Alienware M5500i-R3 troubles!

Hey guys, I recently bought a M5500i-R3 Alienware laptop. It's got serious troubles, like a totally damaged screen, a GPU problem, and the BIOS seems to have the words scrambled,(windowr fahled to rtart). Could I get some info on the machine, possible GPU replacements, and a answer to the mysterious BIOS scrambling? Thanks in advance!

 

That is a very old laptop, I'm not sure if you can really even find parts for it anymore. You should check the service manual (find it on Alienware's website) on how to replace the LCD and other parts. As for the BIOS, I'm not sure.

As for replacing the graphics card, I think compatible ones include the Nvidia 6600/6800 and perhaps the Nvidia 9 series and/or ATI 3xxx series. These are very inexpensive on eBay.

Also, check here for more info about replacing the graphics card.

 

Thanks for the info! The BIOS thing is very weird... It won't display the BIOS boot screen either, I'm wondering if it's corrupted... If anyone else has a idea, I'd appreciate it!

 

You could also check if there is some kind of coin battery (CMOS) on the motherboard that you can take out and replace. Doing this would reset the BIOS and potentially fix your problem.

Otherwise, you might need to reflash the BIOS, but it seems that you need to first replace the other broken parts.

 

To start simply, have you tried swapping out sticks of ram or running the laptop on only one? Its a basic thing to try and it may help your BIOS issue, bad memory will cause many odd things. If you still have troubles after that you may want to look into re-flashing the BIOS or running memtest if you can get it booting that far.

You say the screen is damaged but what is actually going on with it?

As far as graphics cards I think your laptop will work with many older mxm cards like the x1400 that you can get on ebay cheap. There may also be better cards you can upgrade to if you read around, 4670 comes to mind, or even a 3870 if you can take type III cards. If all of this is confusing I apologize, but start by getting it working before looking into upgrades.

Parts for these units are all over ebay and many parts you can cross swap with the larger m5750 / m5790. Your laptop was just the 15" version of those, using many of the same parts inside.

 

I tried different RAM, so that rules it out. It's probably in need of the BIOS flash, but what should I do first? get a new screen, and video card, or try to fix BIOS?

And the screen is cracked all across, non-working order.

 

Fix the BIOS! You don't want to get a new screen & videocard only to realize the motherboard is junk. Use an external monitor and see if you can get the bios going. Also pics of screen shots of the problems you see will help us help you.

 

i have an alienware m5500i r3 updated bios 4gb ram nvidia card does anyone have the same issue that the gpu running at 63c ? ive cleaned and replaced fan and everything i could think off but still running same temp

 

Idle at 63c or under load? Did you bend your heat pipe? When removing my heatsink I one time accidentally bent the pipe a bit and it would no longer cool properly as the contents inside the pipe (I forget what is actually in it) could not transfer heat properly. Bought a new heatsink on ebay and that fixed my issue. Other than that make sure you are using the correct small amount of paste and that its making good contact.