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Problem with lighting/high fans on Aurora D01M
Hello Everyone,
First of all I would like to thank anyone that responds to this post and I'm sorry if I don't follow all the rules in the forum since I'm a first time poster. I've been searching endlessly and haven't seemed to find a solution to my problem. When I boot up my system after removing the power cable and draining the internal batteries by holding down the power button I get normal startup and my lights and fans work normally before Windows is even booted. I am able to control the the Alienfx with command center and everything seems to work normally. Then when power down my system (leaving the power cable in) and boot it up again, the fans go on full power and the lights don't turn on (normally just the side lights but on occasion the Alienware head also doesn't turn on). This issue is also present when the computer goes to sleep and is then awakened. I've troubleshooted the issue and it seems that it has to do with the Master I/O communication with my motherboard. When I remove the Master I/O cable from the motherboard and boot it up I get the fans working and as well as the lights but they are unresponsive to command center (the software does not recognize the system), Also the lighting configuration is not the one I chose.
I've seen some suggestions about trying to factory reset the the Master I/O board by removing the green pin and reversing the polarity. So what I did was take out the green cable and exchange it with the blue cable in the row below it and booted up my system. Windows was able to recognize that there was a "device" connected to motherboard but that it could not determine what it was. Then I replaced the cables back to their original position but I am still having the same issues.
I believe this is some sort of firmware/software issue given that I can get all the components to work when I drain all the power and boot it back up but I am stuck on how to resolve the issue of the second bootup.
I tried to be as thorough as I could but please let me know if there is any other information needed.
Thank you.
DudeMeC
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November 25th, 2013 23:00
Hello Everyone!
I fixed my problems with a simple solution. First let me state some of the problems I was having and maybe this fits your case.
I could get everything to work perfectly on the first boot. Alienfx, fans, etc.
1. When I shut down my computer the Alienware head and bottom vent lights would stay on but the side lights would turn off.
*When I booted my system back up only theAlienware head and bottom vent lights would be on and the side lights would stay off. When I opened command center I could control the alienware head and bottom but not the side lights (they would stay off).
*Also on the same boot, my fans (especially the ones connected to the MIO board (HDD Fans and Fan PCI)) would act irregularly and usually at high speeds.
2. When I took the power cord out and drained the power from the Alienware Aurora tower by holding down the power button (confirmed by the orange light on the MIO board turning off), everything would work normally on boot but again if I shut down the computer and powered it up it would revert back to step 1. I concluded that as long as the orange light was lit when my computer was shut down, I would have my issues.
FIX: The reason why my system was acting up and probably because a lot of other systems are acting up is that I upgraded my motherboard. On the newer mother boards, after you shut down the motherboard still supplys power to their usb connectors (aka the F USB_1 connector I had my Alienware MIO Board connected to). However these MIO boards were designed for older motherboards that didn't have the functionality of the newer mother boards and therefore the MIO board still thinks that the system is either still on or on standby when the system is actually off because power is still being supplied to the MIO board. Communication between the two boards gets skrewed up because of this difference in power states. To fix this, you must go to your bios setting and disable power to your usb connectors on your motherboard when the system turns off. On my board I had to change ErP=Disabled to ErP=Enabled under my power management options. If you did this correctly, when you shut down your system now the orange light on your MIO board will turn off indicating that it is in "sync" with your mother board power state (aka off). This resolved all my issues and hopefully this resolves some of yours.
I hope this helps, it took me at least 20+ hours to troubleshoot this myself and I hope I have saved at least someone else that time.
Thanks!
Tesla1856
8 Wizard
8 Wizard
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17K Posts
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November 10th, 2013 23:00
While it's working, make a small AlienFX lighting change, Save it, and give it plenty of time to save that config back to MIO-Board.
Then, troubleshooting is here:
http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/3746/t/19454040.aspx
If it won't test or operate properly (even with CommandCenter re-install) it might be defective.
DudeMeC
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November 25th, 2013 20:00
Hello Thank you for you speedy reply,
I have tried troubleshooting the best I could but was unable to fix the problem. I bought a new MIO board and that still didn't do the trick. I know that when I dissipate all the power it works perfectly fine but when I do a shut down and leave the power cable connected, that's when I start running into trouble. Any ideas?
Thanks.