Dell Studio 1555 power button cable

I want to commend joostr for taking the time to document his work and findings. I was able to perform his repair on a studio laptop. Here's the header information from the laptop I worked on:

      +-------------+
 pin  | 1) blue     |
 pin  | 2) green    | 
 pin  | 3) yellow   |----------------
 pin  | 4) orange   | cable
 pin  | 5) red      |----------------
 pin  | 6) brown    | 
 pin  | 7) black    |
      +-------------+ 

1,2,3,4 eventually lead to the wifi button.
5,6,7 eventually went to the power button.

The power button connected 5 and 7.
The wifi button connected 1 and 2.

I used a small needed wedged between the pins and the plastic retainer to pull out 1 and 2 and swap with 5 and 7. 

My laptop was a bit different. This header is much smaller than you would at first think and is accessible just by removing the keyboard (which implies moving that status light panel above the keyboard). The cable from the header goes up towards the screen and to the right towards the power button, but there splits off into two cables, carrying 1,2,3,4 and 5,6,7. The 5,6,7 connect immediately to the power button, but the others apparently go through the lcd panel to the left side where the wifi button is. Good luck guys, and thanks again joostr.


 

I need photo graphs in how to open the display assembly to connect to wifi.  I greatly appreciate your help on this.

You should be able to find something here:

The connector to the motherboard has four pin slots, solder the wire from pin 1 to pad 1 on the switch board (farthest from the screw hole), then solder wire 2 to pad 2 and wire 3 to pad 3 (closest to screw hole).  The motherboard connector has no wire at pin 4.

The colors of the wires used doesn't matter as long as they are connected pin 1 to pad 1 etc.  My wires are black, brown, red in that order.  See picture:

I have a 1537. I was able to "fix" my laptop power button with the Joostr method, switching Wifi and power button.

I was also able to get the led to light up when the wifi button was pressed to turn on the laptop

This is the basic layout of the connector, with possible colours that i know of. The colours dont matter, only the positions. Pin 1 will either be black or Blue, just check at the wifi switch witch colour is there.

Pin 1    Switch    }                                        Black         Blue
Pin 2    Switch    }                                        Brown       Green
Pin 3    Led         }            Wifi Switch        Red            Yellow
Pin 4    Led         }                                        Orange     Orange

Pin 5    Switch    }                                        Yellow       Red
Pin 6    Led         }            Power Switch   Green       Brown
Pin 7    Switch    }                                        Blue          Black

Why does wifi switch have two led and power only one? No idea!

In my system i did the following

Move wire pin 1 to pin 5
Move wire pin 2 to pin 7
Move wire pin 3 to pin 6

So that now i have

Pin 1    Switch    }
Pin 2    Switch    }    No wires
Pin 3    Led         }

Pin 4                    }                                  Orange       Orange
Pin 5    Switch    }                                  Black          Blue
Pin 6    Led         }    Wifi switch           Red            Yellow
Pin 7    Switch    }                                  Brown        Green

The wire pin 4 is left in place. It works so i'll not change it.

Hope this helps.

Hi Pdaydab,

I don't know about the power and wifi catcher button being bundled together on the old models,

but if you figure out the wiring of the power/wifi button cable you can probably just short circuit the power button wires to start-up your laptop.

It's been a while since i've been toying with it, but i'm sure you can figure out the wiring with the information above.

Cheers

I opened up the laptop to take a look inside, and it seems like the power button and the wifi catcher button arent bundeled together at all.  There's just a single wire going to the board, containing only the three wires from the power botton.  How would I short circuit this thing to turn it on?

Ignored the posts above that are talking obout their 1537s and 1735s. Wired differently (obviously) and only confusing to people trying to learng something useful about their 1555 power switch.

That said, refer to the picture of the 1555 power switch posted above, momentarily connect pin 1 to pin 3.  Note: your wire colors may be different.

Pin 2 & Pin 1 power the LED.

Started to follow Swagman_1's advice and whilst cutting some of the shrouding of the wires to expose them I must have shorted the correct wires and the laptop turned on - amazing!

Thanks Swagman_1.

For the future, would I just connect wire 1(black) to wire 3(red) momentarily.

Joostr, you remain the man!  My sister's laptop had this problem and this made things much easier than buying and installing a new power/wifi wiring assembly.  Cheers!

TJNH

Hi Toolbox,

I would assume by now you have this fault corrected... but could you tell me which location each of the 3 wires are soldered to please?

I have the same issue as im certain many others do... all three of my wires have come clean off!

Your assistance/any assistance, would be awesome! Thanks in advance,

Tony.

Tony,

The easiest thing to do is to repurpose the wifi button on the left hinge as a power button by switching the wires connected to the motherboard - this requires no soldering, and few people use the hardware wifi button anyway - most turn wifi on and off through software.  This is what people are referring to as the Jooster method, as he was the one who suggested it in the thread. 

Scroll up in this thread and find the post by "Username" from 4 Jan 2012 at 6:36 PM.  This details where the wires are connected and where to switch them to repurpose the wifi button.  Also, if you really want to solder, it shows you where the wires were originally connected.

Thanks for your reply TJNH,

I did read that post on the wifi catcher button use, but unfortunately the issue i have is the power button itself has "Disappeared" magically!! So i have another makedo button to use. Its gonna be cosmetically rather ugly, but for use and performance, its <ADMIN NOTE: Profanity removed as per privacy policy> :) That being the case, is why i was asking about the solder points/wire order. Thanks once again for your assistance,

Tony.

Dell studio 1555 power button issue: dear sir I have the very same problem ... but in trying to desolder the glue from three points I knocked off one of solder tip so can not solder wire red on that lcd button. Can u guess some solution for it?