Hi everyone,
2-3 days ago my Alienware 13 R3 laptop started behaving weirdly after I powered it off holding the power button for 20-30 seconds. It was suspended by Fedora and unresponsive to resume attempts. After I powered on the laptop, I got some CMOS or NVRAM error I couldn’t remember fully right now. Later I noticed Dedicated GTX 1060 not recognized and USB ports are only working with USB 3 devices, USB 2 devices are not recognized. I got into BIOS and saw there is no Dedicated Graphics Card listed, previously my GPU was listed in there. Furthermore, loading the default configuration was not changing anything. I tried to remove the laptop and CMOS battery, holding down the power button and powering back on, nothing changed. Tried to reflash the BIOS through USB and also trıed BIOS recovery. Nothing fixed the problem.
Thinking on it, I remembered there were some glitches on BIOS before, like I needed to add UEFI Boot options manually via choosing it from drives. Also, from time to time main NVMe drive was not getting recognized at first boot but recognized after restarting. Probably these were serious indicators of something wrong. Anyways, after I searched a lot on the internet I saw this website and I want to go through stuff and try to fix things. The service will just replace the mobo anyway with a hefty price. It may sound a bit stupid but being a noob I need to ask. Can these problems be related to embedded software? I mean if something is just burned I don’t want to spend too much time trying to fix things.
Looks like a great community by the way. Thanks for sharing this much information.
Most probably internal HW issues from mobo/pch , too much issues to be software related.
After all the bios operations bios related u performed, if it was a corrupted SPI, the operations would have failed/break the bios.
Presumably after a re-flash of the bios, the CMOS/NVRAM didn’t display any errors after? Check the Intel ME FW status.
My opinion only.
Thanks for the answer, reflashed again to check. There are no errors printed after reflash, but it does not turn off after reflash and a single beep with changing sound is given like bee-oop. Only the boot block and the main block is written. Also, some EC Firmware is being flashed. Nothing is being flashed to NVRAM nor Intel ME.
I will check Intel ME Firmware status. I tried to install Windows 10 but the installation media was complaining. I am not sure it is related to the media itself since I created it using Linux. Party because of this I was not sure if it is messed further after flash. Since I lost the Fedora trying to install Windows.
Hello again,
I cannot reinstall any OS, looks like there are UEFI related problems. So, I did ME cleanup using the guide on forum with a programmer just to be sure. Nothing changed.
With this much issues do you think I should go for PCH replacement? Found several places doing it, though one said it is probably North Bridge. Here is the summary of problems, all appeared together:
- The PC do not have USB 2 ports and USB 3 ports do not recognise USB 2 devices.
- Dedicated Optimus GPU is not recognised on BIOS.
- UEFI do not recognise EFI partitions on any storage units, I need to manually add them.
- Cannot install OS due to UEFI problems.
What do you think? Intel PCH replacement would solve them? It is weird PC working normally apart from these. I was able to use Fedora before trying to reinstall Windows. I noticed the problems when I connected the USB 2 mouse to it.
Well…all points for a possible PCH malfunction but it should confirmed by a good technician, for the right tracing signals in the circuit.
I found someone good at these kind of repairs. Diagram will definitely help. Thanks for your help MeatWar. I am going to post the results, in case someone encounters a similar problem.