17 R5, Support gave incorrect BIOS password

Question

I have enjoyed using an out of warranty 2018 Alienware 17 R5 for the past three years. It sports a GTX 1080 and an i7-8th gen CPU with 16GB RAM. I am happy with the heavy 10lb laptop because it is robust and has served me well. The issue: I set my BIOS 'Unlock Setup' password about 1.5 years ago. I want to modify some settings and potentially sell this laptop by removing that password, so I contacted Dell Support. They gave me a wrong BIOS password then claim my computer hardware is to blame. After a week of emailing back and forth and confirming I owned the laptop, the support agent gave me a password. The agent was reluctant to help me for some reason, and asked repeat questions even when I provided them with the information they requested. I'm not even joking, it's not like I missed any details, they just wanted me to resend the exact same information twice for some reason. In the end, the BIOS password didn't work and then the agent claimed my hardware is to blame. But nothing is wrong with my laptop. I just decided I wanted to change my settings in the BIOS, nothing else went wrong. Now the agent is trying to push me to pay for a service charge and ship my laptop out to them. HAH! yeah right. I'll just let it be the way it is. I'm not about to be jerked around for what will inevitably be a $200-$800 charge as I've witnessed others go through with Dell. I'm writing this post to bring to light this poor service. I hope they can improve their service and not put up a paywall just to obtain access to the very device I already paid $1500 for just 3 years ago. I'll say one last thing; Dell and Dell brand associated laptops will not be my first choice in laptops in the future. Such a simple task to give me the password, and yet they fail at even that.

crimsom · Answer

Hi @Timothy Sands welcome to this free user-to-user Alienware laptop discussion forum.

Dell has a duty of care to the legal owner of the system which may have been stolen. It is essential that the new owner register their system as soon as possible, especially if it has been locked.

How to Reset or Clear the BIOS Password | Dell US.

The Alienware 17 R5 (4/16/2018) operating system will upgrade to Windows 11.

Alienware

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