Suddenly... Bluetooth not showing up at all, AlienFX stops working then USB stops functioning??? :(

Hi guys,

So I don't know what i've done to deserve such terrible luck tonight but I've gone from having a perfectly functioning m14x r2 to having the following annoying problems which started to occur after i updated the Killer wireless driver to the new beta version:

1. Install new driver. Reboot and Bluetooth module has completely vanished. Not in device manager or anything despite the BT driver being installed. Tried to install the flight mode switch thing from dell again but didn't work
2. After uninstalling cleaning reinstalling the cleaner software etc. i randomly notice that my alienfx is doing the same pattern it does on startup (slowly changing colours on the right side of the keyboard; all other lights off). When i try and open Alienware control center (ACC) i get the error message "The device you have selected is included in the current theme but AlienFX cannot detect this device on your system. Do you want to remove this device from the current theme?"
3. So now i'm reinstalling ACC and the killer driver to no avail when i notice my headphones plugged into the USB 2.0 slot on the left have stopped working. Tried multiple devices - nothing.

What i've tried:
- Power draining (unplug, take battery out, hold power button for 30 sec etc; tried it like 4 times before and after driver installs/uninstalls)
- Installing/clean installing Dell only drivers (killer card and ACC) about 4 versions about 100 times
- Run alien autopsy as well as the BIOS boot diagnostics thing. No errors
- Running the "AlienwareAlienFXTester.exe" file in the ACC directory - get the error "It seems there is some problem with the AlienFX board" when i try and run the test
- Disabling and re-enabling the Bluetooth module in the BIOS
- Forum searching

Additional Info:
- Been running Windows 8 for 6 months now with few to no problems. As i said was working perfectly before i tried installing that new killer driver and yes i made sure to uninstall the old killer driver and clean before installing the new one
- Got the latest BIOS (A12) and did not change a single thing before this started happening
- Got less than a month left on my warranty


I know its ridiculous but i just have no idea what to even try next apart from clean install which im not sure will help with the alienfx stuff anyway. And i have limited time as an intern. If anyone could help me out here it would be much appreciated. Ask any questions or investigations necessary.

Thanks in advance!

 

WOW this is so fking random i cannot comprehend how weird it is...

So right after i finished posting that massive long list of problems that ive spent probably over 12 hours trying to fix, I went to close the Device Manager when i found something i hadn't noticed before... Under the "Universal Serial Bus controllers" category there was just one controller called "Intel(R) 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller - 1E26" that had a little down arrow as its icon. Figuring i can't stuff it up much more now anyway i enabled it and...

BOOM! Bluetooth recognised and i'm able to manually install the driver from the dell package, run the alien fx test and its working 100%, plug headphones into USB slot and it works as per usual

I just have no idea what the hell happened - what disabled that random controller, why it effected such random parts of the computer it just makes no sense but I left the post incase anyone else is having similar issues as i'm not sure how many people would think to check such a random fix

 

that's weird haha, maybe next time you can try using a system restore.