Alienware M17x video issues

Hi, I purchased an Alienware M17x during the summer, several months ago. Sometime during August. The Dell site tells me I have an M17xR2, and for my graphics I have CrossfireX ATI Radeon HD5870s. I did a driver reinstall lately, went from the default drivers that came with my system to the reference drivers and back to the dell ones again. After I did that I noticed a problem where during the windows loading screen, it would frequently stutter, and if I leave my computer idle for several minutes or if I try to turn it off/hibernate/sleep it at all the screen will go black, the mouse lights will go out, but the keyboard lights will stay on and the fan will still be on and I can definitely tell my computer is still running. That's been a near constant issue lately, the only way I'm turning my computer off now is by holding the power button down to force an emergency shutdown. Sleep is now out of the question.

Again I performed a CLEAN install of the Dell drivers yet again, hoping for a fix, only I didn't get one. No improvements. So I saw hope in the vbios update for my cards, except...

It doesn't work. When the setup.exe is run I see VERY briefly a window that says extracting... and then it disappears. The actually package from Dell extracts smoothly enough into my drivers folder, it's the actual setup tool that refuses to work no matter what I do. I'm running as an administrator. It just refuses to work no matter what.


On a side note, whenever I try to play Crysis it's so unbearably laggy and choppy it's basically unplayable. Yet an M17xR2 SHOULD be able to handle it with at least a playable framerate...Any ideas?

 

Update: So you know that shutdown failure I'm suffering from that I mentioned above? Well, I decided right after posting that to go ahead and update my BIOS to A09. It WAS going smoothly until when it was supposed to restart, well my computer suffered from that again so I was forced to hold down the power button and emergency shutdown it. It made EXTREMELY weird noises. I waited a bit, tried turning it back on, and well... It kind of lit up, made a loud sparking noise, sort of flashed, then died. I waited a bit again, and this time it worked but the entire time it kept making strange noises. I turned it off again, without logging in, this time it actually turned off, so I turned it back on, logged on, and immediately reran the BIOS update tool. This entire time I kept hearing strange noises. After I reran the BIOS setup it seems fine now... Well I'm actually not sure because I just finished running it.

By the way, it says 'restart' on the setup dialogue- The second, 'successful' time I ran it it sort of just turned it off. Completely. No restart whatsoever. Is this normal?

Also, I shouldn't have touched any of the advanced settings right? Just double-click, immediately click the flash bios button next to the exit button? Run it all in it's default settings? Because that's what I did, but I did try clicking advanced and just got an error message for my troubles anyway. But just now I retried it and got a massive menu that I decided wasn't worth tinkering with especially with what I've done to my computer so far.

I have a habit of going into my dell/drivers folder and deleting the R#### folders after I run the setups, is this alright at all? R281215, my video driver, is the only folder still in there, by this point I've already deleted the BIOS folders too.

Did I do any harm I should be immensely worried about to my machine? Anything irreparable? Please help.

Another update: My laptop is still making concerning noises.

Update 3: I tried going on Ventrilo with a friend. He sounds EXTREMELY garbled and staticy now, and apparently I sound that way to him. It's apparently definitely on my end. Jesus what did I do? Edit: A Ventrilo re-install fixed the problem- Are you supposed to have to reinstall everything after a BIOS flash? Edit: No. No no no. Vent is back to being terrible.

 

I'm sorry for bumping. But please... any help? At all?

 

Suggest contacting support. A 'sparking noise' or popping noise coming from the system is not something we are going to resolve here with updating drivers. This plus the other issues you are having most likely would be better resolved with talking directly with support. Call AW Support and allow for extra time - the call will be long I imagine.

Also, be aware, power cycling the system by holding down the power button is not something you want to do - use it as a last resort. HDD problems can occur from this.