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November 14th, 2011 02:00

Alienware Aurora ALX - Monitor goes into sleep-like mode,computer seems to be frozen

Hi to all !!!                09:59    14 November 2011 Monday           The UK time

      Posting the description of my computer failure because I could not find any other exact case of it ,so please read it and I hope some of you will have experience with this kind of problem and would like to share it .THX

      I have Alienware Aurora ALX , Windows 7 64bit, 12GB RAM ,i7 920 2.68 GHz, Bios -A10, Graphic Card - ATI Radeon HD 5800series CrossFireX enabled, Monitor - HP 2510i

     I have this machine around a year ,when  I received it I followed all instructions, installed some games and everything was like it should be. As I also play Eve Online and have 2 accounts I decided to try playing it with 2 monitors set up , I bought another HP 2510i connected it and all was running smooth even with high graphic settings. About a week ago I had sudden ,,Sleep-like,, mode. I was in the game (Eve Online) and suddenly in the middle of it my both monitors went into sleep mode and in the same moment  my keyboard and mouse became inactive so I could not bring it back from that state. I also noticed that Hard Drive Activity Light was blinking regularly (too regularly) like some beacon - like when its frozen . I had to turn it off in the Hard way by holding the power button. Tried to turn it on soon after and it could not load the system ,the monitor was not even detected , HD Activity Light was blinking the same way , The Alien Head and the Lighting section 4 (the front bottom) were blinking in white-and-yellow , after enough time I decided to switch it off The Hard way again. Afrer 2 or 3 more tries I disconnected everything from the computer and tried once more with success ( it started like it used to ) so I connected all back ,entered password and logged in . All my desktop icons were rearranged - anyway I ran windows update also scanned the whole system with Norton Internet Sec. that found no viruses(Quick scan). In the middle of installing some important updates all ,,sleep-like ,, mode happened again. Before I decided to start the computer again I have done some online reseach and found that it may be some Power Options issue, that some computers really dont like the sleep mode (weird because before all that it used to work just fine ). So anyway it was worth a try . As soon as I managed to turn the machine on and get access to control panel I changed all power settings for ,,never,, also  changed ,,what the power button does,, for TURN OFF so if the whole thing happens again I will not have to turn it off The hard way. After all those changes I restarted the machine. It restarted just fine only to experience the same ,,sleep-like,, mode again. This is when I decided to do AlienRespawn from the partition. For the next almost 2 days I had really hard time to turn the computer with the monitor and keyboard connected to it ( I was unable to run AlienRespawn from the loaded system because was not loading at all - in the moment when Alien Logo changes into your desktop computer went into ,,sleep-like,, mode. I had no time to see my desktop at all ) After many tries I gave up for that time , I was tired and needed some sleep . I left the computer tottaly disconnected from power and all other things. After 1 day break from it I spent a lot of time on the internet trying to find the similar problems but with no luck . All I was able to find was related to the Power Options settings.

        After that  1 day Break I was finnaly able to turn the machine on with the keyboard ,monitor and mouse connected. I pressed F8 as soon as Alien Logo appeared and was able to do successfully AlienRespawn.

       With the new system on (The Factory settings) I decided NOT to connect the second monitor or any  non-Alienware equipment . I updated the new system ,changed power options for ,,never,, ,updated Alienware Command Center, installed all necesary drivers, Norton I. S. , Norton Utilities (ran benchmarking with result - 2495.4 with cd) , ran diagnostics (all I could) with no problems found ,  Installed 2 games : Eve Online and Call of Duty MW2 (both compatible , eve online with latest patch)

      So in this perfect new shape I decided to wait and see if the reinstalation solved the problem. I started to play MW2 again just to spend a lot of time with computer observing its behaviour. All game settings were high but not the highest (exactly the same I had all the time before the failure). After a week of heavy gaming the ,,sleep-like ,, mode appeared again,   all the same symptoms - monitor sleep mode ,no mouse or keyboard, HD Activity Light blinking like a beacon, power button did not work even when it was set on turn off in settings. Alien Head and the lightning section 4 blinking white-and-yellow .

   Some more info:

- It was never dropped or any licquid spilt on it

- Catalyst Control Center was working normally

- I checked the inside (no sign of anything that would looksuspiciously, no leakage from water cooled proccessor )

- it is in dry and rather cool place with no damp , nothing that would cause any vibrations while it is working either

- out of warranty (barely couple weeks I think)

- I noticed that the first ,,sleep like,, mode happens after about 20 to 30 minutes from switching the computer on (when it happened) , and the next ones seem to appear sooner and sooner until it does not load your desktop at all (in the end monitor ,mouse and keyboard become inactive in the moment when normally Alien Logo is being replaced by the view of your desktop )

- I also noticed that (before the failure happened) after switching the computer off some of the lights inside the computer were still on (even very long after turning it off) . And simply pressing the side of the computer or even attempt of lifting it fixes this.

                            Many Thanks for patience reading it and posting possible solutions !!!

      

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