Start a Conversation

Unsolved

This post is more than 5 years old

Closed

4 Posts

84639

May 26th, 2017 01:00

Dell XPS15 9560 charging status LED is blinking orange / white

hello all,

i have a problem with my XPS15 since receiving it. All is well, but sometimes the charging status LED is blinking with the following pattern: 

3 orange, 5 white, 3 orange, 3 white

Does anyone knows what it means? I already had a technician who visited and replaced the motherboard and battery, but the problem is still here.

On top of that, my idle temp is not dropping under 45 celsius, and CPU under load goes over 90 celsius. I'm pretty sure that is not normal, and i believe the technician who replaced the motherboard did a poor job repasting the CPU and GPU with thermal compound.

Can you please share what are your temperatures for this model (9560 i7 7700HQ) ?

Community Manager

 • 

54.2K Posts

May 30th, 2017 08:00

Not sure about the temps. Will have to see what other XPS 15-9560 note as their idle and load temps. Below are the Battery Charge and Gauge LEDs =

May 31st, 2017 22:00

Hello,

I am so glad to finally find someone else with the same issue!  I have the same thing.  Every couple of times I power on, I get 3 amber, 5 white then after a short pause, 3 amber, 3 white.  Then the system won't boot.  I haven't found anything like this sequence in the troubleshooting guide.  I did the full pre-boot test and everything passed.  When the laptop does boot, everything else seems normal.

My temps at idle are around 45-50.  I think that's normal.  My fans don't speed up at that temp.

I hope someone can figure this led blinking power issue.  DELL-Chris M, I know you mean well, but that image isn't related to this problem.

I'm going to monitor this thread in the hope that someone can finally figure this out.

4 Posts

June 1st, 2017 00:00

Exactly the same behaviour for my unit.

Nobody i have spoken with at Dell could give me an answer as to why this is still happening after having the MB replaced.

As for the temps they wanted to replace the heatsink and do another application of thermal paste on the CPU and GPU, but i don't think the heatsink has anything to do with it, and i have confirmation from aomeone at Dell that temp of 93 Celsius under load are not normal, or safe for the laptop in the long term.

Yesterday, at their request, i have sent it at the repair center to be inspected and hopefully they will find out what is wrong.

Community Manager

 • 

54.2K Posts

June 1st, 2017 08:00

"I know you mean well, but that image isn't related to this problem."
"sometimes the charging status LED is blinking"

To which LED are referring? There are only three on this model =
- power button
- battery charge
- battery gauge

Are you saying that the "3 amber, 5 white then after a short pause, 3 amber, 3 white" are not on one of those LEDs pictured?

4 Posts

June 1st, 2017 09:00

I think he meant that the problem here is the battery charge LED, but the behaviour is common to a system error.

Under the picture you attached is just the common behaviour of the LED when everything is working as it should.

Community Manager

 • 

54.2K Posts

June 2nd, 2017 07:00

I cannot find any documentation that shows the battery charge LEDs would ever use orange. The only LED that uses orange and white is the power button.

June 2nd, 2017 17:00

Yes, what Marius_V said is correct.  It's the battery LED, but it blinks after hitting the power button and before loading the BIOS.  When it happens, the boot sequence doesn't happen and you have to hit the power button again.

I think the wording in that chart must be incorrect because the light flashes happen on the battery LED, which seems to be called the power LED sometimes.

The situation is that it does 3 amber, 5 white followed by 3 amber, 3 white.  The chart says that the sequence will be repeated, but in this case it's two different sequences.  Also, the chart says the blinks can go up to 9, but the chart doesn't have entries for higher than 3/4.

So our/my questions are:

* What does the 3/5 sequence mean?

and

* Why does the sequence not repeat, but instead shows two different sequences?

Thanks,

-- Michael

Community Manager

 • 

54.2K Posts

June 5th, 2017 05:00

Unknown. we cannot replicate the issue on the two XPS 15 9560 in the lab (BIOS 1.3.3, 16GB ram,  i7-7700HQ). To validate if this is a trend or if these are two uncommon issues, other XPS15 9560 owners will need to post the same issue, their specific hardware, BIOS revision, etc.

June 9th, 2017 01:00

Also, I always have the Logitech wireless adapter plugged in, if that helps.

June 9th, 2017 01:00

OK, I might have stumbled onto some more info.  It seems to happen when powering on from battery only (no AC adapter).  It might also need the battery to be really low or empty.  I'm still looking into this, but these things seem to lead to the issue.

1 Message

July 6th, 2017 04:00

Hello everybody. I am having the same issue too. I tried booting the system from a shutdown state and this happened to me. There were many times where I had trouble booting the XPS 15 9560 but this is the first time I noticed the LED lights blinking. It is consistent with he 3 amber 5 white 3 amber 3 white sequence that everyone is getting. One issue worth noting is that this only happens when I close the lid of the XPS  15 when it is shutting down ( as far as I remember).

July 9th, 2017 19:00

Thanks for your input Jeff.  It looks like Dell is giving up on this issue, so it's good to cooperate with others and narrow down what is going wrong.

I also always shut down my computer instead of putting it to sleep.  I'll test closing the lid when shutdown hasn't finished yet.  That sounds promising because I know that I sometimes close the lid during shutdown while the power light is still on.

4 Posts

July 10th, 2017 00:00

OK, so i have to come back with an update.

First of all i need to tell you that my laptop was behaving this way even with full battery and without closing the lid before complete shutdown, so i really don't think it has anyything to do with the issue here.

Second,... after coming back from Dell's Service center it is working just fine appart from the coil whine with AC plugged in.

They have replaced the motherboard (again.... that would would make it my 3rd), replaced the 4K panel, replaced the heatsink, replaced some smaller unnamed parts.

All problems seem to have disappeared for the moment so......i really hope i can really go ahead and use my device after 3 months since i bought it.

1 Message

July 14th, 2017 08:00

I have also experienced this issue about 3 times in 2 months. Can't think of a common pattern but I also always have the Logitech wireless mouse adapter plugged in. Is this common with everyone, I see that one other user stated this.

I also have issue with coil whine usually when the battery is full. My suspicion is with the battery...

1 Message

July 16th, 2017 06:00

Same thing just happened to me.  My computer was unplugged from AC but had a completely full battery.  Logitech keyboard USB plugged in, but not sure if that's related.

No Events found!

Top