Help with lighting up my M17x

So i have tried everything on this forum to try get my lights back on.

Cut a really really long story short, i went from the original Vista 64 to Windows 7 64. Had no problems installing drivers + Command center which were the latest from Dell.co.uk at the time. Anyway then the grace period ran out so i decided to go back to Vista 64 since i completed my testing on Windows 7.

Installed all latest drivers from dell.co.uk in the orders described on this web site. When i got to command center i had ran in elevated permissions. Got all the way through. Got the message about flashing the control chip. Then got the restart message. Pressed next.

Machine shut down instead. When i switched on all the lights were out (including media so i dont have caps lock or power lights). No when ever i go into command center it sees it as an M17x and no matter what i try i cannot get the lights back on.

Tried most of the standard stuff. Even went and took cmos battery out over night unplugged and battery out.

I have even tried installing Windows 7 on my data partition and done a install of all drivers from the disk. Which hasnt worked.

The only thing that does concern me is that i now get a message saying unknown usb device.

According to Dell they have said in order to get it working i will need a replacement MOBO since the control chip is on the MOBO and they want it back at their depo for 10 days which i cant do.

Now my first question was the Dell techie right that its on the MOBO?

Second is is this a known issue and possibly getting fixed in the next release of command center?

Third is anybody got any other ideas on what i could do to try get this working?

If its a bad flash then it should be fixable. I guess once a newer version of command center is out the firmware should forcefully overwrite the existing bad flash if thats the problem.

Open to suggestions.

 

Download and run the bootable diags from a USB stick. You can grab it here:

http://support.dell.com/support/dow...pub&deviceid=20023&libid=13&releaseid=R214588

See if you end up with an error code of:

5D00:0009

If you do, then its the AlienFX board (which is part of the MB as far as I can tell).

You can try reinstalling the current command center and then once complete, shut down and remove the battery (disconnect AC power as well). Wait a few minutes and then plug the battery pack and AC back in and start up the system. If you still have a non-functional AlienFX after everything loads then its new MB time. This is what I did and it did come back for me after two reinstalls of the Command Center.

 

Do you have a Re-Spawn CD?, if so, try starting from scratch means you will lose everything on the machine so remove any important items you want to keep. The full Re-Spawn should reset your machine to how you first ordered it, i.e. the theme and colour of lighting etc every Re-Spawn cd is specific to your machine/service tag. Check if it works....if not then

Flash your Bios again after the re-spawn, check if that worked.....

If that didnt work then try to update Command Centre software & Applications / Drivers.

If the above doesnt work then you may have deeper issues as you have been advised.

Freestylaruk