M17x R3 Broken CMOS Battery Holder/Clip

So, I managed to snap off one of the end pieces of plastic that hold the CMOS battery in the slot , and without it being in there fully it will give 5 beeps or go to a blank screen. I have tried everything short of super glue, I have bad luck with super glue so I want to avoid this. But I am going to guess the battery will probably outlast the laptop most likely so maybe super glue may work here (it is a new CMOS battery as well). Anyone have any tips?

Update 1: I seemed to have worked some magic with tape and the battery seems to be fine for now. But I have another issue, after the laptop boots, it goes to the desktop, and if you start to do much of anything, the screen goes blank. It has the 3D screen and 580m so I assume that it is driver related maybe?

 

Try hooking up a external display and see if the external display goes blank. If it does, it could be driver related or hardware related(gpu).

If the external display does not go black, it could be the internal monitor cable is loose. That you would have to open up the laptop to check.

However, before you try anything, go to device manager and make sure you have installed all of the drivers from the dell website including these gpu drivers:

NV Graphics Driver Update for Win 7 & Win 8 for Alienware M17xR3, M17xR4, M14x, M14xR2, M18x, M18xR2 Driver Details | Dell US

There rest of the drivers are here: Product Support | Dell US

Once all of the drivers are installed, then see if it black screens. If it does, try the external monitor.

You can do a update install after install the dell nvidia drivers to the latest nvidia drivers here: Download NVIDIA, GeForce, Quadro, and Tesla Drivers

Hope that helps. For the cmos battery, use electrical tape to tape over the battery, and go to the sides.

One more thing, try out the built-in hardware diagnostics to see if anything fails. During the bios screen, press f12, then choose diagnostics.

 

Give everything mentioned a try but this is 'clasic' 580m failure. You have no iGPU connected to boot to. Next thing will be unable to get into windows except safe mode, then card failure and 8 beeps .

I've been seeing around two a week for the last month just here on NBR. Can't say what is triggering all this but the card had a reputation of being as bad as the 880m.

You might find an old dell driver gives you some more time as they stress the card less, but I seriously advise saving the pennies and looking for alternatives.

See: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-17-m17x/749102-580m-675m-please-post-here.html

Or just go to my profile and see the recent posts for details

 

I would try the external 1st, if that works fine then the LCD cable could be loose.

 

I agree this does seem like a common 580m failure. The hardware diagnostic might catch it, if not, after trying everything listed, it should be obvious if the gpu is truly failing.

One of the downfalls of having the 120hz 3D display is no integrated graphics sadly.

 

Yeah, for sure re the 120hz display making it more difficult to accurately diagnose, but on the up-side, you don't need to mess with the bios to upgrade, just the drivers .

 

Thank you for all the help! I have not had time to mess if it lately but I am going to give it another shot this weekend. Not having integrated graphics sucks

A more detailed write-up of what is happening, I can boot to the desktop with no issues at all, if I open internet explorer or pretty much any program for that matter the screen will go blank a few seconds to a minute after doing so. Once I shut it off and turn it back on it is fine again until I open a program, etc. It makes driver related changes impossible as I do not have time to do much. It will sit at the desktop though for hours and not have an issue at all. I know the R3 has a lot of graphics issues in general so this config makes it even harder to figure out the problem

 

Can you reinstall windows? Also try booting into safe mode to do changes. Don't forget to try the external monitor test as well.

It could be either cpu or gpu at this point. Hard to tell. If you can run an app like intelburntest in safe mode and it passes, then the cpu is most likely fine and it is a failing 580m.

 

Seen another two 580m's die since my last post. You might be able to get the browser to stay up by disabling hardware acceleration inside the options. Not sure about IE but FF has it. And it did help with reducing crashes on my 675m (identical card to the 580m).

 

Is it just the 580m that had this common issue?

Does the 560m have this issue? The quadro 5010M(580m based)? I'm curious to know if it it just the 580m/675m model or all of the models in that generation. Also curious about the 400m series as well.

 

Just the 580/675 (and 880m) from what I have seen in the past two years. Many people think that that generation (Fermi core) just do not do well on the latest drivers. New unsupported features like GPU Boost and staged throttles should be ignored by the card but...

Can't say about the Quadro but if it has a 580m core then I would avoid it. The 400 series has not come up as containing any 'troublesome' versions and I believe the R3 fully supports the 480m, or was it 460m? Sorry can't recall but it would be fully supported in the bios and not need a driver mod.

 

That's good to know. Looks like the 580m and 675m are the only two using the core that failes commonly. The quadro 5010m uses a different core but has the same cuda cores.

The 460m was the officially supported one for the m17x r3 but it's performance is low compared to the 580m.

 

Still have not gotten around to playing with the R3 yet but I will post my results, probably sometime Wednesday or so

 

So, I went to go play with the R3 today and it is stuck at 8 beeps, the 580m finally passed away haha, I must have caught it on it's last legs the other day.

 

You can try removing it and inserting it again.

Could also try a power drain.

If none of those help then we have another dead 580m.