dleihstaem

Heyhey, My name is Vincent and I'm hoping to find enough info on upgrading my AW M17xR4 and giving it a second lease on life. Current upgrades envisioned: 120Mhz screen & 980m. Grtz.

Unfortunately the BIOS pw on a laptop can only be reset with the help of a master pw. The master pw is specific to the tag of the machine and is generated by a little program which only Dell techs/reps or big companies have available. as per: Generic + desktop and laptop Just found this, you might give it a try.

Alienware Command Center (or Fn+F7) won't work if your Integrated Card (Intel) isn't recognized in the BIOS. Been finding references to this problem all over the web but no solutions provided anywhere. It's an issue because HDMI-out won't work anymore on AW m17xR4 if this problem pops up. For sure this is related to the introduction of UEFI/Windows 10 capable BIOSes from Dell. Going to try flushing my CMOS settings on my A12 (stock) and/or installing windows 7 without UEFI enabled. Reflashing to an older BIOS (Eg. A5) seems to be very dangerous coming from a BIOS A8+ so that is not advised.

Same here, my old trusty Alienware M17xR4/QM2720/680M still working like a charm trying to compete with newer stuff. Things did indeed get a little hairy during Windows 10 introduction time but problems solved for the most part. My AW served me so well I'm leaning in favor of upgrading to newer parts rather than buying a new laptop. 980m/1060m/3940XM ... maybe soon

Might have been a power problem rather than a temp problem.

Hello everyone, As I am facing either upgrading or replacing my ageing Alienware M17xR4/QM2720/680M I was researching all available options. During my research I noticed that my stock BIOS seems to have some graphics card related problems being the following : 1. Internal GFX card not recognized anymore (grayed out) 2. GT Performance option not available (grayed out) 3. error msg regarding "gop driver" when trying to switch to pure UEFI mode I'm pretty sure my Intel card and GT performance option where available after flashing A12 although I can't be sure after all this time. After installing Windows10 I didn't use Optimus anymore with Fn+F7 as this was unavailable driverwise. So my questions now are the following : How can I re-enable the use of my Intel card Eg. for Optimus ? Should I flash an UEFI capable nvidia 680M vbios to solve the GOP driver problem as I read that this might lower the baseclock of the card (Dell baseclock was higher than standard ?) There also seem to have been more people having similar problems but no specific solutions to be found (?) Maybe this thread can serve to collect these problems/solutions. Thanks in advance!