4 !!!

and ofcourse my warranty is out ...

i am not expecting anything from this , i am just advicing whomever is interested in a gaming laptop , just reconsider about alienware ! , such a disappointment !

Hi all - as above really.  CPU failure indicated during post.  Took the laptop apart - repasted and cleaned.  Put it back together - worked again for 10 mins (temps all sitting at 40 degrees C) then died.  Back to flashing up the alienware 2 red 1 blue.  4 years old 17r4 6700 with 1070 GPU, 17 inch 120fps gsync 1440p monitor with tobii eye tracking all now worthless because of the soldered CPU dead on the motherboard.

  Not impressed - the 2012 Alienware M17x R4 laptop with its 3630Qm, 660M is still going strong.  Certainly going to give Alienware laptops a hard pass for awhile. 

The Alienware 17 R4 Service Manual > Diagnostics says light code 2,1 = Processor failure, but does not say CPU and/or GPU. If the screen works it is a false positive. Try holding down the F12 key during boot, select diagnostics, then press the Enter key, to run the ePSA tests. If the screen does not work, try looking for a different root cause that may not have powered up the processors. Yes I know, we are trying to be positive, but its an expensive laptop and worth checking all the hardware, just in case its a simple fix, like reseating the RAM cards or installing a replacement laptop charging port, that is shorting out through normal use. 

Like all of you, our new 17 R5 AWCC does not work properly, so have purchased a replacement NVMe drive preinstalled with Windows 10 Pro x64, but the AWCC still does not work properly. Conclude its probably another example of very poor Dell Quality Control. Very disappointed that our out of the box, expensive Dell Gaming laptop is plagued with faults and just dumped on users, with no interest in fixing it under warranty.