Symptoms of the problem:

• Brand new laptop (1 day old) Alienware M18 R2. Investigating has revealed that seemingly the same exact problem affects a huge range of other alienware laptops up to ~5 years old.

• Pressing the power button turns the keyboard RGB on, the power button glows (blue light on AC, yellow light on battery)

• No post, no way to enter BIOS, no backlight on the LCD

• Caps lock does not work

• Fans don't spin

• Pressing the power button for 40 seconds with or without the AC power does nothing

• Booting with the battery disconnected results in the same effect

• Booting without the RAM results in the same behaviour

• Pressing the power button while holding D on the keyboard (dell's LCD test) DOES WORK: the LCD panel lights up with various colors. This means the issue is NOT and LCD issue, contrary to what it might seem like.

• Nothing turns on the LCD backlight except the D+power button combo

What the tech support suggested:

In addition to the stuff above that I already listed, they suggested using another combo ctrl+esc+insert AC plug to bypass the power button: again, that lights the power up, but not the LCD panel. Then they agreed to send me a tech to replace the motherboard at my place. Shipment of parts takes a week. They refused to replace the laptop. They refused to acknowledge that it's a widespread problem (I showed them multiple links) and told me to just wait for the technician to arrive with the replacement parts.

Coverage of this problem on the internet:

There's seemingly a million threads with people having seemingly the same exact problem:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/1cpfw5h/alienware_boot_up_black_screen/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/1bkhle8/alienware_m18_is_stuck_on_a_black_screen/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/1bmzieo/help_my_alienware_17_r4_screen_is_stuck_on_a/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/1ceng82/computer_wont_boot_up/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/10mdve7/alienware_wont_boot_after_failed_bios_update/

All sorts of alienware laptops are affected, up to really old ones. Various solutions are presented, you can read for yourself, but it's mostly suggested to press the power button for 40 seconds (to reset the bios), to plug/unplug the battery and to plug/unplug the AC cable in all possible combinations. None of these worked for me.

What I think caused the issue:

Right before the issue happened, I decided to install a new SSD. I extremely carefully opened the laptop and before installing the SSD I read the message on the battery that said something along the lines of : "disconnect the battery before interacting with any components". I installed a SSD's a million times before this without disconnecting the battery, but decided to be extra careful this time and followed the advice disconnecting the battery. After connecting the SSD, reconnecting he battery, putting the back cover in place and attempting to power on the laptop, the problem manifested. Disconnecting the newly installed SSD did not help. Absolute panic ensued (that was the first day of me owning the laptop and I've never been as careful with a laptop as I was with this one).

What did help:

As I mentioned, the support very quickly agreed to ship me a replacement motherboard, but that takes a month. So instead of waiting for a month, I decided to browse the internet and try really stupid (but harmless) things that people suggest. And one of them is: turn on the laptop on battery power and use it to charge something via its USB port in order to drain its battery. Naturally, this makes no sense, but I decided to give it a try anyway. Turned on the laptop, connected a power bank and started waiting. And believe it or not, after about 10 minutes the screen lit up! I kid you not, the charge fell down to 90% and the laptop booted.

Discussion/Analysis:

I'm extremely curious to understand why this could work. The message on the battery says that POST might take a longer time after re-installing the battery. But there's no way that can take 10+ minutes, right? So it has to do with the battery discharging. But why on earth would that help with anything?

Anyway, I hope this helps somebody. It's a really scary experience to brick a new laptop, and there's a lot of really generic advice (powering it on and off), the support is not helpful with diagnosing the actual cause of the problem, as they just send you a replacement motherboard and move on. So I wanted to bring the problem to people's attention to hopefully help somebody, and I'm also really curious to learn why this works (or at least why this can work).

As I said in the title I was downloading the newest drivers for my laptop when the computer went black and stayed that way for a while. It didn’t change and whatever I did gave me no response in return. The computer itself is still on as the keyboard is still glowing and I can still hear the fans but the monitor itself is black. I turned it off and then on again and the screen reappeared as normal and scanned my face but when it got to the Home Screen it went black again. I’m not that well versed in computers so if it’s just something I need to wait out or not isn’t something I know. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I’ll try to keep this detailed.

Device is Alienware 17 R4 with a GTX 1070 graphic card.

It had this issue where the Alienware logo would show up on start up but it won’t go further. I would press the power button once and it would turn off/hibernate and then on pressing it again the login screen would show up. It was a workable situation.

I felt my Netflix desktop app had decreased FPS so I thought I should update drivers maybe. I got the GEForce Experience app and that started installing things and then when it restarted the laptop got stuck on the (post alienware logo) black screen. My method didn’t work and I booted the pc multiple times and got it to work a bit. Found out that the 1070 was disabled in device manager and the driver wouldn’t update or uninstall.

Then the thing stopped going past the alienware logo altogether.

I took it to the shop. The guy tried to restore the original windows but it would get stuck every time. So he installed a cracked version of windows and then it started working but it didn’t have any drivers.

Now I updated all the drivers. The initial issue where I had to power off and on to get the login screen started again. And now after I got the 1070 driver from nvidias website it stopped working altogether.

Nothing is working and I get stuck on the post alienware logo black screen.

Sorry if it was confusing or too long but I need help. There’s no official centre for alienware or dell here so can’t send it to them. Even the warranty is expired.

Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks!