HDMI IN suddenly disappeared?

So a few months back I was using the HDMI IN feature just fine, then one day out of the blue it just up and vanished from my recording devices menu. https://puu.sh/xEqHH/d4f0b98281.png (and yes, disabled devices is checked).

Weird part is nothing really happened that day. No updates, no OS upgrades, no driver updates, nothing. It just up and vanished. Which is a shame because being able to play console games while the laptop downloads something is incredibly handy and it'd be a shame to lose this feature over nothing. I was wondering if anybody knows what happened or has the same issue.

edit: And I forgot to mention, I did do an OS upgrade to windows 10 after the inital hdmi IN disappearance, and it returned. But after I went back to windows 7 again and then back to windows 10 (long story) it wasn't there again. So now I'm back to square one.

 

Reinstall Alienware osd drivers and try using the hdmi in hotkey to toggle it.
Maybe the windows 10 reinstall deleted it.

 

perfect advice, Chipset, and MEI and then yeah OSD and then AWCC...

 

Sorry to revive this thread but I reinstalled OSD and AWCC and nothing happened, and installing MEI, chipset doesn't work. It says windows 10 has newer versions of these and trying to install them anyways just fails with an error.

 

It is a hardware feature, it works even under linux. It does not need any drivers or even OS presence to show video input. If it does not show any input then it's hardware damage or bad connection. Only optional drivers needed are sound card drivers that will reroute sound from HDMI IN to your speakers but it's purely optional.

 

I see, any other way to check the connection? Because its hard to imagine it inconveniently breaking in between OS installations, multiple times.

 

This happened to me before on my R5. One day I was using the HDMI-IN feature then a few months later when I try to use it again, there was no video output from the inputted signal, only a white screen. It turned out to be a problem with windows that I never really figured out since uninstalling the drivers and/or Alienware osd and reinstalling them did nothing, but reinstalling windows 10 fixed the problem.

 

Yeah same here, except this time it didn't fix it and I really don't want to try reinstalling windows 10 again just to fix this if there isn't even a guarantee it'll work.

 

Hmm... very strange. How does the screen show up when you plug something in like a game console? Does it show up white or black? If it shows up as white, that's most likely a software problem. If it shows up as black, that's most likely a hardware problem.

Also, I forgot to mention that after I reinstalled windows 10, I also switched from optimus mode to dedicated only mode so I could run the GTX 1060 I now have installed in my Alien. That's when the HDMI-IN feature started working again for me.

 

That may be the issue. As I said earlier reinstalling Windows has nothing to do with HDMI-IN as it works even under linux.

 

The screen shows up fine. I could use it as is... if I were deaf. The only way I could get sound coming from the hdmi in back when it was working was checking a box in the hdmi in recording properties that said "listen to this device". Which I can't do since its not showing up under recording devices.

I haven't used the integrated graphics card (If I even have one) and have also been using a new 1060 just fine.

 

Yeah you're right. The HDMI-IN capability always seemed to work better after using FN+F5 to disable the integrated GPU and run in dedicated only mode.

 

Oh ok, so video does show up? Just no audio? I never had to go through those steps for audio to work over HDMI, it just worked. Nvidia's driver package is supposed to contain an HDMI sound driver, and it works with HDMI-IN as well. If you have that installed, try a different HDMI cable as the pins on those cables can go out (doesn't happen very often but it does happen, usually with defective cables).

 

On M18xR1 you won't have HDMI-IN sound until you install IDT Audio drivers for the integrated souncard.

 

you can clone/image your drive and reinstall windows and if no change revert back exactly as it was.