Area-51m, black screen after vbios

Question

Area 51m, rtx 2080, 9900k

Hi all. I'm hoping someone can help me, or at least give some good advice. I received my area 51m a few days ago. I wanted to use a different ssd, so I disabled raid, etc, and did a fresh windows 10 install. I went to the Dell support area to download all drivers and programs according to my support number (or whatever it's called).

Once all drivers were installed, it ran just fine for a few days. However- I saw that the bios had been updated to 1.3.2. I normally dont mess with that, but being a new PC I figured it was important if already out, and marked as urgent. I installed it and had no problems for the next few hours.

Hours later, I decided I wanted to get the new 200w vbios update, and it was listed as recommended. I downloaded it and installed it as well. Seemed to go well for 2 hours or so. I then updated the nvidia graphics drivers to newest version. Ran fine for an hour.

Went to dinner and came back 40 minutes later. The keyboard was lit up, but the screen was black with no backlight as well. The computer also seemed to be frozen. The capslocl key light still went on and off, but nothing else.

The only way I could get in was to run safe mode and disable nvidia drivers and use the Intel HD GPU and reboot. I have tried everything: DDU to uninstall nvidia drivers and install nvidia drivers, Dell GPU drivers, etc. I have tried pressing windows + p, fn+shift+ctr+b, etc. I have even done a fresh windows 10 installation without connecting to internet. Windows installs the Microsoft basic display adapter, screen goes to 1920×1080, and it runs just fine like that. I go to try and install nvidia drivers again and, boom, black screen. If I restart the PC, about 5 seconds after the login screen appears, it goes black. Event viewer says display driver stopped responding and recovered, but it certainly does not.

Please, I cant live on just the Intel UHD GPU. Anyone have any advice?

Edit* 2080 was not overclocked

Corona7221 · Answer

Well, I have tried everything I can think of. The only thing I can still try is to take a version of the pre-200w vbios and try to flash it with nvflash to see if that will fix it. I should also note that the screen doesn't just go black, it cuts off. If hooked to another monitor, it just says signal lost. No one have any ideas?

Eimy_B · Answer

Hi @Corona7221   Send me a private message with the Service Tag so I ca review your case.

Dassiel · Answer

I am having the exact same issue. I reformated a few times, done it without internet, disbaled win upadte.

I even tried downloading older nvidia drivers to no avail. Sfae mode works fine and if I uninstall nvidia drivers everything works but as soon as they get installed I get a black screen.

Eimy_B · Answer

Hi @Dassiel    Try different versions of the video driver, from the DELL website and/or from the Nvidia website.

Dassiel · Answer

I tried drivers from May, April and March. I tried installing just the drivers without the geforce experience. I also tried the drivers windwes update installs on its own as well as downloading from Dell or using the alienware update application.

I contacted tech support and we're operating on the suspicion it's a dead gpu. A tech is supposed to come by with a replacement part today.

Wackysuperman · Answer

Did you have any luck with this? I'm having the same issue everyone ride seems to be having,  symptoms to the letter! Hard to believe the flagship Alienware laptop has this repeated issue.  Kinda shakes my faith in the brand

Alienware

Area-51m, black screen after vbios

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