Search the Community

Hello to all big format laptop users! I`ll try to make it as short as possible. I have the Alienware M18X R1 for about 7years, i think. It was a problematic machine all the time. But during warranty period local support fixed everything super fast and free of charge :). I even upgraded from gtx 580m sli to gtc 780m sli. And made primary hdd samsung evo ssd. Unlocked Bios. Power brick i changed 3 times by now. Battery once. And 6moths ago one of the long time ago installed 780m died ( started with artifacts on screen then refused to boot windows). Replaced that and was as happy as ever. The machine kept working stable and i pushed all i could get from it in reasonably modern titles. Even tried RDR2 on default settings, gave me 17fps :). Not sure if SLI is supported for that game. The point is it was running fine for last 6 months. What happened: Gaming as usual, room temp 23C. After around 2hr suddenly black screen. The laptop switched off by itself. What i check: First checked power brick. Green light off. Unplug from wall and laptop. After plugging in wall green light back on. Connect laptop light off. Next: Tried take out battery, unplug. And hold the PWR button for 1 min. Try to start on battery - nothing. Plug in - green light off again. Later: after some googling found that need to try to remove video cards. Done that. OK Nice! Plug in power and it starts as nothing happened on the integrated intel video. Found out that i one of the video cards is plugged in that triggers the power brick to trip. (the original upgrade 780m from years ago). Start with GPU: Insert the other one in its slot. Systems start. But immediately i notice there`s no video drivers. OK i think reinstalling and job done. Drivers reinstalled, asked for restart. After restart nothing. Still no driver. Windows device manager: This is bogging me. it shows that i have 670M instead of 780m. Windows gives Code 43 Error. BIOS: I go into bios just to find that that it has reverted back to A05 (hows that possible?). And its so limited that i cant even choose witch video card to use. But it detects nVidia GFX. How to get at least my single 780M to be working?! Update bios again to unlocked? Did this event fry Vbios on my other card maybe? System: m18x R1 SLI gtx 780m Unlocked bios (before event) nvidia driver 443.x(or there about) Win: 7, 64bit