Black screen on boot - Takes two tries to power on successfully - ATI R9700

Could this be<insert>(and was) a bad video card ATI R9700???Black screen during boot -
Waited the grueling month for the awesome Area 51m, upon abduction, I toweled up the pool of drool around me. Opened box to view this beauty juiced it for a while with A/C and upon power on/ it DID NOT BOOT nor display the Alienware logo or boot into windows.
That is until I power off - then power back on a second time.
Don't get my post wrong - Once on! this machine is AWESOME after a few days knowing this is not anything I loaded on because it was still virgin so new my next mission ~ had to load some games and break it in.
Installed NFS2, FarCry,Painkiller, Tigerwoods 2k5,HL2, Doom3, all work great, only issue I had was with Painkiller I had to lower clip rate and change shadows, but i'm on HL2 now and can't get enough runs sweet!!!. I'm also able to use wireless and vpn for work ;o) so this baby is not all play.. ahem..

So I had to give in and call AW support because this is definitely not right. Even though the 2step boot seems to work definitely I'm not thrilled.
BTW - I am in support field myself ~so i am somewhat patient - support folks over at AW are nice CS replaced my broken shipped mug. Recently I called Tech Support today about my black bootie. This was not fixed on intial call but got a follow up email to see if there recommendations worked. Not to worry I still have good faith these folks will do me right when we narrow this down some.

The support team thought it was the lid notch, after used compressed air no go. Also I connected another monitor and booted after letting notebook cool down. See funny thing is after it boots the second time, any restarts after installing anything or just a boot back up withing 2- 5 mins restarts like a charm.
What I tried,
Tried the following as requested by AW Support.
1. Let Notebook cool down, before starting opened lid and depressed lid button/toggle switch and used dust air stuff.
2. Plugged in external monitor to see if activity during bootup.
3. Attempted to start Notebook
4. Notebook seems to kick on fan, but not fully kick on hard drive or something because the fan starts and quick blue indicator on keyboard not screen indicator, just no alienware logo and bootup screen.
5. After about a minute or two without screen activity, I then have to power off holding button til it's off.
6. Powering on a second time, seems to take longer and fan kicks on and sounds like hard drive too. It will boot correctly at this point OR will display safe mode option or normal selection for me to select.
7. If there is no Safe mode option, then the Second boot attempt will boot up normal. If booting in safe or normal option appears notebook boots as expected safe mode, or normally. The connected test monitor also shows exactly what the notebook shows - if its black so is monitor, bootup fine so does the monitor.
8. Strange..Any restart within 5 minutes of a shutdown will boot notebook correctly. That is, if the Notebook was on and running/displaying video.
9. Otherwise a double start is necessary if A51m is powered off for longer than 1hr.

Just hoping someone out there has a magical fix or has encountered the same thing with a similar setup to me and has some pixie dust they can spare.
Bios setting? Tried Omega drivers no change to boot up.
Still able to use my baby but want it to work/bootup as expected.
Everything else is just awesome everything I was expecting. My buddie wanted me to load up Doom3 to see how it compared to his Tower Pute, says, "dang that is way smoother than my !@#$," this weekend he bought a 400$ video card.. hehehe

Ordered 10/13 - Fed-x label on AW box says shipped Nov.5th - eta to CALI - 11/12 - Got teased on the 11th, with backpack and Wireless Card, broken MUG. boo. 5lb box. Which had me worried about the big 30lbs package my~ A51m - I was officially abducted the morning of the 12th with the second box- yay -

Area-51m Case with 15.4" WideSXGA+ 1680x1050 LCD Display - Conspiracy Blue | Intel Pentium 4 Processor w/ HT Technology 3.4GHz 800MHz FSB w/ 512KB Cache | Motherboard: SiS648FX + SiS963L AGP8X Chipset | 1GB DDR PC-3200 at 400MHz - 2x512 SO-DIMMs | Area-51m ATI 9700 Pro Module with 128MB DDR| Hitachi 7200RPM -
BTW- Have ye'all picked up your Danger Hiptop2 ~ well Sidekick II - to compliment your AW??

Thanks Jsd91741 for the info. - I have Bios Ver : 1.19w and KBC Ver 1.20 Build Date 9/29/04 calling AW tomorrow to see about Bios upgrade. Will update thread with results.

Still have the 2 bootup issue problem, AW support said to change back from Omega drivers to ATI drivers on site no change still has initial problem.
When I tried the Omega drivers it did not change anything with my black screen bootup. AW also had me take out the video card and reseat it.
Took three boots the next time.. strange.
Then back to the 2 boot, tried different settings for power off button for hibernation mode and no change either. Comes out of sleep ok
Calling AW again, they said to hold off on Bios last call and to try the original drivers. No go... still on Half Life loving it - dune buggy now.. and Need For Speed2 -

Called tonight - Helpful people from support walked me thru the whole bios, burn, install, etc. from the AW support site.
Installed bios 1.20 hopefully all will be well after I let the baby sit for a few hours.. Thats gonna be hard to do!
Other than this little bug, this notebook still is so awesome and worth the wait.

StudioOnion, yeesh.. thanks for confirming it's not just ATI not comforting. Was your black screen after being on for a while or on first boot of the day?
I too see this, "I can hear the HD and optical drives being accessed, and the blue LEDs confirm this... but nothing else. "

So far, It's not the old Bios or settings, nor hibernation we disabled it. Twas' not the lid latch either.
Gunner/ I can double boot with a/c in or out.
just got off the horn with AW - and we reseated the cmos battery, it was kinda - but not too difficult to get the keyboard up and out.
Two calls ago we reseated the Video card which then took three times to boot(only once), then back to the 2 boot when cold.

We installed 1.20 last night and no change this morning.
Then today we changed to optimal defaults bios which was already optimal.
They authorized a replacement 9700... will update you later.
At least everything else is working like a charm, just a minor bug.

More news in a week when new video card arrives. StudioOnions' message lets me know not to get my hopes up quite yet.. Thanks for the replies to my post. Hope this helps some folks out and letting me know i'm not alone. Sure we will find the issue soon. These are time consuming but steps i'm sure we need to do to determine root cause. Being in support field i'm still patient. If I wasn't able to game that would be a different story..

(tangent)
btw, installed intellitype 5.0 to remap/disable windows key temporarily - I like the key function, but not when gaming because if the key placement - it's a freakin pain when i'm playing HalfLife2 or NFS when i freak out hitting windows button take me to desktop and i get mauled by the venom leeches or get out of gear shifting rhythm.

yah StudioOnion, i have read a few of the bsod during gameplay, but I have not encountered one yet, knock on wood. yes for sure you should be able to play more than 10 min. Wonder if its possible your video card fan is stuck. Sounds quite different than my issue. Hope you find out the problem in yours. I did find an interesting read about XP SP2 and what games may not work right in the AW KB. Sorry, you have a different issue.
No problems of overheating with mine. In fact, right now I couldn't melt a candybar near my fans. Gameplay is extraordinary nothing like a bsod during gameplay here. Just played HL2 for like 3 hours feels like i was climbing all over the Golden Gate bridge. ugh work 9am.
My symptoms are during boot up only no video when its just been chillin'. I have not noticed any super hot to the touch type symptoms. My other buddie thought it might be a condenser that doesn't fully juice on initial hi'yah and on second boot it has some charge. Not sure if this could be a memory issue AW TS didn't even go there. Wussabi also mentioned mem'
We shall see if this is just the video card.
I am booting up without a cd in the drink tray
Thought it might be stalling on a cd during boot seq. ruled that out.
May have to setup video camera and capture this x-file case.

Ok not just good news but GREAT news...
Today I received the replacement 9700, which AW support came to the conclusion it was my video card causing my 2 boot situation. After all the wonderful help its done what I expected to happen on first power nudge.It displayed AW logo and booted into xp just marvelous.

Lappy did not take two tries to display -after installing new vid card, however I am only basing this on three boots after being off for more than 3 hours and the first time after installing new card.
Mind you this "NEVER" was able to display it was booting up, until the second power on / power off - sure I was able to hear sounds and windows loading before but never displayed on first boot.
So this is magical in itself <doing the AW dance in the pixie dust AW provided with video card> ok it's just packing material...
Just to recap:
None of my symptoms were during gameplay BSOD's or overheating. As some people have mentioned they are experiencing.
In fact gaming has been wonderful thus far and now I can safely recommend this a51m to everyone.
Sure nothing is always perfect and with such a complex machine that cost more than some cars - some things are bound to take a poop could very well have been from shipping. My experience so far has been thumbs up for AW CS and TS and it was worth having the send in advance while we hold your money video card transaction. So no visit to the depot - Appreciate all who cared to send some suggestions. Hope I can do the same in the future. For now all is ok in my world. About to enter HL2... be well all hope your days are BSOD free. I'll be sure to update this post should problems continue.


my only rant, the lil' rubber things on bottom of lappy are a pain when using backpack.. they keep coming off. Thats the only thing, i'm sure i'll live.