Hello,
I received an Area-51 Alienware computer about two weeks ago, and am having trouble with what I assumed to be the monitor.
Everything worked perfectly up until three days ago. At said time, I returned home to find my computer monitor kind of flashing from off-black to on-black. Even though I was slightly confused by the subtle 'flashing', I assumed it to be the screen saver, as I have it set to 'Blank Screen'. I tried moving the mouse, but nothing happened. Then I noticed the LED on the monitor was amber instead of the usual green when the computer is on. I checked in back of the computer and monitor to see that everything was hooked up correctly, and the physical connections were indeed correct, just how I left them. Everyone I know who has looked at the machine so far has not been able to find the problem.
Three days later, my computer and monitor are currently off, just sitting...
I thought it was the monitor's problem until I finally called Alienware tech. support today. The man I talked to was very helpful. He too was confused at first, but presented to me various remedies: trying to remove two memory sticks and moving the blue head at the front of the computer from pins 1 and 2 to 2 and 3 (sorry, I do not know the name of this...it is a flat, blue cover that covers only two out of three pins near the battery).
The blue pin thing did not work (the only thing it did was disable my front USB ports), and I haven't tried the memory stick removal...but I fail to see how that would work (it would also cause me to lose memory...), and I hear Alienware gives that option often.
I tried hooking the monitor up to my friend's laptop (I believe he has the same or similar Geforce FX video card), and it DID work perfectly while his computer was booting up displaying the XP boot screen...but it failed when his desktop appeared, the LED becoming amber and his laptop screen turning on, which again led me to believe the problem lies in the monitor.
But the Alienware support sounded pretty sure it was the video card. He presented me with the option of being sent another identical video card (which I will choose if I cannot get anything else to work). I suppose I believe him in his conclusion that it is the video card, but wanted to get other people's opinions on this. Has anything like this ever happened to anyone? It would be great if I could avoid sending back/getting sent anything.

Here are my system specs:

Motherboard--Intel D875PBZ
Memory--256MB DDR PC3200
Video card--Nvidia Geforce FX 5600 256MB AGP 8x
Sound card--Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2 6.1

Thank you; any help would be greatly appreciated!!