My own - m9750 novel! (help!)

Hello there people.

I found this forum today and I am very happy to see that there's a forum regarding only alienware systems.
Im here to tell you my story with alienware, and to ask for some help.
Lets do a quick summup:

Bought my m9750 in december, 2007. Vista32, 2gb ram, T7200 2.00, Sli 8700M.

Well, its a damn good system!
I bought it in the united states and came back to the country where I live, Brazil.
In the first month, my system started to crash suddenly: the first time, i thought: "oh, that was just a normal crash.."
But it wasn't. After this day, my laptop started crashing out of nothing, and doing all kind of actions, except when i played games! (crysis, bioshock!) It would crash in youtube, mail, maya, any program.
The technical assistence tried to help me several times, we made alot of memory diagnostics, hard drive diagnostics, restarted the video cards. Then, they recommended me to send my system back to the usa for technical support.

I did that, and in 2 weeks they said they had fixed some motherboard component and shipped the system to the adress i refered in the USA, (my cousin's). It stayed there for almost 2 months, and he came back to Brazil, with my laptop.

Wasn't for my joy:
I started off the machine, yay!! its working!
OK.. let's install some stuff here.. make some updates..
"thanks God, its working!"
Should I know that the problems were arriving when i told it to shutdown?!

I tried to shut it down. Just the old way, start menu, shut down.
As soon as the notebook shuts down completely, and all the lights go off.. it will restart again. Over, and over, and over.
Funcions like sleep, hibernation, doesn't work, and when i close the screen, my systems seems to go in some type off restarting loop, and never comes back (when i close the screen for example. The alien led remain with it blue lightning, and the dvd drive blinks. I can hear that the system is on.)
The only way I've found to shut it down is to shut it normally, then when the lighs go back up and its starting, i hold the button so i shut it manually. Then it shuts down.

In the first day it happened, i called the support. The guy said: ok, lets do some basic procedures.. We made 3 or 4 steps, and none of those worked. Then the technician said.. "please send your system back to the factory, as we can repair it here".

Can you get it? Spend more money to send it, and stay another 3 months without it?

Please guys, is there something i can do? I formated and reinstalled my system. Tried to shutdown from that step but didnt work as well. Made all updates, vista sp1, etc, and none of those worked. Tried all stuff i found on the internet, but here i humbly ask for your help!

Sorry for my english, and the long post!
Thank you,
Andre

 

It seems like their customer service is not the best.

 

sounds to me more like a Software Problem or Driver conflict. I remember that my machine did not want to go to sleep because I update the modem driver once I remove the old driver my problems went away .

I am not sure if VISTA has the same feature than XP RESTORE POINT in that way you can try the oldest stable config. If does not work and you are willing to discard the OS reinstall Windows.

 

Yea,
odessa, thx for the help, but i did the restore and reinstalled windows as i said, but it didn't help!

 

I don't think it's Vista or driver related, honestly. Not if it's coming back on after Shutdown. Sounds like BIOS or CMOS or something on the mainboard. I'd send it back and let them fully diagnose and fix it. If it's under warranty, they'll pay for the shipping and repair costs. You'll be without it for a while in the short-term, but that's better than having it malfunction in the long-term.

 

It is likely that if issues persist after reformatting and reinstalling, it may be hardware related. Feel free to PM me with your account information so I may further assist, should you decide to proceed with a repair.

 

now thats some Customer support! cheers james!

 

I can feel your pain man . What about the BIOS version do you have the latest one?. If the BIOS is not the issue for sure is HW related.

Just send the system back and let AW the rest.

 

Hey guys,
thanks for the answers.

as i live in brazil, and the warranty doesnt cover international shipping, i have to pay to send it,
and that isn't the worst. The worst is that to have it back in brazil, i have to wait for someone to come from there to here, and get lucky enough to not pay the tax in the entrance of my country.

how could i check my BIOS version?
the assistence guy I talked to said that they knew what has to be done.
Should i call them, ask for the reason and find some technical support in my country, like dell's?
thx for the help!
(ps: its the best pc i have ever had, wouldn't let it go for nothing =( )