Alienware Alpha 5 blink of death

My R1 Alpha is giving me the 5-blink of death and won’t boot. I have tried the power drain, and unplugging the CMOS battery, waiting 10 min, and plugging it in and no joy.

Before I order the part, is just replacing the CMOS battery enough? The other odd error I used to notice on restart is it would complain there was no keyboard even though one was attached.

I’ve never had an Alpha die that way, but my Alienware laptop was DOA one day, and I found the out of warranty repair process fair - it was only around $200 to replace the motherboard, including shipping. Of course it’s easier to replace the motherboard in an Alpha.

The keyboard thing was always an issue when the Alpha reset or turned off unexpectedly. You just have to reset it again to go away, but I never found a solution, I suppose because just a double reset isn’t that much of a problem.

According to Google unplugging the CMOS battery has a high rate of success, except in my case. I was having problems with it booting with the blinking light, but unplugging and replugging a few times fixed it. It was fine rebooting from updates and the like, but getting to boot clean was a hassle.

I ordered the CMOS battery. It seems like that is a common solution, and since it was working fine – other than boot issues – I figure a $15 part is worth a flier.

I had this problem a few months ago. I bought a battery but I went for a cheaper one and managed to get the wrong end connection. So I ended up tearing the yellow plastic wrap off the old one and saw the leads were soldered to the battery. I was able to pull the leads off and the battery was just a CR2032 ( I think that was it it’s clearly labeled). I took a new cr2032 put the leads on the correct sides of the battery and just taped it up nice and tight with electrical tape. The connector was still the original so no problem there and everything has been working perfectly since.

I also saw the unplug the battery and let it sit suggestion, I got that to work once but it was pooched again after the next restart.

Thanks. I am going to order the battery. It is too bad the damn thing didn’t just post with an error.

Replacing the CMOS battery worked. It took an extra power drain than I was expecting, but it finally rebooted to a BIOS screen where I could then get windows to boot.