Pons

I cant get my head wrapped around windows 8. I swear I think my alienware is a tablet. After upgrading to windows 8 I think windows 7 was so much better.

I agree with the tablet feel. I thought Gnome 3.6 was bad, but I did get used to it. I'll stick with Arch Linux any day.

Get the 09 bios version .exe file, open the .exe file with 7-zip and extract the A09.fb file to .. let's say: Desktop. rename the extracted file and the extension of it to: from A09.fb to M14R2.hdr and then copy it to usb disk driver which is formated as Fat32... remove the power cord, plug the usb in the left port USB and while holding END, plug in the power cord... the vents will go crazy and after a few seconds the beeps will tell you that the system is recovering: DON'T DO ANYTHING ! just leave the system alone, it will beep like 2minutes and automatically restart.

Appreciate the post, but had already tried that even though I forgot to post that part. Doesn't do anything. Contacted Dell, and they're sending me a box to ship it back to look at it. So no computer for me for a month or two.

Not new per say, but refurbished. Still got a good 7 or so months of warranty, though. I'll try your tip when I get back home and watch some disassembly videos of this laptop. I've only taken off the back to disconnect the battery, but it's probably more involved than that. Thanks for the idea.

Update: removed the coin-cell battery for 10 minutes. While removed I (of course) had the battery removed, and held down the power button for 30 seconds to ensure a complete power drain. Hooked everything back up, and got the same result: roughly 3 seconds of LED lights (no screen, no beeps) before it shuts it self off. Any other suggestions or am I stuck with calling Dell? If they won't do anything, which I doubt, what's the next step, replace the mother board?

Yet another bad bios thread. I recently got a new M14x R2. Wiped the HDD to get a nice clean fresh slate to work with, installed Win7, drivers, etc, etc. After Everything was setup, I decided to update to the latest BIOS, A09, from my older one of A04. I used the Dell tool and it seemed to work. The tool rebooted my laptop, so I let it. It boot back into Windows, at which point I decided to reboot into the BIOS to verify it. Got into BIOS just fine, saw A09 in the version, and preceded to go through the menus to check it out. It froze on the Performance options. Stayed frozen for about 30 second, then promptly shut off the laptop. Now whenever I try to power on the laptop, the lights come on for about 3 seconds, then it turns right back off. Oh, and my battery was full when I did this, and I've done it off and on the charger, so I know power isn't an issue. I've read through a couple of guides, and settled on this one by svl7: http://forum.techinferno.com/alienware-m14x/1474-bios-flash-goes-wrong.html#post18029 summarized as:

- Rename the BIOS file you want to flash to "M14XR2.hdr", then copy it to the root of an USB drive (formatted FAT32)

- Remove the PSU and the battery from your system

- Plug in the prepared USB drive into the USB port on the left side (not an USB 3.0 port)

- Press and hold down the [END] key on the keyboard then plug in the power cable. The system should start the fans and begin the reflash. It'll beep quite a couple of times, just leave it doing all the stuff. Then it'll reboot several times.

Obivously, I can't download the file due to my low post count, but I've tried it with the stock A09 BIOS from Dell. No dice. The name M14XR2.hdr I got from following the tool in this thread: BIOS Recovery in case you brick your M17x R3 The same thing happens no matter what I do: 3 seconds of lights with a black screen before it powers off. No beeps, nothing. Was going to call Dell Tech but they're currently closed, and I'm fairly certain I can get better help here. So, anyone have any thoughts?