ForestCat

Thanks, man I appreciate your time. I'll try to post over there. Doesn't 9meg seem too small for a BIOS hdr file?

There's just not much out there on this. What I tried: Main Battery removed. VAS10A05.fd on an 8g FAT32 USB Stick Held down END while plugging in AC Fans full speed, Power switch fading in-out while blinking steadily. After a few seconds, started seeing some activity on the USB stick's LED, was hopeful. No beeping of any kind. After a short time, USB LED was solid & stayed that way. After about 10 minutes of zero apparent activity, held down power switch to turn off. Reboot, still 1 beep every sceond or so, no video. The FD file was only about 9 meg, thinking that was not the BIOS image I need, but no idea where to find it.

Thank you for the feedback, guys. So, was the info I'd read re: the AW18 USB being non-functional in this single repeating beep bricked state false? That would be great, I'll try the A05 on USB, do you know if there's any key combo trick, etc at boot to make that work? I don't know if my keyboard is communicating with the mobo at this point, and not even sure how to test that. Haven't been able to find any P19E service literature re: secret key combos/service modes at power on, etc.

Hi, For clarity, this a circa 2013 model P19E, which I'm assuming is what folks refer to as the Alienware 18. Keyboard/logo lights up, no video/POST, eventually a beep every second or so continuously. This seems to have occurred spontaneously, during normal use, NOT a CMOS settings or h/w change. I sincerely believe I've tried every permutation of the standard bricked BIOS procedures, ie removing batteries, ram, cpu, gpus, power button 30 seconds, shorting CMOS battery, hot swapping one SODIMM during the reboot window, etc. What I HAVEN'T tried is a different CPU, don't have one. The mobo isn't completely dead, ie the core logic knows whether there is ram, a cpu, etc installed and beeps appropriately. If there is way to 'blind flash' this thing, I haven't been able to find it. Here's the questions: Has anyone successfully resurrected one of these with the steady beep every second symptom by attaching a CH341A to the BIOS chip and flashing it with something stock/safe? Conversely, any value in buying one of the 'pre-flashed' BIOS chips from ebay and soldering it on? Is there anything less drastic anyone can suggest before I get medieval on this thing? There so much more info out there on the M18 series, P19, not so much. I hate to give up on this beast. Thanks for reading.