First at all - does your unit have the possibility to bootup - hit f12 and start a diagnosis run?
Did you ever, besides having the battery replacement, open your unit and clean the fans, heatsinks and so on?
Maybe, due to being 4-5 years old - just a thought in the moment, there is somewhere a loose connection or one of the connectors on your motherboard is not so well sitting in its position and now, aged, it causes some hardware errors.
A good thing to figure things out is usually to get into the event viewer and take a look if there are critical errors or notifications or such.
In your case, my personal usual routine would be to open the unit, take a look inside, maybe check all physical peripherals which you could remove (like hardrive, ram and so on) check them, maybe unplug and plug and see if it makes a difference. I think i saw one time a thread where a user had to reset the bios and had his unit stopped doing similar weird thing like yours is behaving right now.
I want to mention, that i do not take any responsibility for any one of those hints resulting in a user damaging anything during opening a notebook and disconnecting /reconnecting any parts of it.
Just some ideas there!
All the best.
Steve
PS: Did you monitor your notebook with HW64 Info or something similar? How are temperatures going? Maybe you can read some stuff from there which might track down something not working the right way.
Hi @SB984 welcome to this free user-to-user Alienware laptop discussion forum.
Support for Alienware 15 R3 Storage says there is one SATA 2.5-inch hard disk drive (HDD) bay and three M.2 solid-state drive (SSD) slots. Where is the OS (C:) boot drive installed, and look at M.2 SATA or NVMe label? Removing the base cover.
Hi @fullyard the slow M.2 SATA drive should be replaced with the ultrafast 2TB M.2 Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe. The OS (C:) boot drive partition format should be the modern GPT so that BIOS boot list option UEFI can be enabled for fast boot. However, the 2TB M.2 Samsung SSD 980 Pro PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe is now advocated because of market availability, reduced cost and it is a backwards compatible and future proof drive.
Replacing the 2.5-inch mechanical SATA HDD with a no moving parts SATA SSD is good for portable laptop but putting OS (C:) boot drive on the M.2 NVMe SSD is the best laptop performance upgrade.
Thank you all for the suggestions. I've got updates but not sure if it's really 'progress'.
FYI the OS is on the SSD. Not the HDD.
I've had the back cover off and reseated both RAM modules, SSD and HDD. Which didn't seem to fix the issue but I eventually managed to F12 and run a diagnosis. Which didn't find anything. While the laptop was working I formatted and reinstalled windows which seems to have improved things. I thought it was fixed but today it has done the boot loop thing a couple of times. It seems to have turned into an occasional intermittent fault now.
Interestingly though, it's now showing "WARNING: The battery cannot be identified. The system will be unable to charge the battery" on boot. Which is how the problems started a couple of years ago that were fixed with a new battery. Sometimes the battery shows a percentage but the power light flashes as soon as it's unplugged. Sometimes it says 'percentage unknown' and sometimes it says 255% remaining. The battery doesn't appear swollen yet like it was last time.
Very different symptoms to before when it wouldn't boot but perhaps the same cause? Is this likely to be another dying battery or possibly something else?
not sure if it works with your model here, but we had in our company back then a few latitudes which got a swollen akku issue - it removed the batteries back then and you could normally operate those without it.
If this would work with your Alienware R3 - i'd give it a try. If you dont encounter it from that moment on, you know that its caused by the battery then.
Hi @SB984 thank you for the Alienware 15 R3 storage discussion.
The Dell documentation does not impose a Storage restriction, it lists the storage capacity that Dell tested, and this has not been updated. The Crucial System Advisor tool's database is updated based on their more recent Alienware 15 R3 testing and says M.2 2TB drives can be installed, see Alienware Alienware 15 R3 | Memory RAM & SSD Upgrades | Crucial.com.
My earlier picture of "Alienware 15 R3 with Base cover removed" shows M.2 slots SSD-1, SSD-2 and SSD-3. However, the Dell documentation says there are just two M.2 2280 SSD slots and ignores the smaller SSD-1 slot.
Hi @SB984 thank you for sharing update with new information.
The F12 Diagnostic tests do not test everything. Reseating both RAM modules, SSD and HDD seems to have changed something. Getting the "WARNING: The battery cannot be identified" is a good diagnostic step forward in trying to find the root cause of this elusive issue.
Dell laptops have a protection system that stops it being damaged from a bad ac adapter (charger) and/or bad battery. Does the diagnostic light on the ac adapter's plug to charger port stay on when connected to laptop? Does the windows Battery Report say there is intermittent charging from battery that might be a bad Dell OEM battery? How to generate a Battery Report in Windows 10 | Windows Central.
Although the laptop protection system is a circuit on the system board, the dc power jack could be the intermittent poor connection issue due to normal wear. The replacement part is Alienware 15 R3 DC Power Input Jack Plug with Cable DP/N WV4NR. Removing the power-adapter port | Alienware 15 R3 Service Manual.
Thanks everyone. I've been testing the laptop and it seems to randomly state either 'no battery detected', unknown, 83-85% or 255% every time I reboot. Occasionally it would begin to charge (or appear to) and then stop. The light on the adaptor power brick is permanently on as far as I've noticed.
It went on like this for a while until eventually the laptop wouldn't boot without being plugged in. So perhaps it wasn't charging and the true charge level is now near zero? It would come up with the "battery cannot be identified. Battery is critically low" warning and shut down immediately; leaving me reliant on the mains adaptor to boot up. I've noticed today though, that even using the mains adaptor, the laptop will randomly shut down every hour or so.
I tried disconnecting the battery from the main board today and everything seems to work fine (permanently plugged in obviously). No random shut downs yet. Does that suggest that the problem is with the battery and that the main board, adaptor, hardware and adaptor socket is ok?
fullyard
1 Rookie
•
116 Posts
1
October 7th, 2022 07:00
First at all - does your unit have the possibility to bootup - hit f12 and start a diagnosis run?
Did you ever, besides having the battery replacement, open your unit and clean the fans, heatsinks and so on?
Maybe, due to being 4-5 years old - just a thought in the moment, there is somewhere a loose connection or one of the connectors on your motherboard is not so well sitting in its position and now, aged, it causes some hardware errors.
A good thing to figure things out is usually to get into the event viewer and take a look if there are critical errors or notifications or such.
In your case, my personal usual routine would be to open the unit, take a look inside, maybe check all physical peripherals which you could remove (like hardrive, ram and so on) check them, maybe unplug and plug and see if it makes a difference. I think i saw one time a thread where a user had to reset the bios and had his unit stopped doing similar weird thing like yours is behaving right now.
I want to mention, that i do not take any responsibility for any one of those hints resulting in a user damaging anything during opening a notebook and disconnecting /reconnecting any parts of it.
Just some ideas there!
All the best.
Steve
PS: Did you monitor your notebook with HW64 Info or something similar? How are temperatures going? Maybe you can read some stuff from there which might track down something not working the right way.
fullyard
1 Rookie
•
116 Posts
1
October 7th, 2022 10:00
Ah. I totally missed the Hard-Drive noise. If this is an old Disk - the solution would be pretty obvious - replace it with a newer model.
I just took a look into the specifications.
It supports for the 2,5 inch format -> 1x SATA AHCI w 6 Gbps up to 1TB
I can highly recommend something like this :
https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-SA510-Internal-Solid/dp/B09ZYQ84CM/ref=sr_1_4?crid=37WLS3TMHK2NS&keywords=sata+1tb+ssd&qid=1665164277&qu=eyJxc2MiOiI0LjQxIiwicXNhIjoiNC4xNiIsInFzcCI6IjMuNzUifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=sata+1tb+ss%2Caps%2C236&sr=8-4
as a replacement.
Another idea and maybe thought - if the OS is on the HDD i would definitely get a good NVME
and get your OS running on it anyway.
Again a WD recommendation ->
https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-SN570-Internal-Solid/dp/B09HKDQ1RN/ref=sxin_15_pa_sp_search_thematic_sspa?content-id=amzn1.sym.6b029eb3-7d41-4744-b45d-69fe835e098d%3Aamzn1.sym.6b029eb3-7d41-4744-b45d-69fe835e098d&crid=1YMSI9IUYWK45&cv_ct_cx=1tb+nvme+gen+3&keywords=1tb+nvme+gen+3&pd_rd_i=B09HKDQ1RN&pd_rd_r=6994bf0e-d225-412b-a0b0-73f56e0f4b3a&pd_rd_w=Y57CB&pd_rd_wg=ok24d&pf_rd_p=6b029eb3-7d41-4744-b45d-69fe835e098d&pf_rd_r=WR82BJAYN3328BYF3R1R&qid=1665164413&qu=eyJxc2MiOiI0LjY1IiwicXNhIjoiMy45NyIsInFzcCI6IjMuNzMifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=1tb+nvme+gen+3%2Caps%2C200&sr=1-1-a73d1c8c-2fd2-4f19-aa41-2df022bcb241-spons&psc=1
I upgraded 3 old notebooks with WD drives and they are running smooth and fast like a completely different notebook.
crimsom
7 Technologist
•
6.1K Posts
2
October 7th, 2022 10:00
Hi @SB984 welcome to this free user-to-user Alienware laptop discussion forum.
Support for Alienware 15 R3 Storage says there is one SATA 2.5-inch hard disk drive (HDD) bay and three M.2 solid-state drive (SSD) slots. Where is the OS (C:) boot drive installed, and look at M.2 SATA or NVMe label? Removing the base cover.
crimsom
7 Technologist
•
6.1K Posts
0
October 7th, 2022 12:00
Hi @fullyard the slow M.2 SATA drive should be replaced with the ultrafast 2TB M.2 Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe. The OS (C:) boot drive partition format should be the modern GPT so that BIOS boot list option UEFI can be enabled for fast boot. However, the 2TB M.2 Samsung SSD 980 Pro PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe is now advocated because of market availability, reduced cost and it is a backwards compatible and future proof drive.
Replacing the 2.5-inch mechanical SATA HDD with a no moving parts SATA SSD is good for portable laptop but putting OS (C:) boot drive on the M.2 NVMe SSD is the best laptop performance upgrade.
fullyard
1 Rookie
•
116 Posts
0
October 7th, 2022 13:00
Totally agree. Unfortunately his model has a 1TB restriction in the specs
https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/de-at/alienware-15-laptop/alienware-15-r3-setupandspecifications/storage?guid=guid-ffa4b311-7053-4dc5-9294-a42c475db5e1&lang=en-us
SB984
7 Posts
2
October 8th, 2022 13:00
Thank you all for the suggestions. I've got updates but not sure if it's really 'progress'.
FYI the OS is on the SSD. Not the HDD.
I've had the back cover off and reseated both RAM modules, SSD and HDD. Which didn't seem to fix the issue but I eventually managed to F12 and run a diagnosis. Which didn't find anything. While the laptop was working I formatted and reinstalled windows which seems to have improved things. I thought it was fixed but today it has done the boot loop thing a couple of times. It seems to have turned into an occasional intermittent fault now.
Interestingly though, it's now showing "WARNING: The battery cannot be identified. The system will be unable to charge the battery" on boot. Which is how the problems started a couple of years ago that were fixed with a new battery. Sometimes the battery shows a percentage but the power light flashes as soon as it's unplugged. Sometimes it says 'percentage unknown' and sometimes it says 255% remaining. The battery doesn't appear swollen yet like it was last time.
Very different symptoms to before when it wouldn't boot but perhaps the same cause? Is this likely to be another dying battery or possibly something else?
Thanks.
fullyard
1 Rookie
•
116 Posts
0
October 8th, 2022 16:00
Well,
not sure if it works with your model here, but we had in our company back then a few latitudes which got a swollen akku issue - it removed the batteries back then and you could normally operate those without it.
If this would work with your Alienware R3 - i'd give it a try. If you dont encounter it from that moment on, you know that its caused by the battery then.
crimsom
7 Technologist
•
6.1K Posts
0
October 8th, 2022 20:00
Hi @SB984 thank you for the Alienware 15 R3 storage discussion.
The Dell documentation does not impose a Storage restriction, it lists the storage capacity that Dell tested, and this has not been updated. The Crucial System Advisor tool's database is updated based on their more recent Alienware 15 R3 testing and says M.2 2TB drives can be installed, see Alienware Alienware 15 R3 | Memory RAM & SSD Upgrades | Crucial.com.
My earlier picture of "Alienware 15 R3 with Base cover removed" shows M.2 slots SSD-1, SSD-2 and SSD-3. However, the Dell documentation says there are just two M.2 2280 SSD slots and ignores the smaller SSD-1 slot.
crimsom
7 Technologist
•
6.1K Posts
0
October 8th, 2022 21:00
Hi @SB984 thank you for sharing update with new information.
The F12 Diagnostic tests do not test everything. Reseating both RAM modules, SSD and HDD seems to have changed something. Getting the "WARNING: The battery cannot be identified" is a good diagnostic step forward in trying to find the root cause of this elusive issue.
Dell laptops have a protection system that stops it being damaged from a bad ac adapter (charger) and/or bad battery. Does the diagnostic light on the ac adapter's plug to charger port stay on when connected to laptop? Does the windows Battery Report say there is intermittent charging from battery that might be a bad Dell OEM battery? How to generate a Battery Report in Windows 10 | Windows Central.
Although the laptop protection system is a circuit on the system board, the dc power jack could be the intermittent poor connection issue due to normal wear. The replacement part is Alienware 15 R3 DC Power Input Jack Plug with Cable DP/N WV4NR. Removing the power-adapter port | Alienware 15 R3 Service Manual.
SB984
7 Posts
0
October 10th, 2022 16:00
Thanks everyone. I've been testing the laptop and it seems to randomly state either 'no battery detected', unknown, 83-85% or 255% every time I reboot. Occasionally it would begin to charge (or appear to) and then stop. The light on the adaptor power brick is permanently on as far as I've noticed.
It went on like this for a while until eventually the laptop wouldn't boot without being plugged in. So perhaps it wasn't charging and the true charge level is now near zero? It would come up with the "battery cannot be identified. Battery is critically low" warning and shut down immediately; leaving me reliant on the mains adaptor to boot up. I've noticed today though, that even using the mains adaptor, the laptop will randomly shut down every hour or so.
I tried disconnecting the battery from the main board today and everything seems to work fine (permanently plugged in obviously). No random shut downs yet. Does that suggest that the problem is with the battery and that the main board, adaptor, hardware and adaptor socket is ok?
Thanks.