Alienware 17 Ranger 7 Beeps

hi guys, my alienware 17 ( i7 4900MQ with BIOS OC Level 1 Enabled, GTX 780M, 32GB RAM) is having a weird behavior for 3 days now...

i pulled the cmos battery out (its back now) but since then the laptop only makes 7 beeps (cpu failure or mobo)

i was able yesterday and today to make it boot (which makes me think nothing is dead in the laptop) by following steps from mr fox or others from other threads but it just froze and turned off and got back to 7 beeps again (1st time, i went to the bios everything looked fine, cpu was detected) then i turned it off (to put the rest of the ram modules/drives and all) i booted again, went to the bios again and it froze, i turned it off and back to 7 beeps...

Today i was able to make it boot again ( i dont know how as steps from mr fox/others seem not to work everytime) it booted on windows and like 1 min later it froze, i turned it off turned it on, it started the windows repair procedure and it froze and back to 7 beeps again...

as alienware ****ed the cmos battery part of the 17 ranger, today to make access to the cmos battery easy and not to have to disassemble the pc completely everytime, i cut the part of the internal metallic structure that prevented access to the cmos battery !

i tried all methods but something seems to work in a certain timing only but i still dont know how...

disconnecting ac/battery/cmos battery
pressing power 30sec
removing all ram
putting ac
turning on

After this step the pc should (if we follow mr fox's steps) beep a few times then reboot ( and then i have to put a ram module quickly) but it just doesnt do that, it just keeps beeping 7 times forever...

idk i feel like everytime it booted was when the procedure (by mr fox) worked but it seems not to work everytime, i just dont understand...

How it started ?

a week ago, i noticed that my date and time was reset and the pc notified me that my cmos battery was low or something like that
so 3 days ago i decided to try to replace it... and the nightmare begun, i pulled the cmos battery out and from that moment the pc started the 7 beeps

HELP PLZ ☹

 

Default for storage is RAID ON, is your Windows installation AHCI or Raid?

 

its in RAID 0 ( 2*1TB HDDs) with mSATA SSD used as cache (Intel Rapid Storage)

 

Now i tried to boot again,
5 Beeps indicating cmos battery issue...

 

5 beeps means its ready to boot into the system upon next boot. That is generally the desired beep code

 

all lights turn on
still black screen
no beeps
shuts down after around 10sec

 

Then its time for trial and error of your components until you can rule out the likely suspect

 

thats what i dont get..
now i tried to boot, it turned on,i pressed f2 to enter the bios
it loaded, froze, shutdown and now back to 7 beeps

but i mean how can something that worked fine, that just got its cmos battery removed and then now its almost dead just wtf

 

trial and error means remove components to rule out a faulty part

 

no no i got what you said i was talking about how it boots randomly then freezes and gets back to its initial issue....

and btw i already removed all ram, the cpu, hdds and tried without them so i dont know what else...

 

I mean it's likely the mobo is dead

Cpu's don't tend to go faulty, it's quite rare.

Could be possible that your raid collapsed if you have it set that way.

You can boot without gpu if you have 60hz panel.

Try each ram slot individually with a sodimm you can vouch for functionality. Ram is usually good if it's good from the factory on laptops generally from what I have seen in the forums over time.

Motherboards aren't too pricey anymore but still best to narrow it down until you can more or less confirm that's what needs to happen

 

so the mobo can die just because of the cmos battery... man i already lost an alienware 18 because of the bios and now here i am again... ffs alienware and their bioses

 

so in the last 5min, i was able to boot 4 times ( tried to go into the bios, let windows load, boot options) each resulting into a freeze... now back to 7 beeps

Update : im starting to understand how to boot it ,i managed to go into the boot options and select the dell diagnostic, it started and boom freeze/shutdown...

im wondering now, could the bios be corrupted ?

 

I've given my recommendation, if its a bad drive or ram or ram slot or mobo or OS installation its simply going to persist that same behavior.

Have to narrow that down first

 

ok so now ive been in Windows for the past 20 min no freezes/no shutdowns i dont know what to do now...im scared to turn it off

i changed the ram module and the ram slot and it worked i hope its not just luck and randomness...

at least it still gives me hope that the pc is not completely dead ^^

Update :
i turned it off ( it was on for like 30-40min ) and now we back to the 7 beeps....

@TheReciever you staying with your initial prognosis ?

 

I've never seen anything other than a faulty CPU or Motherboard causing a 7-beep error so I'm very interested to see how this turns out. I can't really offer anything to help though.

 

@TheReciever @Maxware79

im now thinking about trying to reinstall the bios or put the unlocked version...
but i have some worries..
during the bios install, the laptop restarts right ? so lets say i start the bios update, the laptop restarts and boom hes back to the 7 beeps state, can it potentially brick itself by doing so ?

 

If you freeze up mid flash, you are simply guaranteeing either the need for A. New motherboard B. Need of Programmer (with no backup, so, moot) C. desoldering your sBIOS chip to then replace it with pre-programmed sBIOS chip.

Even then, based on what information and trial and error you have provided, you still have no idea if its just a motherboard on its way out.

Confirm every component that you can first for functionality. You have a lot of variables in play that can be ruled out. My first choice would be to remove the raid array, as I have not good things about Raid 0 w/ cache ssd. RAM is simple as you can test individually and in each SODIMM slot but I wouldnt try that first as the raid array is the highest point of failure in my view, especially with a caching ssd. GPU is also simple, simply remove it and boot. etc etc

Simply making it to the bios or into windows and hoping it doesnt freeze or lock up isnt resolving the issue or allowing you to narrow down the issue much.

Raid > GPU > RAM

That would be my order of operations of trial and error

 

ok ill try everything but i cant do the gpu as i have the 120hz edp screen... maybe on an external screen via hdmi ?

also for the raid what do you mean ? i remove all hard drives and try to boot from something else ?

i was thinking about something, as you can see in the pic i posted yesterday, the cpu was still overclocked to 4GHz but the Bios was supposed to be reset to default so i dont know if the default settings have the overclocking enabled or even if the bios overclocking is not enabled, throttlestop can still overclock it ?!...

 

Raid 0 has double the chance of failure of a regular drive, add in a caching drive and you can probably double that on top. Its your highest point of failure under any circumstance so it should be the first thing to check.

Remove drives and boot from a live disk of linux or something.

eDP screen will make testing that theory difficult, eDP isnt wired to accept a signal via Intel HD 4600 so cant test that. Not sure if the system will post without a GPU driving the panel.

BIOS overclocking on a TDP limited chip that is also enforced on the Ranger is moot, its just a boost clock until you hit a hard work load and then you are likely back down to 3.0-3.4Ghz. Overclocking haswell chips bypassing the TDP limit is specific to every model laptop. I have seen actual overclocking on other 4th gen laptops but not a single instance of overclock on an MQ processor in the Ranger.

That being said your 4900mq has a boost clock of 4.0Ghz so I wouldnt be surprised if Windows reported that especially when you had no actual workloads running on the system. "Bios OC level 1" is kind of a waste of time in my opinion.

 

same 7 beeps with or without GPU
same 7 beeps without HDDs/SSD with other drive in
same 7 beeps with all memory modules with different slots

so far i havent been able to boot it today since yersterday's miraculous boot of 40min

it has some weird beeping though after i try mr fox's nvram reset

it will beep (generally 1,2,5 or 7 beeps) kinda turn off ( as keyboard and all other lights turn off) beeping momentarily stops but quickly resumes to 7 beeps with lights turning on again... and inserting the ram module at that precise moment doesnt do anything as it just beeps 7 times forever

it did beep 2 times at some point (indicating the absence of ram) but after i inserted ram and powered it on, it went back to the 7 beeps

im starting to feel sad as i feel like you were right and the mobo is maybe dead....

i cant believe how a cmos battery can kill a motherboard...

my AW18 loss and those beep sounds are restarting to haunt me...

 

Alienware 18 was a pretty terrible machine overall from its foundation, LVDS and poor mosfet choices make them blow up, Ranger is a bit better but its also considered the downward trend for Alienware as a brand.

Motherboards are about 120 last I saw, and the Ranger can be upgraded to a 1060/1070 epecially since you have eDP panel. However its up to you if you decide to go down that path.

@Papusan

Do you have any other ideas for troubleshooting this machine?

 

Well idk i checked prices and i only found prices of 350-400+$ for the mobo... Where did you find that price ?

yeah there are always options, i was planning to put a 980m or 1060 in the future but now...

idk man...

im a bit disgusted right now that a machine that worked flawlessly (with great cpu/gpu/pch temps) died just like that...

we ll see ill keep trying things for the next days/weeks maybe i will find a way to bring it back and will keep you updated
thanks anyway man

 

Well to be fair, its 7 years old at this point.

They are 140 on ebay. Make sure to actually find your model laptop, there is cross pollination because the names are similar now with the newer stuff.

 

yeah its true that 7yo of intense/long sessions of gaming wears the hardware out...

i might get a laptop with a 8750h and a 1070 for free from a family member as hes moving away from gaming so fingers crossed

but for now, i will try anything in my power to revive that 7yo beast i have very important files in the raid0 and i just cant allow myself to lose them...

 

Thats why its generally not a great idea to run Raid 0 + Cache, best to at least have 0+1

 

Update :
Back to 7 beeps


Hello guys so i have some "good" news for you about my little 17 beast

So i was finally able to make the laptop kinda work (for now idk how long it will last)

So yesterday, i discovered a few links from the dell forum and some videos about dell 7 beeps talking about letting them beep for a while 30+min then shutting them down and restarting them...

So as a desperate attempt i tried the method this morning, the laptop beeped for an hour, and i noticed that it got SUPER hot (heat coming from the CPU/GPU), i turned it off, turned it on again and MAGIC, it booted, i immediately ran the diagnostic tool, which ended up returning no error, i tried turning it off and on again, no more 7 beeps for now

So i guess its about some chip (idk if the cpu socked can have broken solders) either the CPU, the CPU socket, the chipset itself or anything that got hot enough to "resolder" what was broken....

I know its a temporary fix ( which might not work forever) but i guess it we at least know what the main issue is !





Here are all the links :

https://www.dell.com/community/Lapt...o-7-beep-code-at-start-up/m-p/3671264#M593943

 

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