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There was a bug earlier in the system that caused some old members to get negative credits. I pull people out of the negative when I can.

Let us know how the buying process goes if you pull the trigger. We'd love a review.

Well, I spaketh too soon. I have revived Big Blue! Turns out the video card wouldn't stay seated properly even though I had run it successfully for months with 2 of the 4 mounting posts broken at the soldering joint. A third post broke off, and after a big mental debate whether to try to have these posts re-soldered and possibly throw good money after bad, or just retire the laptop after nearly 4 years, I decided to roll the dice on the fix.

After hunting far and wide for a shop that would attempt a laptop solder repair, I finally found one. They did the job, but when I got the laptop back the next day it still wouldn't boot. I had pretty much resigned to giving up on it, yet I couldn't help but keep messing around with it myself every now and then.

Finally, by some stroke of dumb luck, the thing booted! The screen came on and everything worked. I couldn't believe it. As I type this right now, I'm using the venerable Aurora to do so. IT LIVES!!!

Still, I can't trust it and have gotten authorization to purchase an M17x, which I'll do as soon as Alienware runs a decent promotion on 'em. With Xmas around the corner, I would hope they'd run a nice discount or something.

So the Aurora story continues, but for how much longer is anyone's guess. Maybe it has 9 lives or something.

May be it was just needed some cooling off after the soldering from the shop

Glad you have it back on running. AW m17x delivery has been running behind, but yes, a good discount over Christmas would be not bad.

cheers ...

I needed some cooling off after I over-torqued the vid card screws, lol. Ultimately I put the video card in the oven and baked it at 385 degrees for 10 minutes, and then let it cool slowly. I kid you not. The thing worked after I put it back in the laptop. I certainly wouldn't recommend this as routine maintenance, but when all other card revival methods fail, this one might work.

Another nice Xmas present from AW would be dropping a mobile i7 into the M17x. I sure wouldn't complain.