*OFFICIAL* Alienware 17 R2/R3 Owner's Lounge

@Daniel1983 Most calibration software will produce an ICC profile. Windows supports loading these, but is not particularly good at enforcing their use. Games that provide their own gamma setting are often a particular problem in this area because they tend to overwrite the same GPU LUT (look-up table) that Windows uses for ICC profiles in order to implement the functionality.

Did some reading on the Spyder5. Some people report inconsistent results with the included software, and most people recommend using ArgyllCMS+DispCalGUI instead. The sensor is the same for the Express, Pro, and Elite, although the latter two also have an ambient light sensor.

I'm also looking at the X-Rite ColorMunki Display, as people seem to like it a bit better than the Spyder5.

 

I have that module on two machines and I have never experienced this issue. Have you already disabled power management in Device Manager? I start at the top and go all the way to the last USB hub and uncheck the box for everything with an "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" option available. If you haven't already done that, I'd try seeing if that takes care of the issue. If that doesn't help, try using the newest drivers from the internet instead of using Dell's version.

 

Thank you Mr. Fox! I thought your suggestion might just work for my issue but I followed your instructions and did a restart, but once again the Bluetooth disabled. It also shows this device disabled (code 22) I tried using the windows utility for troubleshooting hardware but that also did not work. I can't believe how stubborn this problem is and how it came out of nowhere since I have done nothing special with my pc other then surfing the web and playing a few games!

 

If you are running Windows 10 or have Automatic Updates turned on with a different OS, it is most likely something Micro$haft did that screwed it up. This WiFi/BT combo module has worked flawlessly for me, but I do not allow anything to update automatically.

Even if that is what happened, the latest driver might fix it for you. Uninstall the old ones first, reboot and run CCleaner file and registry cleaning tools to get rid of all the old files and obsolete registry keys. Then clean install the latest. Also, us the INF-only install method for the WiFi. Keep the Killer WiFi bloatware suite off your system and it should perform flawlessly for you, too.

http://www.killernetworking.com/support/driver-downloads

I recommend this option only: http://www.killernetworking.com/support/driver-downloads/standard-drivers (Standard Drivers - no Killer features)

Another thing you can try is editing your power profile and be sure only the maximum performance options are selected and USB selective suspend are both disabled. The latter can affect WiFi and BT modules.

 

I had this exact same problem on my 17R2, it drove me nuts! The problem started happening after I connected my Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Over-Ear Wireless Headphones via Bluetooth for the very fist time.. I noticed Micro$haft immediately downloaded & installed a new driver.. Everything worked fine until it was time to restart.. After each reboot bluetooth was always disabled. Locating and cleanly installing all drivers manually finally fixed it for me. It could have been a new device you connected for the very first time that triggered it.. Microsoft is horrible with automatically updating drivers with BS ones.

 

Thank you again Mr. Fox. I tried almost everything but after extracting the killer drivers package I could not figure out which file was the bluetooth driver. So I went with the original killer driver package and even removed the only device connected to bluetooh my Nexus 6 phone. Problem still there! Here a pic of what I see after every re-boot.

 

Thank you Daniel1983! Unfortunately clean re-install of drivers has not done for me. It seems like I may have to do a re-install of windows to fix problem. As I am using only SSD and PCIe I do not have windows restore active.

 

You don't need Windows restore. If you do a clean install, once you have everything working right make an image with Macrium Reflect (free works fine) then you can restore the image and be back in business in about 10-15 minutes, no hassles or lost time reinstalling drivers and software. With that you will be set to handle malware, driver bugs, screwed up Windows Updates and hardware failures.

 

That's a great tip! I should have done it already but unfortunately I did not. I will surely take your advise on that next time I do a windows re-install.

 

Win10 has its own built-in image backup/restore capability. Has anyone tried restoring from it yet? I made an image of my out-of-the-box 17R3 with it but haven't had to restore from it yet.
I'm wondering if it is good enough or should I make another using Macrium Reflect.

 

Have you tried setting all BT services to run automatically at startup using services.msc?

 

Got the 17R3 today. Absolutely HATE this keyboard, the keys have to travel so far/deep and they feel cheap. Disappointing.

Can't get used to this 4K screen at all. It feels like the built in screen protector is dirty from the inside.. I keep cleaning it from the outside hoping for an improvement LoL; no difference. This screen to me seems far worse than the touch screen on my 17R2. Trying to locate a store that sells the 17R3 with the 4K screen-here in Canada ON, so I can bring mine in to compare them side by side. Something just seems off with this one but putting it into words is next to impossible.. I'll feel much better when I find one to compare mine to. Performance wise though, it feels pretty snappy. Not up to par with my AW18 beast, but good enough.

Hope to God that when I compare it to another one they are identical.

 

Some time ago, I noticed that Killer Suite used to record my internet data usage. But after updating it, I no longer see anywhere about my internet data usage. Anyone know to fix this? It would be helpful since I am on a limited connection about would be good to track internet usage

Thanks

 

After a lengthy call with AW support, we figured it out... The scaling on the laptop was waay off, which was zooming in on images and making them appear cloudy. Correcting that made a world of difference. If only fixing this crappy keyboard was that simple.

Here comes the overclocking 'fun'.

 

The 17R3 came with BIOS 1.2.8 and to my shocking surprise it handles the factory BIOS OC LvL 3 @ 4.1GHz perfectly fine.. Zero issues. I read many threads on here where others have complained that they can never get OC Level 3 to work. Has this been fixed for everyone??

 

Never mind... It is fine in desktop mode but not while gaming.. Bluescreens after a minute of gaming on OC LvL 3. Handles LvL 2 OC just fine even during gameplay.

Another SUPER ANNOYING thing it does is it makes a 'static' like sound any time the mouse is moved across the screen or I type on the keyboard. Thought this was only because of the OC profiles enabled so I disabled them and am still getting this 'static' like sound when moving the mouse across the screen.. This doesn't seem right to me.. Also every time I reboot the laptop when it loads to the windows sign in screen there is a weird greenish broken up long bar at the bottom of the screen about a cm in width.. it goes across the full length of the screen.. They say this is a brand new system. I shouldn't be surprised.... But I am, and envy anyone who gets a perfect alienware laptop the first time. Requesting another replacement; this one is junk. They are offering to send onsite tech to replace the screen and the motherboard on a brand new machine. Um, NO.

If anyone asks why I laugh when someone says "welcome to the Alienware family". Now you know. This isn't just my bad luck over and over again, it is absolutely terrible quality control and machines assembled by inexperienced people.

 

Updated to latest BIOS 1.2.13 still no fix. Here is what my screen looks like when booting: LINK

 

Everything is just about to bring down ALL costs. Now it's worse than ever... Low-educated, low-paid workers doing the job for DELL and not educated well-paid workers. Remember a better quality control cost money. As I said... This cost money and are not prioritized by DELL. Probably similar chaotic conditions also in the factories to other OEM's. My last three purchase of laptops was 2 Clevo and one Alienware. Guess what brand came with problems?

BTW... OC profiles will never be good. You have to do the job self.

 

Completely agree with you & yes I figured I'd have to do the overclocks manually, but was hoping with all these new BIOS updates they would have fixed the OC LvL 3 failure as I am sure everyone complained about it. They don't care. Advertise 4.1GHz but never deliver should be the company slogan.

Another thing I cannot understand for the life of me is how it doesn't cost them more to keep on assembling these lemons, and offering system exchanges constantly, on site techs etc compared to having better quality control??! You'd think that'd save them a lot of $!

The #AlienwareClub; where lemons are assembled to test every last drop of your patience through system repair and exchanges. Join us; the #Elite gaming laptop ROFL. I just wanna cry and bang my head against the wall to stop this from happening over and over again, since 2013.

EDIT: Waiting on yet another brand new system exchange to replace this #junk.

 

Does any OEM ever guarantee that an OC will work? I thought it was always a crap-shoot based on the manufacturing quality of the CPU.

I don't bother overclocking because even the top benchmark numbers that people submitted via Intel XTU are only a small increase over those resulting from stock speeds. I guess this is a testament to Intel's turbo stuff, or maybe XTU sucks at benchmarking lol.

 

Of course it depends on the chips quality. Dell has always made OC profiles that sucks... All too high voltage (so most chips can operate with a small OC on just one core) + power settings that are incorrect. No one should use preinstalled OC profiles from any brands laptop models. + max overclock on 1 core is meaningless. There are not much software / games that use only one core today.

 

The keys have a somewhat tactile response and deeper travel than typical laptop which makes it more suitable for gaming, IMO. As someone who uses mechs (mainly MX Browns and Reds) everywhere else I actually like the keyboard on the 17 R3.

I don't think you quite grasp the nature of overclocking.

Probably because there's so many noobs breaking their systems it makes more sense to just throw the hardware at consumers and let field servicing sort out the mess, if I had to hazard a guess.

 

This is the best I could squeeze out of the lemon without re-pasting with liquid metal.. Straight from the factory (4.1GHz stable, no throttling)







Definitely not ideal temps LoL

 

Very good outcome, but yea 92C, ouch.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

This probably had been asked countless times here but I got no time to go back 300+ pages....

So FHD or 4K screen on this laptop? I figure I could save a few bucks and get more battery life if I opt for the FHD, but is the 4K worth the money?

 

I prefer the touch screen 1080p on my R2, over this 4K on the R3. Both have pro's & cons.. The 1080p screens have a tendency to have noticeably more backlight bleed than the 4K screens; based on my 'guesstimation' 1 in 4 1080p come without the backlight bleed.. If you find one KEEP IT and pray you never have to get the machine serviced. The 4K screen is probably a better option if you do a reasonable amount of video & photo editing on the go and plan to calibrate it. You can always choose to game on a 1080p resolution which is what most people do unless they have the AGA with a decent GPU, 4K gaming is possible by lowering the quality to get desired FPS. IMHO it's more of a bragging rights thing than it is practicality.

I'm slightly OCD so backlight bleed bothers me a lot, you may have to go through a few 1080p screens to get a good one, or you could luck out the first time.. The 4K screen on the R3 I have has zero backlight bleed. That surprised me, so it's fair to assume they are of a 'better quality'. I prefer the glossier glass look on the 1080p touch screen. If there was a 4K with glass, that would be perfect. Maybe in the R4?

Edit: I'd probably lean towards the 4K screen just because of the number of 1080p's I received with a dead pixel.. A good one is harder to come by. Anything to avoid using up the warranty-it gets exhausting.

 

Thanks for your input

One last thing... Are Dell certified refurbished laptops considered OK to get? I found a refurbished 17 r3 with nice specs and an unresistable pricing.

 

It's a 50/50. Personally I believe that they lie to customers when they say they are giving you a brand new system exchange (in the US they can give you a used one, but here in Canada they are not allowed to) due to our no lemons policy.. Dell is known for pushing refurbished as "new". I believe at the end of the day it all comes down to the actual person assembling/fixing your machine.. Some people are passionate about what they do and always do the best they can, and others have no clue what they are doing, so they fake it until they make it. Really it's a hit and miss. Just make sure you have great warranty coverage (even if you have to pay extra to buy it) IMHO your money would be better invested into extended warranty coverage than a 4K screen if you had to choose between them.

 

I picked up an Outlet 17 R3 recently which had issues out of the box with the trackpad not illuminating and a noisy fan. Both were replaced and I've been very happy with the system since.

 

Thanks for the feedbacks. I decided to go with the deal:

17 r3
i7 6820hk
16gb ddr4
512gb pcie ssd + 1tb hdd
GTX980M
FHD panel

All for £1400. Let's see how it fares when I received it, worse come to worst I'll return it within the 14 day period.

Anything to look out for or check once I received it?

 

Nice spec. I also went with a FHD panel as it's mainly used for gaming and couldn't be happier, even with the 970m I can max out setting in many games. I would just benchmark it straight out of the box to establish a performance baseline and give is a little stress testing. Then you can set about changing things and make a note of how your benchmarks change after doing things like BIOS and driver updates. If you're paranoid then do a full diagnostics pass, battery charge / discharge cycle to ensure you're getting the capacity you expect, plug things into each port to ensure it works correctly and nothing wobbles, look over the screen for defects, test each key on the keyboard, etc. But TBH I think most issues you'd probably see straight out of the box as I did and you will have a year's premium on-site warranty to fall back on if something strange does pop up later down the line, plus as you're in the EU there's a statutory second year collect and return warranty if you don't want to renew the premium support.

 

about Dell refurbished Alienwares....


Last year I had an AW15 and got a system exchange due a unsolved part problem. I got a refurb one and it had problems out of the box. The keyboard makrokeys were dead and and other letter keys too.

The thing that drove me crazy was I made a quick search in that service tag, looking for open requests of the original owner and I found out that there was a request to swap the keyboard made by the first owner. The owner probably sent the laptop back to dell and they did not even fixed the laptop before sending it to me.

After my case was escalted to a higher level senior support, they offered my an AW17 brand new a month later.


This AW17 is my last Dell system, due all the problems I had with previous machines, I had several XPS 15 since the l502x. I dicided an AW for gaming, and a surface pro 4 to portability.

obs: I picked up an AW system only because I was living in the US for a short period of time and wanst able to bring a desktop back to my country.

 

Wow that's quite unfortunate. Surprising to know you can actually trace back the previous owner using the service tag, can you provide me with the link so I can try it out with mine later on?

I've already received the laptop today but haven't unpacked it yet as I'm heading out for work. Will head home soon and check it out, hopefully its as good as new out of the box.

 

I didn't think you could look unless you also enter the email address that was used to make the request?

http://www.dell.com/support/incidents-online/us/en/04/srsearch?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04

 

ok so I've opened up my "new" refurbished 17 R3.... out of the box i noticed the removable back cover poped out slightly in one corner, so i pop it back in and proceed to power up the laptop.

So far I've tested the keyboard and speakers, no problems, liking the speakers in particular. Hardware and appearance wise everything seems in place, system specs just as advertised. The touch pad lights up accordingly, and to my surprise it's not bad at all, considering i switched over after using a macbook pro for 2 years +, my macbook pro got stolen 2 months ago so here I am with this laptop.

Alright so where do I pick up from here? Do I need to go through the Alienware setup thing? Update drivers? Do I need to do a clean install of Windows to remove bloatware? Sorry for all these questions, it's been awhile since I owned a new Windows laptop.

 

Always do a clean install of OS and latest drivers.

 

Do I just follow any guide I can find online or is there a specific one for this laptop? BTW mine comes preinstalled with Windows 10

 

Use this link and you'll be able to trace it.


http://www.dell.com/support/incidents/us/en/ukdhs1/?dgc=SM&cid=260354&lid=4793642

 

Thanks. The link doesn't work but I found a link on dell UK website to enter the service tag. I can't seem to find any links to trace previous owner service records etc, but it did mention the original ship date of the laptop was on April 28 2016. Is this date the shipping date for the original owner or when the laptop enters the refurbished store?

 

That's the day the machine left the factory

 

"Display Driver Intel HD 530 for Windows 8(R) has stopped responding and has successfully Recovered"
"Display Driver Nvidia version 353.54 has stopped responding and has successfully Recovered"

The crash ratio for Intel and Nvidia Drivers are 5:1. Intel crashes so many times, Nvidia crashes sometimes while launching a game.

One cannot guess how irritating this is getting!!

Specs for Alienware 17 R3:
Windows 10
i7 6700, 16 GB RAM
Intel HD 530 driver version - 10.18.15.4281
Nvidia GTX 970M driver version - 353.54 (10.18.13.5354 according to Device manager)

Does anyone know the driver version which doesn't crash? I mean it's been 1 year since release of Windows 10 and I hope Intel and Nvidia has come up with drivers which shouldn't crash on Windows 10(seems to be the problem only on windows 10, according to most forums.) This is really getting to my nerves

I tried switching between versions offered on dell website, only to find no difference. Installing lastest driver from Nvidia, HELL NO! It causes BSOD rather than just a simple freeze.

I would be eternally grateful to anyone who helps me get rid of this display driver crashing!

Thanks

 

Update Intel graphics driver. Mine did that maybe 6 months ago, been fine since.

If somehow that's what you did, and there's new Intel graphics drivers that screw things up again, then rollback to previous driver.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

Hello guys! I seem to have trouble getting my 17r3 to boot from USB drive every time I need to do a clean install of windows 10.. Does anyone have the proper bios sequence to do in order for the laptop to boot from USB? Or a link to the proper instruction? Thank you in advance for any advice on the matter!

 

What you have to do is turn off your system, insert the usb drive, turon on your system and start pressing f12, a menu should come up and you can choose your usb drive, make sure that your drive is in uefi format or else you will have to change the boot options of your system to legacy from the bios. If your usb shows up but does not boot try turning off secure boot.

 

Anybody had any luck getting Wifi working on ubuntu? If so, how did you do it? Could use some help here

 

Update to the newest Kernel then download a firmware file to the firmware folder.

U can read more at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/razer#Killer_Wireless_Network_Adapter

 

I really wish it was that easy! I used rufus to set up my usb drive with windows 10 iso but when I try to change boot sequence in the bios I get stuck. It should be as easy scrolling to the usb drive but it is not. I don't know why windows makes so difficult. I had followed the sequence from a post which i longer have and it included naming the usb drive and a couple of other steps. I am so mad for losing those directions.

 

Just call Dell & ask them to send you a USB with the OS on it. It comes with very clear step by step instructions how to use it/install a clean copy of the OS... It's free, kill 2 birds with one stone.. No need to complicate simplicity.

 

New 17R3 drivers available on Dell's site:

 

Installed new BIOS, seems to work fine here.