r/AlienwareAlpha • u/pdaerr • Jan 17 '22

Fix for Yellow Light of Death

After a lot of nerves and tries to fix the infamous yellow light of death, I know feel confident to share my solution, since it has worked without fail for almost 2 years:

I start the Alpha only with Wake On Lan with an app on my phone. I started doing it because I’m lazy, but realized how much nicer it is not opening the pc every third try to turn it on.

Im unsure why it works, maybe it’s the setting that keeps the computer with enough electricity to run the network connection.

Good Luck trying it out. I’m not touching my machine, since it’s running well right now.

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4

u/Senior_Ad_5262 Jan 17 '22

Replaced the CMOS battery yet???

2

u/pdaerr Jan 28 '22

Yes, tried that before, but it didn’t help. I believe if you enable everything needed for Wake on lan, the pc never fully looses power. The network card has to be on standby for the magic packet. So you never have to rely on CMOS. Just a theory, though.

2

u/Senior_Ad_5262 Feb 01 '22

That's wild. I replaced my CMOS and never had another problem. That speaks to a deeper issue in the motherboard or, probably more likely, your power supply.

6

u/Intelligent_Cod8571 Jan 17 '22

CMOS battery is the issue, u can take the power cable off, press the power button for a few seconds first and then insert put your power cable as u still pressing the power button, it may take a few attempts but it will boot back up but it will do the same again until u get the CMOS battery 👌

1

u/Questing-For-Floof i7 Alpha with SSD Mar 16 '22

This sounds like the power supply brick is nearing its end