Brand new M17X R4 - No sound card?

Hello and happy new year to all !

I just received my Alienware M17X R4 and there is no sound. When I opened Device Manager, I didn't see any sound cards other than Intel's HD driver (I have a Creative 3Di sound card). So I downloaded the latest drivers from Dell, uninstalled the existing drivers and tried to install the new ones.

It came back with the following error message "Setup is unable to detect a supported product in your system". Does this mean they forgot to put the sound card in the system or is there something else going on?

Any help is greatly appreciated...

Edit: I'm using Windows 8 64-bit, and right now I don't see ANY unidentified sound cards at all in device manager.

 

Sounds like another windows 8 blunder or a serious hardware issue. The Sound Blaster Recon3Di is hard soldered onto the motherboard, so it's kind of hard for the sound card to be missing. But anything can happen. Have you tried right-clicking in the playback tab (sound control panel) and checked both show disabled and disconnected devices? If it still doesn't show up, there is something more going on there. You should then get it touch with Alienware support or PM one of the reps here in the forums RIGHT AWAY to see what can be done. Don't dawdle because you just got your R4 within the last few days right? So you only have a 20 day window to return it if the issue can't be resolved. Otherwise your stuck with dealing with warranty and depot support.

 

Hi ! I experience the same problem since I have mine ! It's a really good laptop, but my recon3Di can disappear sometimes from the device manager after a GPU swap and a sleep... Well, sometimes just a reboot would fix it. But the only true good solution that I found and which works EVERYTIME is to reflash the bios Good luck and I hope this will help you !
On this, Happy New Year !

 

Looks like the problem is fixed. I uninstalled all the audio drivers - which then populated the list on device manager with previously absent default HD drivers which enabled me to install the Creative drivers on top of them.

I want to blame Alienware, but at this stage I'm blaming Win8 more, and I wish I'd stuck to Win7.

 

Seriously, if it disappears, reflash the bios, you'll see it works... I wouldn't blame win8 since I had the same issu with win7 lol

 

If you are using Windows 8 then just right click on the Audio driver and uninstall it, Windows will install the default one and that one will work just fine. If you have Windows 7 and have tried the fix and it did not work, send me a PM and I'll take care of the issue.