M17X R2 BIOS Update help!

I just updated from A09 to A10. It went succesfully. Now, when I start my computer, I get a gray screen and nothing else with all lights on. Then I need to press power again to see the Alien logo in bootup or sometimes its just gray screen. I took out the battery and restarted it, then it becomes normal until I restart it or shutdown. Then its the same process again.

Any idea whats going on?

 

Make sure you installed the Right Bios and mybe even try to reinstall the Bios.

 

I already tried twice.
I got the right bios from Dell's website.
its A10.

 

Try Reverting your Performance Settings to Default in BIOS.

 

I tried that but still it doesn't work.
I just get a grey screen everytime I restart and I have to do a hard reset and then back to normal.
Nex time, either shutdown or restart, same grey screen and hard reset and so forth.

YouTube - M17X

 

Clear your CMOS spradhan.

 

take out the cmos battery?
Did you had similar situation?

 

Unplug the power cord.
Take out the system battery.
Unscrew the back plate and unplug the little battery(CMOS batt.) near the CPU fan.
Now press your power button for ~20seconds with everything unpluged.
After that plug everything back, start, now your BIOS settings should also turn. to default values so if you need to change something do it now.
See if it still does it.

 

basically what this means is - try powerdrain.
another good thing to try (if on warranty of course): call alienware techs, they usually got some steps that may lead this kind of situation to solution

 

Can anyone tell me what can basically cause this issue?
Anyone faced this issue?

 

I can't tell you what caused it, but I can tell you that I experienced the same symptoms until I was able to fix it today.

My machine (an M17xr2) actually got to the point that it would not boot at all - I either heard the fans spinning up to full speed and then switching off (lights remained on) or I'd hear them spinning up to normal speed, but in neither case did any kind of POST occur.

I took the entire machine apart, including removing the second graphics adapter. After each change I tried booting the machine. Unfortunately, the solution to my problem ended up being the simplest and the one I should have tried first.

Yes - unplugging the CMOS battery and waiting a few minutes was all that was required.

In case you're not starting at the same point as me, I should tell you that I first upgraded the BIOS (looks like you did that already) as well as the VBIOS for the graphics cards (2xATI Radeon 5870) and the graphics drivers. None of these things resolved my problem - it was the CMOS battery that finally did it.

Hope this helps.

 

Ill be trying that out right away.
Thanks for the confirmation.

 

Any luck with the powerdrain?

 

Ok it seemed to remove the grey screen in boot menu but it takes like 25-30 seconds to get the boot screen where I can see the Alienware logo everytime.
Before flashing the bios, it was like 5 seconds.

 

That's half good now set your BIOS to default settings and flash again!