HELP! m17X R2 not booting after CPU upgrade!

Hi guys, I finally plucked up the courage to have a go at upgrading my stock 740QM CPU to a 920XM I bought from ebay (from shirley) - after watching many videos on how to dismantle the laptop to get to the CPU (many times) I slowly but surely went through and did it.

I thought I might try and test everything was working before I fully reassembled it so I just replaced all the bits and pieces without putting in the screws (except for the CPU heatsink of course) but when I turn it on, all I get are the SCROLL LOCK & NUM LOCK lights flashing on the touch pad (the CAPS LOCK light stays on solid) and after about 10-15 seconds, I get 2x short beeps. Nothing comes up on the screen and nothing else seems to happen after that - the SCROLL & NUM lights just keep flashing.

Before I go blindly poking about hoping to stumble on something I thought I'd ask the guru's here first - anyone seen anything like this happening to their m17X before? I tried to find some information on BIOS POST error codes and all I can seem to find is an indication that the memory might be the problem (but they were generic BIOS POST codes, not Alienware specific).

I really hope I haven't broken my baby...

Thanks in advance guys...

 

I had the same thing happen to me when upgrading the CPU. If I'm not mistaken it turned out to be the display cables not having been seated correctly.

 

Bet you $20 Bucks he got soo freaked out when it didn't turn on....that happens alot with my desktop when i didn't install something correctly, don't worry, it'll be fine, unless you touched something with a static charge, everything should be alright..

 

Also, please make sure you have latest bios installed... You have to start all over and make sure all cables are settled properly.

To be 100% sure, have a look at the processor and see if you set it right. It has an arrow on one side which needs to be set in the right direction otherwise it will not fit. Also remove the CPU and make sure no pins have been bended over... I have the same processor installed by me from Shirley (ebay) and it works perfect. Without no issues.

Wish you best of luck...

 

OMG! You're a genious! That's all it was!

After a closer look at the display cables, I found the larger cable has a little locking mechanism that isn't mentioned in any of the videos I've been watching (it's a little wire that runs across the plug, it's what the little blue tag is attached to) - it was in the "locked" position when I was plugging it in. I flicked it to the other position, reseated the cable and everything seemed to boot up okay

I should probably run some temp tests before I screw everything down incase I botched my thermal paste application.

Thanks again for all the replies, I love this forum

 

Just for future reference Alienware? M17x and M15x System LEDs - Hot Topic - 358462 | Dell

 

Also remember some screws are used to ground some boards and with them out you don't get the juice flowing correctly as in plus to neg.