So, this one has a happier ending than I thought. But, I hesitated to post the solution, because it just seems somehow non-replicable. So, after testing the system with SATA drives only for a few days, and not seeing the Bluetooth/black cursor problem resurface, I decided to reconnect the m.2 drive just to experiment around. I restored a known good image from this same machine using Macrium Reflect onto the m.2 drive, and re-established it as the primary boot drive running Windows. Then erased/formattted the SATA SSD drive that I had temporarily been using as the primary, and made it a secondary storage drive. So, I now have the m.2 drive as primary, and 3 SATA SSD's attached, and have not had a recurrence of the Bluetooth/black cursor problem. One of the 3 SATA SSD's is a Linux boot drive, and the system loads a Grub bootloader on system start by default now. The BIOS boot order contains both the Grub entry and the Windows Boot Manager. This took some doing. Secure Boot is not turned off per se, but I placed it in Audit Mode (the only way you can successfully load recent Linux on this model). It couldn't have been a simple reseating problem with the m.2 drive, because I had the entire board replaced and thus it was clearly "reseated." But my running theory is that attaching the SATA SSD's first, then re-attaching the m.2 drive later might have played some role. Just a theory.
Hi everyone! So, this one is going to be a bit tricky. About 3 weeks after my R10 arrived, Bluetooth stopped working, the Bluetooth icon disappeared from Device Manager, and any Windows Bluetooth settings also disappeared. This was resolved temporarily by uninstalling an Unknown USB device in the Device Manager. About a month later it happened again with greater frequency, and uninstalling the unknown USB device did not always resolve the issue. In some cases, I had to unplug the desktop, hold in the power button for 60 seconds, and then plug it back in and turn it back on. That worked well for a while. Then Bluetooth started disappearing daily and a black cursor screen would appear for about 10 seconds before the Alienware splashscreen would load on every boot. I became a little annoyed at having to unplug the machine every day to resolve this. Then one day, all of the above tricks did not even resolve the issue. Disconnecting the CMOS battery and resetting the CMOS jumper resolved it that time for a day. But then the Bluetooth disappeared 2 days later. I tried with a clean install of Windows - same problem. I tried restoring a known good image from the system - surprisingly the problem still appeared. Happens on Windows 10 2004 and Windows 10 2009. Happens on BIOS 1.06, 1.07, and 1.08. BIOS SATA mode is in AHCI mode. My only other choice is RAID On, which I don't use. I once reloaded the Chipset driver and that made Bluetooth reappear, but then the problem came back the next day). I reseated the wireless/Bluetooth card, RAM, graphics card, CMOS battery, PSU cable. The Bluetooth came back when I reseated components, but disappeared the next day. I found one condition where the Bluetooth would not disappear: if I unplug any SATA hard drives that I have, and use only the NVMe m.2 drive, the problem never occurs. This happens whether I use the original SATA cable that came with machine, or a 3rd-party SATA cable. So not tied to any particular SATA cable. If anyone knows anything else I can try, I am all ears. Even though the m.2 drive is my primary drive, I would prefer to use my computer with my other SATA SSD's attached (I have 3 SATA SSD's - 1 for a backup image, 1 for Linux, and 1 for storing large video files; it doesn't matter which drive or which SATA cable or which SATA port I use, the problem will resurface if I have ANY SATA drive connected). I now have 3 Bluetooth devices connected (2 on every boot, as permitted), but the problem first appeared when I had only 1 occasional Bluetooth device connected. Edit: One further detail, just so you know it is not a Windows/software problem. When Bluetooth disappears, and the black cursor screen appears on reboot, the keyboard and mouse are unresponsive for about 15 seconds on the Windows login screen. This same keyboard/mouse lag and Bluetooth not appearing happens if I boot to a second Linux drive instead. So, it happens on Windows and Linux.
Aurora R10, ongoing Bluetooth woes