Alienware M15x black screen on startup

First time poster here.

I purchased a new M15x laptop a few months ago. I had some issues with it crashing when I installed Daemon tools to mount .ISO's. Anyway, I installed the OS fresh on the machine and installed the necessary drivers for the laptop minus the extra stuff.

The problem at hand isn't a big deal, but is starting to get rather annoying. When I turn on my laptop, the machine makes it's normal start up noise. The keyboard keys light up as normal and the laptop is plugged in. The screen remains black as if its trying to do something.

To get the laptop to work, I unplug the power cable and hard shut down (holding the alien button dwn for a few seconds). Usually if I wait a few seconds, I can turn it back on and it works.

I checked the windows logs and there isn't anything there that jumps out at me.

I hope that someone else can point me in the right direction.

Thanks in advance!

-Cloudstrifejr1

 

Did you wait to see if windows boots up? If the brightness is set to minimum the screen stays off until windows finishes it's startup sequence..

 

Thanks for the reply Mr. Pras

I'm 99.99% sure I have the brightness set to maximum for my normal use. Is this somehow different in alienware laptops? Is there a 2nd setting while windows boots up for brightness, or is this the same across boot/login/desktop screens? I do wait 30sec-1min before I force a physical reboot. Maybe this is normal in alienware laptops...

The weird thing is that this happens 3-4 times out of 5. If I pull out the plug and hold the alien head to power off the mahcine, then plug it back in after the lights go away, it usually works and show ths alien picture with the F2/F12 words in the bottom right corner.

I hope I can get this resolved, since this is my 1st alienware and I'm already a little dissapointed with the machine doing this. I've had other laptops, but never any problems a month after purchase.

Thanks in advance for anymore ideas.

-Cloudstrifejr1

 

what are your specs??
for now try a power drain with the cmos battery out.

shut down the machine and unplug it. take the battery out and open up the bottom of the laptop, disconnect the little coin battery and press the power button for 20-30 secs. put everything back and see if that helps.

i usually get the black screen thing after a hard crash when doing benching and this always helps.

 

Here are my specs off the dell support site from my service tag (I'm not home to pull them from my laptop)

Processor, I7-740QM, 1.73, 6MB
Dual In-Line Memory Module, 4GB1333MHZ, 512X64, 8K, 200
Dual In-Line Memory Module, 2GB1333MHZ, 256X64, 8K, 200 - 6gb total
Card, Graphics, Hard Drive, 5850, Professional
Hard Drive, 640GB, S2, 7.2K, P11, SMSNG-MP4
Battery, Primary, 56WHR, Vmware 6 Core Processor, Lithium, Dynapack International Technology Corp

Sorry for the extra stuff in my list

When I home I will try the cmos battery suggestion and see if that hepls. I will post my findings later today.

Thanks!

 

How is your result? I've the same problem but I think it is related to dim problem. When I close the lid to put the system to sleep mode and reopen the lid, it will be fine