M14X 7 beeps, DEAD

I had a problem with my 2 month old m14 today.
Went to power on and all i get is a 7 beep warning.

I just phoned Dell, they tell me its is a CPU fault and will require a change out. Im now waiting on an enginner to call.

Will update progress, hopefully this will not take to long.

 

The Engineer came today and fitted a new motherboard.
all done within an hour..

I went to play bf3 tonight and found that I only have intel graphics.
Checked the nvidia software, it cant find my card.
I looked at the device manager and it doesn't show the card at all, just the intel card and a standard vga grapics adapter??.

So next I uninstalled the drivers and tried to reinstall the nvidia drivers.
Only the nvidia installer failed for hardware not found..

How anoyed am I..guess I've been given a duff motherboard.

I'll be back on the phone dell tomorow

 

You didn't have to uninstall the drivers just update the nvidia driver

 

If you uninstall the old drivers first there are less issues with installing the new drivers. sometimes files remain. It is recommended to remove the files completely from the registry, but i just delete them using windows add/remove program.

 

For some reason I feel like the guy didn't plug it in right or something... The GPU is secured in with the pins and bracket like CPU in laptops though, right?

 

The GPU in the m14x is soldered to the motherboard and cannot be removed like its bigger brothers. The larger laptops use the mxm platform, so all the graphics cards are interchangeable if they card is recognized by the bios. I'm guessing the issue with his laptop is just what the other guy said, just needs to install the the driver.

 

I'll try again to install the drivers, the bios shows the card.

So far when I go to install the drives they fail for not seeing the card?

Any ideas


---
I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=50.861166,-0.992762

 

I've tried reinstalling the drivers today and still no joy.
No mater what I do the card is not recognised.

will have to phone dell.

 

you didn't check to make sure it worked after the guy repaired it????

 

Didn't have time, had to go back to work.

Spoke to them again today, an engineer is coming back out on Monday with another motherboard.

Apparently the new motherboards with the 3gb cards are no good, if this one doesn't work. I will have the option to down grade to a 1.5 gb card Or have a complete factory replacement unit.

Have to wait for Monday now to see what happens.


---
I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=50.860982,-0.992850

 

Now fixed with new driver released: NVIDIA_MULTI-DEVICE_A02_R316025

 

I bought my m14x in November and just over a month later it died with exactly the same problem with the black screen and 7 bleeps (plus I only had the 1.5gb gfx card). An engineer came out a couple days later and repalced the mother board and all seems fine now.

I only had the standard 1 year warranty but I'm paranoid now that maybe I should have got the 4 year warranty instead (although I'm not sure I can afford it to be honest) seeing as after only a month my machine temporarily became a large paper weight.

Not a great start really to my alienware expericene.

 

tbh.. I felt exactly the same, i think we can extend the warranty later on in the term though.