I have an older Area-51m, which has been working fine until the other day: it powers up fine (with or without the battery installed), the power button stays green, but it never beeps like it used to (once, on start-up) and it never gets to the BIOS screen (much less anything else). It just stays black.
I've pulled the CMOS battery, flipped it, put it back; no change. I re-seated the HD; nothing. I pulled the RAM and tried them each individually; I tried swapping them. I plugged in an external monitor, but apparently the Alienware never gets the hint to switch over to the other display (hitting Fn+F4) as the external monitor never registers a signal. No keyboard inputs seem to work (not even Ctrl+Alt+Del). The only peculiarity I noticed is that a couple of the pins on the HD are bent where the ribbon connector's plug seats ... but it's been like that since I got it (used, from a friend, a couple years ago).
So ... I dunno. I don't mind pulling laptops apart, but I've yet to fiddle with the display on one, and now I'm pretty much stumped. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
I've pulled the CMOS battery, flipped it, put it back; no change. I re-seated the HD; nothing. I pulled the RAM and tried them each individually; I tried swapping them. I plugged in an external monitor, but apparently the Alienware never gets the hint to switch over to the other display (hitting Fn+F4) as the external monitor never registers a signal. No keyboard inputs seem to work (not even Ctrl+Alt+Del). The only peculiarity I noticed is that a couple of the pins on the HD are bent where the ribbon connector's plug seats ... but it's been like that since I got it (used, from a friend, a couple years ago).
So ... I dunno. I don't mind pulling laptops apart, but I've yet to fiddle with the display on one, and now I'm pretty much stumped. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
