Thanks for your reply! Last night I decided to unplug the ac adapters (Area 51 has two of them) and let the battery die. I can’t say for sure what exactly happened but an hour or two later in desperation I tried holding the power button down for two minutes straight… I had done this before several times… still no effect… but then about one minute after I had stopped holding the power button down it shut down on its own. Not sure what did it… maybe finally ran out of battery? I plugged it back in and booted again and it took me to a screen with the Alienware logo at the top saying “battery has been disable” (yes it actually did say “disable” instead of “disabled”) and then something about the battery being overheated. From this portal I was able to run a system scan and it found no problems. I restarted again this time tapping F2 and confirmed that battery and ac adapter were functioning properly… then rebooted and it came up with a screen saying it was finishing windows update… after that it booted normally and seems fully functional. Not sure exactly what fixed it but my best guess is battery finally died… I hope this helps someone who might finds themselves in the same situation.  JD
My Alienware Area-51m must have decided to do an auto update. When I arrived at my office this morning it was showing a black screen with white letters saying "please wait while we install a system update.".  After 8 hours its still stuck on this screen. No matter how long I hold down the power button it does not shut down. I have searched all over and other threads seem to indicate this has something to do with a bios update. But I'm unable to shutdown so cant even boot into recovery. Please help!  
Area-51m R1, wait while we install a system update