!!!! Alienware Alpha / Steam Machine 5 Yellow Light Fix !!!!

Question

Alright, so it looks like I certainly wasn't the only one having this problem,  got my Alienware i5 Steam Machine and it booted up and everything was great.  Went to restart it and it got 5 yellow blinking lights, so I read on here that to fix it you unplug the power source from the wall and wait until the led goes completely off and then also hold the alienhead (power button) in for a minute to dissipate all of the electricity stored up in the capacitors on the board.  This does work however it's only a bandaide and will continue to happen.To PERMANANTLY FIX your Alpha you're going to want to disconnect your cmos battery, this really isn't a hard thing to do if you just take your time and make note of how the wire harnesses are wired into the appropriate slots, it will only take you 5mins and you won't have to wait for fedex to ship you a box, ship the unit back and then wait for them to fix/ship it back to you.  The cmos battery is actually located underneath the motherboard, so you will have to remove the 4 phillips head screws at the bottom and remove the shell, at this point you will be looking at the motherboard and have the hard drive chassis below it secured by a single screw, remove it and slide the hard drive off.  Now there will be 2 screws on the very back top corners that are holding the back plate (the area that has the holes for usb, hdmi, etc etc), remove these 2 screws and firmly press down and outward and it should come off (this will probably be the most difficult part as they are almost on a hinge of sorts).  Now before you can pull the motherboard out you will need to disconnect some of the wires going to your lights and the one going to your power button, take note of the orientation of how these are plugged in as I'm not 100% sure that they wouldn't go in backwards.  Now remove the 2 fan guards for the cpu and gpu, just sit them off to the side, no point in fully detaching them.  You should now have access to the bottom of the board and see the cmos battery that is encased in yellow plastic.  It's not in a standard holder but it has a connector, dis connect this connector and let the unit sit for 5-10mins (this will reset your cmos).  Finally, reassemble everything and before hooking the power back up to it hold the power button down to dissipate the stored power.  Plug it back in and the screen should tell you something about the cmos being reset or needing to be setup, hit F2 to enter the bios, save and quit in the bios.  Now your unit is fully back to working order and you shouldn't have any more problems. I tried to recreate the yellow light problem after doing this time and time again and it hasn't done it since!

Alienware - Rodrigo · Answer

Hi,  Thank you for sharing this with the Alienware Community.

Anonymous User · Answer

This is not a permanent fix, I did this same thing and it only fixed it for a few weeks, now I have to take it apart every single day, it's literally driving me crazy, because I know, all that I need is a new CMOS battery. And I have talked to people about it on Dell.com, just too many times, every one of them listens to my whole story then wants me to contact someone else. What is dell support even do, if they can't handle this? Maybe someone on here from Alienware will reply, and help me. At the moment I am taking a brand new CMOS battery, I bought on Amazon, it has a slightly different size connector. Just my luck, So I'm guessing it's the same size battery a CR 2032. I will double check, but I am just going to cut the connector off the old, and soldier it to the new battery. I simply don't have time for Dells complete nonsense, absolutely horrible customer service Dell should be ashamed

Let you know how it

The Goblin · Answer

Any update? I have the same problem, what should I do? Did it worked the replacement of the coos battery?

Neowulf · Answer

Did you try a new CMOS battery cmiilne9? Did it do the trick, or did you have to get a RMA after all? I'm have the same problem and the power drain doesn't fix it, but reseating the RAM fixes it for a time. I can get a new battery, I just want to know if its worth the trouble as I could RMA it instead, but that's trouble enough on it's own :)

Bruiserlarue · Answer

Ditto here too. I have the Alienware Alpha the blinking yellow light twice I fixed it by powering it down and now that will not solve the problem.

Bruiserlarue · Answer

Dinner with me. I have an Alienware Alpha that I was able to fix the blinking light by powering down according to directions and forums. But only two times and now in my motel room it does not fix it. I will check back in the form here to see if we have other advice.

Locked Topics – Alienware General

Was this post helpful?