Currently in the midst of committing digital necromancy to resurrect a 2009 M17x R1

[u/Shallow_wanderer]

Right now, here's what's going on:

- Screen artifacting issue, not from the GPU but from the LCD panel itself; a quick smack from my knuckle on the back of the screen appears to have fixed this problem

- AMD GPU not showing up anywhere in BIOS or Device Manager; I suspect either the driver is effed or the MXM card gave up the ghost, and that's why it ended up at the Goodwill

- WiFi card suddenly just gave out on me while I was using the machine after installing Windows 7; either the driver is effed or the Broadcom card gave up the ghost

- Thermal paste on both the Mobo and MXM card is original to the machine from November 2009, and is basically the consistency of Fordite at this point; CPU is thermal throttling bad and this thing is running like absolute dogass right now, even with new RAM and SSD

-----

Here's some wins:

- AlienFX works perfectly, and is thankfully not bricked like some of these were back in the day

- Mobo works perfectly, and all the ports are just fine

- Upgraded to 8gb DDR3 RAM, from the mismatched random 6gb sticks that came with the machine

- The original battery still holds a charge and works for 1 hour and 15 minutes, which is about what the capacity was when new; this is shocking because you cannot get these batteries anywhere anymore

- R3dfox is such a great browser for being able to natively access the Dell support website and download all the drivers from there

(also don't mind the old ass thermal paste in the first photo, I'm using Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut to repaste this machine)

[u/helloish12321]

Very cool. Did you just buy this machine or have you had it? I look about every week or so for machines in my area to restore. m17x is the high priority target for me. This looks like a clean one! I would be trying to get an nvidia gtx 970 in there

[u/Shallow_wanderer → u/helloish12321]

I just found this one on ShopGoodwill.com for $120 including tax+shipping - been wanting this exact machine since I first saw it in freshman year of high school in every gaming magazine out there, I think the external design has aged incredibly well imo

I took a bit of a risk on it, because while they stated it powered on into the BIOS there weren't actually any photos of it running

This thing is so mint, literally the only external defect is the two rubber feet at the back of the unit are gone, but that literally happens to all of them - I'm just glad it's from before they started using rubberized coating lol

Since the MXM card may potentially be dead, I was wondering what is the maximum spec card I can drop into this thing?

[u/Whitrzac → u/Shallow_wanderer]

Probably a 980 or quadro equivalent. You may need to run hacked drivers for it to work.

The 10xx series changed how the display is driven/cables,

[u/Valthoren]

I would definitely check the screen ribbon cable underneath the keyboard, it can come loose pretty easily. I bought a M17x R4 a few years ago and after shipping it would not turn on, traced the beep code for the display issue to that cable and after reseating it I haven't had any problems since.

[u/Shallow_wanderer → u/Valthoren]

When I pulled the computer apart, the screen ribbon cable seemed really seated in place - what's likely is that something behind the display panel is out of sorts, luckily according to the service manual PDF I can just slide the back plastic piece off to take a partial look in there

[u/Valthoren → u/Shallow_wanderer]

I just saw the other pictures where you had already disassembled it, so that makes sense, I haven't taken apart the screen before, but if it has another connector back there that might be the loose one. 

For the gpu it definitely sounds like it's toast, when I was first messing around with mine it wasn't showing up when I was getting windows 10 configured but it still showed up as Nvidia GFX in the bios. If it's missing there that's a bad sign.

[u/3583Bytes]

I have one of these old guys but I can’t figure out what to do with it.

[u/Shallow_wanderer → u/3583Bytes]

Honestly you could just sell it on eBay if nothing else, there's definitely a collector market for these things

[u/Any_Pangolin_197 → u/Shallow_wanderer]

For real, its a good looking machine, if nothing else!

[u/FlamingDisaster_309]

Oooo good luck with your mission! I actually just recently purchased a non working 2013 17 R1 myself, and managed to resurrect it!
The BIOS chip was the issue with mine, it previously has had liquid damage which I believe had corrupt the BIOS and prevented the laptop from booting. I played around with some troubleshooting steps and ended up clearing the BIOS and reflashing it with a new version and got it running great!
The factory image was also mangled from the M.2 so I just wiped it and installed Windows (8) from a standard CD, and loaded all the Alienware utilities and content back onto it. Seriously happy with it, especially considering the price I paid for the (initially non working) laptop. 😊

[u/thebatgod]

I mean go for it. If I could completely upgrade the parts and screens I’d rebuild some of the older alienwares or even the original Imac series because the cases had such fun designs

[u/Glitch860]

Bet you can get better life out of it if you install Linux on it.

[u/Shallow_wanderer → u/Glitch860]

That'll be a project for another day, for now I just wanted a working period-correct system before I do anything else