GL552VW-DH71 No Boot after HDD Swap Fix

[kether888]

I recently ordered four of these laptops and ran into the issue where the laptop will not boot when the 2.5" HDD is swapped for another disk.

I ended up with 3 out of 4 machines that would no longer boot at all - even with the original HDD installed. No power, no lights, nothing.

The odds were against having three out of four bad boards and I had no interest in waiting six weeks to RMA. My hunch was that a simple CMOS reset would get me back up and running.

Turns out I was right - unplugging the CMOS battery on the motherboard for a minute allowed me to boot again normally. This worked for all three dead laptops.

I tried a bunch of different drives to see which ones gave me boot issues. The laptops would not boot with Western Digital drives but would with Seagate and Hitachi. I only had these three brands on hand.

Here's how to get to the CMOS battery... this will technically void your warranty so attempt this at your own risk. If anyone knows a way to clear the CMOS on a dead laptop without opening the machine - please let me know.

You'll need to remove the screws from the bottom of the laptop including the ones holding the hdd caddy and another under the ODD drive. Do not remove any screws holding heatsinks. Then use a credit card or driver's license to gently pry apart the top half(keyboard and trackpad) from the bottom half(start near the ODD slot). The CMOS battery is right behind the SD card slot and can be unplugged without unplugging anything else.

Sorry for the long post. Hopefully this helps someone who has had similar problems to get up and running and avoid waiting for an RMA.

[JustinThyme]

Thanks for the Info and going through the trouble to post up an issue and resolution!

Im sure some member will come along with similar problems and find this very useful!

[HickHackerz]

I have experienced same issue. I was able to get it working without CMOS reset. Pulling the power and battery and holding the power button to drain the board. Put the battery back in and connect the ac adapter and it should boot again. Tried this on 2 GL552VW.
I was not able to get a 2.5" SSD to work with these models. the laptop will not boot, no power LED unless the orginal HDD is back in.

I did not test without a drive installed, I would guess it would now power as well. Bios should post without components, so I would assume it has some power circuit attached to the SATA chipset. It somehow detects the HDD and powers on the mobo.
That is why all the m.2 ssd work as a secondary drive.

[rhett83]

HickHackerz wrote:
I have experienced same issue. I was able to get it working without CMOS reset. Pulling the power and battery and holding the power button to drain the board. Put the battery back in and connect the ac adapter and it should boot again. Tried this on 2 GL552VW.
I was not able to get a 2.5" SSD to work with these models. the laptop will not boot, no power LED unless the orginal HDD is back in.

I did not test without a drive installed, I would guess it would now power as well. Bios should post without components, so I would assume it has some power circuit attached to the SATA chipset. It somehow detects the HDD and powers on the mobo.
That is why all the m.2 ssd work as a secondary drive.

Do you mean that you were able to get the 2.5" SSD to work after pulling the power and battery and holding the power button to drain the board?
I seem to have the same problem, SSD into the HD bay and it doesn't power up...