Alienware laptop shuts down

Ok trying to game on my Alienware 17 however it shuts down soon as I load a game. I have a temperature monitor and can confirm the machine is not overheating which was my first thought. I am not trying to play anything taxing just Star Wars The Old Republic. I have updated drivers and scanned for viruses. Really unsure as to what the problem can be. Thinking about a fresh windows install but want to explore options before i do that

I would scan the hard drive for errors. In the past I've seen a bad hard drive cause the pc to shut off.

johnb35 said:

I would scan the hard drive for errors. In the past I've seen a bad hard drive cause the pc to shut off.

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Ah good idea I hadn't thought of that. That laptop has sat unused for quite a while

What kind of AC adapter do you have?
This is apparently an extremely common problem with alienware laptops, especially M17s made in the last five years
Most of the problems from googling didn't have much solutions but the problem seems to revolve around the ac adapter/battery
The only solution I could find had to do with replacing the 240W adapter to a 330W one
If you have a 240W adapter then this might be the culprit