Long story, short post.
My Alienware Aurora R3 has been giving me issues. Specifically, the screen will go black and the PC locks up. Once I shut it down and try to power back on, the PC refuses to boot. It gives the POST boot beep, then beeps 5 short times in a row, over and over again until you shut it back off. Sometimes it will boot again after a few minutes, sometimes it will not boot again for hours.
Alienware support did a bunch of tests, and the first thing they wanted to do was a clean install of Windows 7. Negative, Ghost Rider, the pattern is full. The issue cannot be Windows, because the PC never gets to the point where Windows is involved. The issues is most clearly hardware or firmware related, since it can't get past POST.
So they're going to replace my video card.
OK, let's ignore the POST error code and hope for the best. Hopefully they guessed right. I have a nagging feeling, however, that they did not.
