Thanks, Archie. The thread should be treated by Hicoga as a checklist to make sure everything has been done. It's entirely possible something short of BIOS reflash may resolve this.
I've been gaving some issues getting the trace to work and I posted in the forums thread to ask for help.
I was, however, able to deactivate hibernate.
I deactivated it and then went into the start menu and selected 'Shut Down'. The computer shut down the lights on all my peripherals and the screen went dark as if the computer had shut off but the lights on the computer remained on and I could hear the computer working so it was still on. I then performed a hard shutdown and rebooted the computer. Without hibernation enabled it read 'Starting Windows' instead of 'Resuming Windows' but this didn't seem to fix the problem at all.
The problem isn't Windows here, so troubleshooting with tracing tools showing what Windows is doing isn't going to be helpful. Windows has sent the shutdown command to the hardware and has unloaded itself completely, but the hardware is not honoring it and following up with sending the hardware interrupt commands to shut the hardware down or restart it - hence why you see a proper "resuming" or "starting" message on reboot from Windows after you physically power off the device and restart, even though it wasn't a "proper" shutdown or reboot in reality - it was to Windows, but not by the hardware underneath it. Unless the hardware BIOS or tools from Dell/Alienware can provide information on what's not happening here, you're going to be grasping at straws in the dark and underwater. The hardware vendor should be engaged here.
Based on Carl's determination I would work with SanDeep to get the BIOS reworked. This is apparently a fault with the BIOS update as you already acknowledge. Dell really needs to make it right since your tower lights worked correctly until the BIOS update.
Hi Hicoga,
Please let me know the if you have X51 or X51 R2. Also, if you can show me the picture of the lights that are constantly on the system.
I might not be able to assist in downgrading the BIOS but I if it is a flaw in the BIOS update I can definitely ensure it to be resolved in the next update.
Also, have you checked Alien Command Centre to check for option for disabling the the lights. Keep us posted with the results so we can advise you further.
Your battery is likely failing. Replace it and start smiling again. I had the same wake-up problem with my Lenovo laptop some years ago and it took forever to figure out that it was a weak battery. Recently, my Alienware laptop began doing the same thing. There's a built in system check with Alienware laptops, and mine passed everything except the battery, which it said was operating at 60% of potential. I replaced the battery with a new one, and the problem is cured. Press F12 during boot, choose Diagnostics, and see if your battery health is good. Mine was at 60% before replacing it, and everything worked great, except for the wake-up feature.
Sometimes there's another listing on the Boot Menu when you tap the f12 key at boot, besides Diagnostics there will be a Utility partition which is the actual choice to get all of the hardware tested. I would run both.
What is the battery rating?
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