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Alienware Alpha wont startup, Flashing yellow light 5 times, FIXED DONT SEND BACK
Hello Alienware Alpha Users,
If you are like me and bought the Alpha, you may be having the same experience. Fairly quickly after receiving my wonderful gift, every time I unplugged it, then plugged back in it will not startup, the only thing that happens is a blinking yellow light on the power button, blinks 5 times then stop and repeats over and over. This for me happened days after I got it, so I left it plugged in and then it got worse, happened even if I restarted, then every time I tried to start it.
There are suggested fixes on here and all over the internet, some people seem to get them to work but a lot of them don’t, and are told by ALIENWARE EMPLOYEES to send it back, which it great to help the customer out very easily. The thing to note is, when I see all the posts of the people having this issue, not having success with the self-fixes that support tells them to do, then when they get the Alpha back from Dell and post that the main board was replaced. Replacing the mother board sounds quite substantial. This is also a very common issue, I think that is partly why there’s a new version of the alpha already.
The Fix that works, ok so there are 2 common fixes out there for the yellow blinking light issue, they are; 1. The power reset/drain unplug everything then restart. 2. Do same thing in the beginning unplug everything hold the power button for 60 sec, then take everything apart in order to reach the CMOS battery located under mother board, and unplug battery for 5-10 min, then plug back in, reassemble, when starting hold f12 to enter BIOS, then save and exit to OS.
My fix, so I tried both, the power drain worked for a while then didn’t, so I tried the CMOS battery removal option and that also didn’t work. At this point I was very upset as I am a computer technician by trade, and I simply couldn’t find anything wrong. So not wanting to send in to Dell, then have to wait. I decided to do the CMOS battery trick again only this time I held the power button for 2 min then left the CMOS battery out for 15-20 min instead of the suggested 5-10. Put it back together plug everything in as it was, don’t forget to hold f12 enter BIOS then save and exit. If I am correct you should be fine from then on.
It has been 3 full days since I performed the fix, I have unplugged and moved to another room a couple times, absolutely no problems! Mine is fixed as far as I can tell, I really hope I got lucky and have the answer to so many Alienware Alpha owner’s problem.
I have my Alpha running windows 10 home, i7-4785T 2.2 GHz, 8 GB RAM, 250GB SSD(Solid state drive highly recommended)
Sorry to say this fix, Dose Not Work For good. after about a week it started happening again, now I need some support, I am guessing I need a new CMOS battery, I am going to try to contact one of the dell staff online.
Anonymous User
6 Posts
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September 8th, 2016 17:00
PLEASE READ I made an edit to the end of the post but I wanted to make sure anyone would not miss it. This fix turned out to not be permanent for me. I have to do the same thing all the time now has become very annoying. I think its a bad CMOS battery but I cannot test this, as they chose to attach it with a connecter, need to get a new one sent to me from Dell. will comment after.
The Goblin
2 Posts
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January 28th, 2017 07:00
How did you manage to get a new cmos battery sent by DELL? Did you call them?
Anonymous User
6 Posts
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January 29th, 2017 16:00
I tried that first and after the second or third try of them wanting to go through the whole sending it in, and whatnot, I know computers, I use to build them... So not having time for Dells burocracy, and simply wanting a orrect cmos battery. I simply typed in dell laptop cmos battery in Amazon.com, as the alpha is a laptop motherboard. What arrived was the correct battery with the incorrect connector soldiered on. So, being quite confident this is the correct battery cr-2032 I just cut the old and new connectors and soldierd the 2 wires together, giving the new battery the old batterys connector. Very easy, and simple if you know how to soldier. And thats it, to this very day I have never once had the yellow blinking light of death again.
Anonymous User
6 Posts
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January 29th, 2017 16:00
Yea totally disregard my original post, that turned out to be just hopeful at best
largewoodenspoo
1 Message
1
April 18th, 2017 02:00
Hey cmilne9!
So if I replace the cmos battery, all will be ok!?
I can use the little blue jumper chip on every boot, but what a pain!
How long had yours lasted with the new battery?
Many thanks.
Tesla1856
8 Wizard
8 Wizard
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17K Posts
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April 18th, 2017 19:00
If you are still around ... you might what to edit the title of your original post.
s2000cr
6 Posts
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May 4th, 2017 09:00
Also want to know if replacing the battery fixed the issue permanently.
emptyfish
1 Message
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September 24th, 2017 18:00
I'm not 100% sure yet, but I believe a new CMOS battery fixed this issue for me. I have been experiencing the same problem on an i3 model. I ordered a replacement battery from eBay which included the connector, so it took more time to get to the battery than it did to change it. Before the new battery, I couldn't reboot without getting the yellow lights - I had to unplug overnight and/or switch from UPS to wall outlet directly to get it to recover. So far I've been able to do reboot and full shutdown without issues. I've only had it in for a week, so will let you know if anything changes.
Eric_Fate
2 Posts
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October 7th, 2017 18:00
So the point is "holding the power button for 2 min instead of 1 min and keeping the CMOS battery out for 20 min instead of 10 min", right? If I've got the point correctly, I'd like to ask about a detail. Since it could not fix the issue by holding the power button for 1 min only and keeping the CMOS battery out for 10 min only, what happened when you tried to boot your device after doing this? How did the "1 min and 10 min" method fail? Was it exactly the same as before, power button blinking yellow light? Or did it turned blue for a few seconds after you pressed on it to reboot, but then quickly turned back to "yellow blinking"? Because my failure after I tried the "holding the power button for 1 min and keeping the CMOS battery out for 10 min" method was like the latter one I described. If your experience was the same, I will try the same method again with "holding the power button and getting the battery out for longer time".
Thank you for your detailed instruction.