EHhhh, maybe I won't touch that then lol.
I got some good news FINALLY. with some crappy news.
So I got in the tearing apart mood again and this time I unhooked nearly everything. I even completely took the lcd screen off of it and away. I only left keyboard, (not at first) one stick of ram, one video card, and the power button bar with the led icons.
Guess what?
The SOB actually booted! I have it hooked up via external monitor at the moment. Now since there are no hard drives, it only boots up a little bit lol. but it turns on!! and it doesn't even turn itself on now. After that, I plugged the cd drive back in which also works. Now I started testing ram sticks.. which. btw memtest loads up fine..
here is the... horrible horrible.. when it rains it pours scenario. Let us look back at this picture of the cards and ventilation system.
http://4help.alienware.com/cgi-bin/a...i=&p_topview=1
Well, you see the copper color pipe going from primary card to north bridge to fan? Well that got snapped $#%@#$%% stupid accident. This is why the primary card is heating up so horribly. Which is why it shuts off after a few minutes right now. I need to fix this. I know these can be bought, but they are also expensive for what it is. (think I saw some sites selling that for 130$ bah)
Now I just need to figure that out
update- I am now able to boot into windows! this is still running minimum stuff thought. Soon i'll put things back together one by one to see what could be causing it.. before that.. i gotta figure this heat pipe out