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Go to Solutionm15 R7, crashing and not charging
I bought an ALIENWARE m15 R7 around 1 month ago. After 2 weeks of usage, while I was gaming I had massive fps drop. I realized that the charger wasn't plugged in, and switched it on causing the laptop to instantly crash. I turned it back on and it had stopped charging. After a bit of troubleshooting, I decided to press the power button for 30 seconds and it turned back on and charging worked fine.
Fast forward today, the same happened but this time it was when I put game settings to ultra it crashed. This was at the end of an 8 hour game session. Then I again had to drain residual power (pressed power button for 30 secs) and it started charging again.
Is this normal? Could it be that its just due to the power surges or stuff like that?
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Hi guys. Op here from a different account. I fixed the problem to make it's frequency 1 per 3 month.
1) install dell power manager and set your power to adaptive. if your laptop stays connected all the time to power use primarily ac use.
2) in the alienware app set your thermal to balanced. I found out that for some reason using high performance thermal also causes the crashes. Full speed mode doesn't do this though so you can still use that while gaming
3) buy a laptop stand. Lifting the laptop will reduce heat... and the crashes.
4) this is also very important. If your laptop is at <98% charge and your going to play games better let it charge to 100%. Alienware laptops use some battery along with ac power in gaming and for some reason when there is not enough battery or there is alot of heating in battery the battery isn't able to provide power to the main board causing it to crash while gaming.
That's my theory. For now it's working.
Hi drash123 welcome to this free user-to-user Alienware laptop discussion forum.
The m15 series has Hybrid Power Design. The design intent of Hybrid Power is to maintain full system performance under extreme heavy loading conditions. It does this by allowing power to be drawn from system battery for up to 5%/hr with the AC adapter plugged in. Under a heavy loading environment, the computer may be stressed to pull more power than the designed system power profiles allow for. When playing 8 hour gaming sessions on laptop, Hybrid Power will be disabled to prevent further battery drop and potential system performance issues (stuttering, lagging, throttling) may be seen. Alienware, Precision, and Dell G Series Laptop Performance Issue or Battery Drain While AC Adapter is Connected | Dell US.
Need more power? Dell laptops are designed to have an ac adapter (charger) of up to 330W maximum. The Alienware m15 R7 (2/28/22) gaming laptop Primary Battery option should be the 6-cell, 86 Wh, "smart" lithium-ion, Dell ExpressCharge Boost. Alienware m15 R7 | Gaming Laptop Computers (dell.com).
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[This user does not work for Dell and volunteers their free time. Please remember to say thank you by clicking on my thumb up icon.]SHiFT_DeL3TE
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Posted October 23rd, 2023 00:47
Same for me. Im having this issue right now. This has happened to me like 8 times this year, this is incredibly annoying to deal with because it only starts charging once it dies. And sometimes the outlet I use doesn't even charge it until I go and use a different one far away. This time right now, it just shut off running roblox for 5 minutes. LOL
Before it crashed it flashed red for like 5 seconds and my laptop blacked out.
I wish somebody gave a solution to solve this because the only solution I see is just getting a desktop.(edited)
I have this exact same problem. Alienware M15 R7. When just running a game, the laptop just crashes and shuts down. Then it doesn’t recognize the charger and won’t charge. I have to drain the the laptop until it dies before I restart the laptop and it starts recognizing the charger again and then charging. This seems like a manufacturer defect but of course Dell is unwilling to admit it. I’m also one month outside of the warranty and now they’re refusing to help. This is not a cheap laptop by any means and it’s quite disappointing that Dell won’t support their laptops when it’s pretty clear that more than just a few people are having this same issue. This will be the absolute LAST TIME I BUY A PIECE OF JUNK FROM ALIENWARE/DELL EVER AGAIN. Dell doesn’t stand behind their laptops. I tried calling them about this issue and they just spent the entire time telling me I need to pay them to diagnose and fix this manufacturer defective laptop. This is absolutely ridiculous. What kind of high end LAPTOP DIES ONE MONTH AFTER THE WARRANTY ENDS? During the warranty, I’ve also had Dell change out the motherboard, the fans, AND the thermal paste because the laptop constantly got too hot, would crash, and then wouldn’t recognize the new SSD that I installed. Seriously, what a piece of junk. Absolutely regret buying this thing.
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dontcallmecrazy
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Posted July 7th, 2024 10:28
Just started experiencing this issue within the last week. Has been driving me nuts until I read this and now understand what I am seeing. Details are:
- Alienware m15 R7 running Win11 Home
- I would experience the occasional reboot while system was not in use so assumed it was windows updates (and might still have been).
- I was "cleaning up" the system last weekend by removing software I never used. This included AWCC and Dell support software.
- Really noticed the issue after that whereas the PC would just stop. Determined that the battery was zero charge and system did not seem to want to charge battery.
- Researched online and did the unplug, remove battery connection, press power button 30 seconds, then put back together. That would work for a little while, sometimes a day before same thing happened again.
- Used a restore point to put all of it back to where it was before I removed AWCC and Dell support software. System ran fine for 2 days.
- System JUST did it again just now. Read this thread and saw that the battery was not charging. Ran BIOS diagnostics and it reported same. I then held power button 30 seconds and unplugged charger. When powered up and charger plugged in, battery now charging again.
Event viewer says:
- The pervious system shutdown at 5:41:55 AM on 7/7/2024 was unexpected.
- The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.
- I have tried going to a restore point prior to any of the deletes and thought that resolved the issue but it repeated this morning while trying to play Diablo IV.
Will now try going to a restore point a couple of days earlier...
If this does not look to have resolved this, I can go to a Macrium Reflect backup from a couple of weeks ago as well.
Anyone have any ideas on this issue. It is definitely related to the power system in that the laptop forgets that it is plugged into AC as part of the initial issue that leads to the system abending or is a direct result of the issue and appears when the laptop restarts.
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@dontcallmecrazy I am having this exact issue on my m15 r7. Shutdown while gaming. GPU temp is at 60 deg and it doesn't recognize the charger. It doesn't charge unless it completely dies. Usually while gaming or running 3D design software.
Did you find a fix? I am contacting support now.
DERGIOUS
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Posted April 20th, 2025 13:01
I believe i have found a solution.
After weeks of this issue driving me crazy, I went into the BIOS and switched the power settings from adaptive to primarily AC and I haven't had the problem since
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