Hopefully I am posting this in the correct place as I am unfamiliar with this forum/website for the most part and I do apologize if I do anything wrong or out of the ordinary.
Anyways, I had just received a brand new Alienware M17 Laptop almost 24 hours ago from the time of this post. I started it up, signed into my Microsoft account and played with it for about 5 hours before my problem first occurred. While plugging in a USB Flash drive to move a few pictures into the new laptop from my desktop, about 5 minutes later or so, my laptop's screen goes black. In the end I tried to counter this by hard shutdown, and then it begins.
Now, once I try to start up the laptop, I just get this
In that picture, that little circle with the spinning dots just sits there frozen. At this point, I am unable to do anything but another hard shutdown. Although, I am able to start up BIOS by hitting the F2 or F12 key(s) upon start up.
I have already done the following troubleshooting with the BIOS Setup/Utility
- Allowing the startup process to do an "Automatic Repair"
- Result: Same thing happens as in the above picture, only it says "Preparing Automatic Repair" on the screen as well.
- Startup using Windows 8.1 Recovery Disc
- Result: Laptop recognizes the disc and loads the files, only to then go back to square one & start up like shown in the picture/video.
- Run "Diagnostics"
- Result: Black screen. Have to hard shutdown yet again.
I had also taken the time to call Alienware support, in which they had come to the conclusion that I should send the laptop to their repair center and if that doesn't work, give me a full refund. And that is fine and all, I don't mind. It's just I would like to try & be productive for the next 3 days before the packaging arrives so I am able to send the laptop to the repair center which will then take another 5-7 days after it arrives.
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And finally, if it helps.
Here is a link to a 30 second video of myself starting up the laptop only to get the result of the picture shown above. http://tinypic.com/r/2589ff6/8
Here is the "Main", "Advance", and "Boot" pages of my Setup Utility/BIOS
Thank you in advance for the assistance!
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**UPDATE**
Right after I posted this, I was still in the system utility pages from taking those pictures and the screen went black. I thought, "Okay, it just went to sleep". Nope, now there is no picture either. So I hard shutdown the computer and turn it back on. Still a black screen. I'm not even getting to the startup part where it eventually hangs as I stated in my previous explanation. Should I continue to try & fix the laptop with the support of this community? Or should I just set it down & wait for alienware repair center to take care of it next week?