XPS 9560 - Will not switch on

Question

I went abroad with my 9560 and brought along only a 100W USB-C charger.

A few days ago I switched it on to back up some photos and the battery was showing very low residual time left despite being full, I connected the USB charger, which was recognized and started charging.

However, it switched off all of a sudden and upon restarting it showed "no battery". I kept using it for 20 minutes, after which it switched off and refused to turn on again.

Since then, I tried all kind of things. Pressing the power button for 15 second with and without the battery connected. Pressing the power button for longer, to reset bios, but with no luck. Pressing the power button and F12 at the same time. But no luck.

I was about to buy a replacement battery abroad from some shop but then I thought that the problem might be due not using the AC adapter, so I waited.

Now I am back in the UK and I tried with the normal 130W AC adapter. The adapter works, the light on the jack lights up so I am assuming it does work fine, but the computer does not start up, it is entirely dead.

I tried again with the battery connected and disconnected, and all the long power button presses just in case, but nothing seems to happen. With the battery connected, if I press the battery checker on the side nothing light ups. Also. the light on the front does not light up when connecting the AC jack, whether the batteyr is connected or not. The battery is not swollen at all, perfectly flat.

The only thing I have yet to try would be to disassemble it all to try and disconnect or substitute the CMOS battery, because that is the only thing I can think of (the laptop was a dell outlet refurbished, purchased 5 years ago, in 2021 I i decided not to renew the warranty and now I am regretting it).

I am debating with myself whether to try and have Dell repair it, but I fear it might be very expensive for the age of the laptop. Still I am very used to it for work, and I upgraded the ram and hard disk not long ago, so ideally I would like to have it back working.

Any advice?

Thanks.

JOcean · Answer

At 6 years old the CMOS battery could be dead and there is no guarantee it was replaced when refurbished. Try to reset the system. Disconnect the battery and adapter then press and hold down the power button for 30 seconds. Then reconnect everything and try to boot again. Also seeing as how you have had it for 5 years, the laptop battery could be the problem as the lifespan on those batteries is generally 1 1/2 - 2 years or roughly 1000 charge cycles.

Usually a system that will not charge points to one of three things, a bad adapter, or DC jack, or battery. In rare occasions it could be the MB

ejn63 · Answer

Even a dead or weak CMOS battery will not prevent a powerup.

Unplug the system, disconnect the battery from the system board and hold the power button for 30 seconds. Remove and reinstall the memory modules and the hard drive or SSD. Plug in just the AC adapter (no battery) and see if the system will then power up. If it will, but won't with the battery installed, the battery is bad.

One last thing you can do is leave the hard drive or SSD disconnected and retry powerup. If the system will POST to a setup screen with the drive out of the system, the drive is bad.

Otherwise, the mainboard is bad. The boards for this system run between $350 and over $500 for a refurbished unit, depending on the CPU and GPU you choose. That's expensive for what will amount to a year's guarantee at best on the replacement, and the replacement board will come with an unknown history and be of similar age to the system. If you have to pay a shop for the labor to replace the board, you could wind up putting over $700 into a system that's well beyond its design lifespan. That's 30-40% of the cost of a new system.

Dell will not have parts to repair a system this old -- once the 4-5 year mark comes, the third party market is the only option.

mcala · Answer

Thanks.

Indeed Dell does not seem to even offer any option for out of warranty intervention on my machine, from the product page.

I have tried what you suggested but it still does not start, so probably a bad board.

I might get the same model for cheap second hand and hope that just putting my HD and memory in will give me back the same system I had. I am very used to it for work and the amount of licenced software I would need to put in a fresh install would take me ages.

Of course, it is a risk and might not last much longer. I looked into more recent models but I think the trick of putting my old HD back in might not work with something which is not identical.

mcala · Answer

Thanks, having tried everything, it seems to be a bad board.

I was in a country with different voltage, so perhaps the adapter I was using was not very good at avoiding surges, not sure.

I am contemplating buying the same model for cheap on Ebay, and stick my hd and 32gb memory in, in the hope to go back to my usual system. I have so much software installed for music production, which takes ages to reinstall due to size and copy protection stuff.

ejn63 · Answer

Before taking that route, check with the publishers of the software in question -- if they use a hash of the system configuration for copy protection, swapping the system for one with a different mainboard won't solve your problem -- you'll still wind  up needing to to a reinstall or reactivation involving the software publisher anyway.

mcala · Answer

Fair point, thanks for pointing that out.

It really depends on the specific software, a lot of music production plugin use Ilok, I am not sure how that works when it comes to hardware but I might research it a bit. Others use their own proprietary systems or launchers. which might or not notice a change of hardware.

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XPS 9560 - Will not switch on

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