Dell Precision M3800 Troubleshooting

Laptop will not start even when fully charged/ connected to power adapter.

If your laptop has a power adapter that does not charge the laptop even when plugged into a functional outlet, then the power adapter may be broken. To replace the power adapter, you simply need to find a new AC Power Adapter Charger on Dell’s website. After ordering a new charger, your laptop should work like new again!

If your laptop dies immediately after you take it off the charger, your battery may need a replacement. You can find the guide to replace your battery here.

When using the touch pad, the mouse cursor does not move or click.

If your cursor does not move or click on the screen of your laptop, the touch pad may be damaged. To ensure that the touch pad hardware is the issue, connect the laptop to a mouse and check to see if the cursor is responsive. If the cursor is responsive through a connected mouse and not the touch pad, then you may need to replace your touch pad. You can replace the touch pad through the guide found here.

There is no sound coming from the speakers or the audio is buzzing, vibrating, scratching, or seems distorted.

If there are issues with your audio through speakers, there is a chance that you have outdated or faulty drivers. Drivers are a series of code that utilize physical components which allows communication with the rest of the system. An outdated driver can cause distortion in the audio.

Keep drivers up to date by visiting Dell’s Website, selecting the “Support” drop down, and selecting the “Drivers and Downloads” category. Choose “Detect Drivers” option to download the most current version specific to your product.

If you have updated your drivers and there is still buzzing or vibrations coming from your laptop when audio is playing, there is a possibility that the speakers have sustained physical damage. In order to fix this, the replacement of the speakers is recommended. You can replace your speakers using the guide found here.

Keyboard does not respond.

If some of the keys are working and some are not, you may have some debris under the unresponsive keys causing the issue. The quickest fix to this problem is to take a can of compressed air with a thin nozzle and blow air under the unresponsive keys to remove any debris.

If the entire keyboard or whole parts of the keyboard is unresponsive and you do not have any debris under your keys, you may need to make sure the connectors between the keyboard and the motherboard are in place and unobstructed. You can follow the guide found here to replace your keyboard.

The laptop’s fan does not move, or the lack of movement causes the laptop to overheat. The issue can be declared as overheating when the system may be very warm/hot prior to shutting down suddenly without notice nor following update icon, noticeably slowing down, freezing function, or rebooting without notice nor following update icon.

Be sure to remove any debris that may have fallen into fans such as dust, and check that laptop fans are not blocked by any stickers, laptop cases, or any outside blockage to fix the issue.

If you do not have any debris/blockage and your fans are completely non-functional, you may need to replace the fans entirely. To replace your laptop fans, you can follow the guide found here.

Monitor will display a blank blue screen when booting computer and will provide an error code to describe why the computer is having this problem. If the error code includes “RAMDISK_BOOT_INITIALIZTION_FAILED,” then the RAM needs to be replaced.

• Faulty memory
• Power supply issues
• Overheating of components

This specific error code means that your device has faulty memory, and your RAM needs to be replaced. You can replace the RAM following the guide found here.

When inputting device into the USB port, laptop is unresponsive to insertion .

This is typically caused by long-term use of quickly/repeatedly inserting and removing a USB device, or using an incompatible USB extension cable. In this case, you may need to replace your USB port. To replace your USB ports, you can follow the guide found here.