How to unseat CMOS and reset BIOS (discrete graphic card not recognized)

I opened the bottom of my Alienware M17x R3...IDK what to do. I'm a total laptop newbie. I searched all over the web and this forum to no avail...HELP!

 

You need to remove the battery, it looks like a watch battery (a silver round disk about the size of quarter).

If your graphics card isn't detected there is a good chance it is dead. Have you called alienware?

 

But how do u remove it...? And I'm pretty sure (well, I HOPE) that it's not dead, looking at some of the forum threads i read

 

Here's the coin cell battery. Remove it from the casing and then press and hold the power button for 25-30 seconds. That will clear the CMOS, which holds certain BIOS data in memory.

 

I'm unable to remove it...I'm not sure I would do it right...is there anything that ejects it?

And by power button, you mean one above the keyboard?

 

My coin battery is secured (for a lack of better words) by something, making me unable to take it out...

Do I just forcibly take it out with my hands, or what...?

 

i used force to take it out.

 

It's not easily coming out......

 

Can somebody plz gimme an instruction on how to take it out?? It's not at all easy to take out by hands, and if I use full force, I'm afraid something would break...arghhhhhh

 

Got it...removed the battery held power button under the monitor for 30 secs+ and reinserted the coin battery and plugged into the wall......now I get 5 beeps and screen isn't coming up...?

 

repeat the process again...it took me couple of tries.

 

Now, my screen is back up...date reset and everything, but when checked display adapters on device manager, still only shows integrated graphic (Intel(R) HD Graphics Family). This crap is driving me nuts. Couldn't play PC games since mid-December.

 

Did you reset the video configuration in BIOS to SG (Switchable Graphics)?

Edit: NVM. You must have. I saw in another thread that you had it working now. Congratulations.

 

In the BIOS on my m18x the discreete graphics are disabled. To switch from the SLi graphics to the Onboard, I have to hit FN+F7 in Windows.

 

Could someone please tell me how many tries that should be? I've done it 5 times already and still get 5 beeps.

Tried resetting CMOS battery because my CPU wouldn't increase the multiplier above 19. Was playing Witcher 2, got irritated by longer than usual loading times, checked CPU speed and it showed 1,8-1,9 GHZ in hwinfo64. Checked it with CPU-Z and the multiplier would only go up till x19. Reinstalled windows as it's just a gaming machine, but didn't help.

I thought resetting the bios might just get it to system defaults. Looks like it wasn't the best idea, or I'm doing something wrong ;-) It's still under warranty, but didn't want them to replace my parts that aren't that old.

Here's what I do:
open the lid
remove the battery
turn the laptop over and hold the power button for 25-30 secs (or 30+ 1st time)
replace the battery and close the laptop
power up (either on battery or AC connected). And here I get 5 beeps and black screen :/

Any hints what I'm doing wrong? Is it important that it's aroind 25 secs or should it be at least that or longer?

In case it's important it's the A09 BIOS I got with my laptop

EDIT:

It works now. I've just reseated CMOS battery, closed the laptop, reseated the battery, plugged in the AC cable and left it at that for a few minutes. Now ehen powering up held the power button for almost a minute (not sure if it helped ;-)) and after I released it the notebook just powered up normally

Looks like I was too quick to panic. And it would seem the multiplier works the way it should again.

 

This happened to me before. I reset my BIOS settings to default and rebooted then everything worked fine.