Alienware 17 (2014) 8 beeps of death

Hi all,

Not usually one for posting my problems on forums but this problem has been killing me for the last 10 hours straight.

So I've had this laptop for about a year now and have had no problems until now. I hadn't used it in about a week, went to boot it up and I am greeted by no display and 8 terrifying beeps. Googling suggested that it was a LCD error. I power cycled the computer (removed the battery, popped the CMOS battery out, held the power button for 30sec, then put everything back together). Hit the power button and I got 5 beeps... powered it off, hit the power button again and BAM! into the BIOS. Set my date and time, hit F10 and launched into windows. I immediately got an error saying my battery could not be recognized and would not be charged, I skipped through cuz one problem at a time. Windows loaded wonderfully (this is where things get interesting), about 5 or so minutes passed of it just sitting at the desktop and it made the sound like I unplugged a USB device and the screen went black. When it came back up half a second later it was all weird and like repeating 6 different times, off center and flipped with weird colors. I rebooted and got the 8 beeps... repeated the steps above and windows was still all weird. I plugged the laptop into my TV through the HDMI output and it displayed to the TV perfectly. This is when I noticed that it was running on my integrated graphics. I hit the switchable graphics button and rebooted while still connected to the TV. It booted fine, straight into windows (still got battery error) and displayed correctly on both the TV and the laptop screen. Thinking I won, I disconnected the TV. It was still displaying fine so I rebooted to make sure it stuck anddddddd 8 beeps... So basically if I have an external screen plugged in it boots fine and I go do whatever I want on it even if I immediately disconnect the HDMI cable as soon as it reaches the BIOS. I reinstalled drivers for my dedicated graphics card as well as the chipset drivers and integrated GPU drivers. Still wont boot by itself. The next logical step would be to update the BIOS.... but I cant... When I try to it says it cant update the BIOS unless the battery has a minimum charge of 10%... and if you remember from above, my battery "isn't recognized" and "can't be charged".

So basically this is where I'm stuck. I just ordered a new battery but Im not sure if its just a coincidence that the battery dead at the same time all this started happening or if its related and the motherboard is dying.

Anyone have any suggestions on what I can try while I wait for the battery to come in?

BTW I'm posting this from the laptop. It just makes no sense that it works fine as long as I boot it with an external display plugged at time of boot. Its annoying cuz I cant unplug it and move somewhere else cuz of the battery problem.

 

Did you use EVGA PrecisionX? If yes, the EDID on the lcd screen is corrupted. Deinstall PrecisionX and re-flash your EDID on the laptop screen.

See http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...levo-lcd-panels.779449/page-158#post-10090770 for a possible fix.

 

Now that I think about it, the last time I used my laptop I installed precisionX to use Kboost to try to get rid of stuttering in Doom. Interested.

As far as re-flashing my EDID, I have no idea how to do this. Do you know where I can get the correct EDID and what programs I can use to flash it?

 

@t456 have the expertise to help.

 

If you read through the thread I linked you, you should get all the information you need. When in doubt, ping @t456 as Papusan said.

However, as the very first thing, de-install PrecisionX and never let it touch your system again.

PS: The post I linked ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...levo-lcd-panels.779449/page-158#post-10090770 ) contains the steps to fix your EDID. Just make sure to use the correct EDID for your LCD.