I have only recently gotten my R5 though I seem to have this problem aswell. Though it is localized to one game. World of Tanks. The edges will "countdown" in white in the initial game timer and the board goes yellow. There are no game profiles for in the command center and was going to create one tonight to hopefully fix this issue. I'm hoping that's the extent of it but you are not alone it would seem.

My R5's lights went berserk after I launched Civilization VI for the first time. Initially, they'd revert to default blue and start flickering and only rebooting would fix them. Then they just got stuck on the Spectrum setting and now that's just what they permanently are. Nothing I've done, including completely removing and re-installing AWCC has fixed them. The theme doesn't change, rebooting doesn't help, the FN+F12 shortcut doesn't do anything, nothing works. It's like Spectrum is the only setting. I hope Alienware rolls out a fix soon.

Try a clean-install of AWCC v5.2.20 .

https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/drivers/DriversDetails?productCode=alienware-17-r5&driverId=4TPFV

Try not to use the "Update from AWCC Server on Startup" thing.

In Device Manager / System Devices ... make sure there is only ONE "AWCC Driver" showing. DM should be free of errors.

The option in AWCC v4.x was "Enable Third-Party AlienFX Access" but I don't see that in this v5.2.x version. Nor does it have a SysTray icon.

I read another persons thread about their issues with the FX lighting. They suggested this as a fix to stop the auto game recongnition part happening.

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So for anyone in this situation, this is what I did for the time being. Your mileage may vary, but this worked for me to prevent the locked-up colors:

* Uninstall Alienware Command Center

* Look under C:\Windows\System32. Rename the file "LightFX.dll" to "LightFX.dll.old"

* Shut down (NOT simply restart) * Turn your laptop back on At this point, the system will boot back up, showing the "default" AlienFX colors (solid light blue).

Running AlienFX-compatible games will no longer break, as they look for a loaded LightFX.dll.

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Shutting down (not rebooting) is usually also the way to clear the initial problem, but I've also been haunted by the persistant issue. So I've just done a windows reinstall to purge all problems, reinstalled every driver and update from the Dell site. If it happens again I'll just do the above and be done with it until whoever is responsible get their software fixed, or removes this buggy feature all together.

Thanks for the reply,

What is the "Update from AWCC Server on Startup" thing you mention? It's not an option in AWCC afaik?

The Enable Third-Party AlienFX Access was removed in 5.xx sadly. And 4.xx checks hardware and wont allow installation.

Other threads allude to dodgy 3rd party implementation and Dell's reluctance to facilitate any sort of adherence to a standard that makes this work. So in reality, it has been left to the end user to choose between disabling the feature with a dll-disable hack or live with the dodgy software upon game launch.

My preference, should my latest clean reinstall fail, will be to do the dll rename I posted from another owner suffing this joke of a problem, and just live with the FX software being at my sole command and not reacting to game launches...

Maybe Dell, in their enlightenment, may one day provide an option to disable this feature in their software, so we actually get the choice of whether we want the feature on or not.

Wont hold my breath tho.... !!

Hello im a bit late to this party, but i just got an alienware m15 this past Wednesday, i was having the issues with world of tanks. I didn't know the game was taking control of lights, and getting stuck on yellow. I tired the uninstall, but command center gave me my lights back, but now no thermal controls. tried another fresh install. no good, after 4 hours on the phone with alienware, and a full system restore because, command center would never completely uninstall, even when alienware tech tried it. all was finally back to normal thermals, and lights. so i go back to playing world of tanks, bam lights back yellow no control in command center. so what i have found seems to work some how, is to power off the laptop completely. close lid, i noticed powered off the rear alien head is still glowing yellow. so i unplugged the ac adapter from the computer, stayed yellow for a few seconds, then turned red and finally went off. after restarting, it somehow fixed itself without having to try the dreaded uninstall again.

what i think is happening is with that light still glowing yellow, and unplugged from the wall, its effectively doing a power drain, sort of. and maybe clearing out whatever memory or cache that is saving the world of tanks lighting profile. yes 3rd party disable would be great because i do not wanna see my lights flashing anyways. for me though sticking with my method for now, cuz i do not wanna do a full restore when command center wont leave my pc. 

It's very disappointing that we've had no information back from Dell/Alienware in regards to this issue. 

There was a post where it was mentioned one of the recent AWCC versions could fail to flash the FX hardware properly and cause issues, and that an update was due out to rectify this. 

It's anyone's guess whether this will help with regards to how the lights are performing in some game titles.

I too would just prefer to be able to set my own scheme and disable 3rd party apps/games from trying to control the lighting. I don't understand why a feature like that would be removed as it's just opening things up to problems and leaving us the consumers in the middle of it all with no way to resolve it.