I was able to trace the issue to the Virtual Machine Platform Feature in Windows 11. If this feature is enabled, it will break the Intel(R) Extreme Tuning Utility which Alienware Command Center uses to overclock the Aurora R13 Intel Alderlake CPU. Enabling the Microsoft Virtual Machine feature in Windows 11 interferes with the Aurora R13 Overclock BIOS settings which breaks the CPU and Memory Overclock panels in Alienware CC. It also corrupts the ELCSetup load up routine which causes light zones 1 to 3 to fail at initialization. To fix these issues, I had to turn off the Virtual Machine Platform and Windows Hypervisor Platform features in Windows. Upon rebooting windows, my front AlienFX lights came back on, and all overclocking settings in Alienware Command Center were restored and fully functional. I tested this numerous times using different Alienware CC versions, and the results were 100% consistent indicating that this Windows 11 feature, when enabled, breaks Alienware CC. Dell engineers need to take note of this to fix this limitation in their next Alienware CC release. It does not make any sense that we have to give up important Windows 11 Features just to get Alienware CC to work.
The Alienware Update app notified me of a new update for Alienware's Command Centre. I accepted the notification and it proceeded to update Alienware's CC. After it finished installing, it ran for the first time, and I received a pop-up message indicating that it would take approx 30 seconds to load up. During that period, Windows Security popped up requesting Admin privileges to load Alienware CC. This never happened with the previous version. After it finished loading, it proceeded to update Alienware OC Controls Plugin. After it finished updating everything, my system started exhibiting the following issues: I tried rolling back to Alienware Control Centre v5.4.7.0_A00 and Alienware OC Controls Application v1.3.50.1360_A00 but Alienware CC still won't show me my CPU overclocking panels despite being enabled in BIOS nor will the front light zones ( 1 - 3 ) light up. This got me wondering if the Alien FX module's firmware got upgraded in the process and that's what is messing up the front panel lighting now. I also checked the prerequisites for Alienware CC v5.4.16.0_A00 and noticed the it requires BIOS v1.0.2 which I'm currently on, so BIOS version is not an issue. I'd really appreciate it if someone can provide me with guidance on how to fix this mess. I miss my Aurora R13 front lights. Thanks.
Aurora R13 - Numerous failures after updating Alienware CC to v5.4.16.0_A00