Just purchased an Alienware M17x-R1 -> but having horrid issues already. :-(

I met someone with an Alienware MX17-R1 and he needed money and decided to sell it to me for like $300.00 due to it just sitting on his shelf for 6 months. I purchased it when I saw it running and look at the specs in the (system information) seeing how it was decent machine. 2.8ghz, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA video card, bluetooth, etc. The computer only has a 120GB HD in it, so I would like to buy another hard drive (Hopefully one of you can recommend a good brand of HardDrives for one about 500GB in size that is good for gaming.)

The PROBLEMS that I am having are:

1. Whenever trying to update the video drivers that are installed on the machine I get some kind of error. I've looked up the error and it shows possibilities that it's already installed, the current one is already newer, or it's incompatible.

2. The monitor is nowhere near as bright as my other laptop. It looks how my other laptop looks at about 85% brightness with a slight tint to it.

3. The service tag sticker is missing, and trying to run that 'detect my service tag' app won't pull it up

4. Sometimes Windows Explorer just freezes for no reason, but everything is still functioning fine.

5. When browsing the net, the wifi card seems to lag horribly then burst with speed. I noticed that it'll be connected right next to the access point and show a signal of 1 bar for a bit, then show full signal, then 1 bar... full signal. It's like the signal is going in and out on it, but my other machine doesn't have this problem.

6. The alien heads and the touchpad light up, but the keys do not. I am wondering how to tell if mine has the function to light up or not. The guy said he never seen them light up and thinks it could just be a loose wire. I don't know if this machine even has the light up feature though, so would like to know how to check this as well.

7. Pages on the internet load extremely slow. I have another laptop that I can load at the same time and it loads almost instantly while this one trolls along and loads like 1 or 2 photos at a time in sets, then finally loads the background. Other laptop takes 4 seconds to load the page, this one took 17 seconds.

What I'm asking an Alienware/DELL rep for

1. Help with finding the proper drivers, etc.
2. Help with finding the service tag
3. Help with retrieving another Windows 7 disc + alienware files (i have a Windows 7 Pro key)
4. The proper BIOS update
5. Help in testing whether or not the keys have the ability to light up like I see on others.
6. Help choosing a hard drive, and tips on anything I need to do to maximize it's function with this laptop. The guy I bought it from recommended I keep the 120GB HD in it and never swap it because drivers are supposingly almost impossible to find according to him.

 

Since you are out of warranty dell won't do the fixes for you. I will help with what I can so you can fix it yourself.

1. Any laptop size hard drive will work. Ssd will obviously be fastest but at a higher cost. Hard drive is all about what you want to spend though.

2. Brightness being low could be caused by windows setting, too little power for dual graphics cards, running on the integrated gpu possibly could do it too. If you can run gpu-z and post a screenshot it would help a lot.

3. boot into bios and it will show your tag.

4. Could be hard drive issues. Or windows installation. You should be able to download a windows disk image from Microsoft since you have the product key.

5.6.7. Most likely all due to loose connections. 5 and 7 from unplugged wifi antenna and 6 from unplugged lighting wire. For wifi u need to unscrew the three screws under the trackpad region, two are under the battery, third is to side in a well.
For lighting u need to remove the keyboard, to do that remove the bottom cover with the two screws under the battery. Then I'm the area near the middle fan you need to find two screws, not for the fan, maybe 1 inch to each side of the fan. Once those are out flip the laptop over, open the screen as far as you can, and slide a flathead screwdriver under the hinge cover that is part of the media strip thing that has the power button. That should pop out showing the 5 little screws to remove the keyboard. The lighting plug is the little one to the left.
You can probably find YouTube videos of this if I confused you.
Anyways good luck, post the gpu-z info so I can help more. As far as installing new nvidia drivers you need to modify them to get them to install for certain cards, not hard to do. But if our cards match I can send you my modified file to let you install them.

 

Probably would have been better to get the latest and greatest as it'll be new and in warranty.

Sent from my One using Tapatalk

 

Which M17x is this? If this is the pre-dell one I believe the keyboard had an option for a backlit or non backlit one. Also there would be no service tag on this model - perhaps you could supply a picture so we have a better idea?

 

I tried booting into BIOS, but no service tag was shown. I'm guessing they didn't start putting it there until DELL purchased it. I also ran the "detect my service tag" thing and it didn't work, nor did the system diagnostic tool that pull all the information. They both say not designed for my system.

I looked at everything and don't have the AlienFX stuff installed (wasn't installed when I got it, but I do see a space for AlienFX in the power options advanced menu, just nothing is there.

I opened it up, and you were right, the WiFi connection was a bit loose, but that's tightened and working fine now.

And thanks a million for the thought of sending the modified file to help! I'm going to load up the other machine shortly and run the GPU-Z program to get the information.

Yeah, I wish I could have, but unfortunately I can't really afford a beast machine yet. Too many responsibilities and not enough income at the moment, but things should change greatly within 2 or 3 months. ;-) I seen the laptop listed for $575.00 and talked to the guy about helping him with some marketing stuff and in exchange he told me I could have it for $275.00, so I jumped on it. The system itself is nice, gets high ratings when test run, but when I actually play a GAME on it, the graphics are extremely choppy and are nothing like expected considering it has the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX installed. I'm thinking it has to do with all the drivers being out of date, etc. and no way to update them since it's so old. :-(

 

It's definitely the pre-DELL version. I was thinking that too, so that's probably why. This is the original first M17x-R1 before they change the case to be more dramatic.

I have some photos, I took earlier, but they don't show it that well. I can take better ones though if need be, just don't have my photo with me at the moment.
and

 

If it's anything like the pre dell m15x (which was based on the same platform) you can't update the drivers past a certain version due to compatibility.
The brightness issue is normal - the newer laptop screens are brighter and that's just how it is.

As for the machine freezing this may be caused by a hard disk or virus/spyware problem. A new hard drive (i would recommend a Western Digital Scorpio Black for performance) and a fresh reinstall will sort that. If you do a quick google search for windows 7 sp1 iso the first link will let you download an iso of the windows 7 install disk direct from microsoft.

You must have the version without the backlit keyboard - you could probably buy a backlit keyboard if it is important to you.

 

Here is the GPU-Z snapshots I just took.

 

Thanks to everyone offering assistance, advice, etc. I just want ya'll to know it's very appreciated (seriously... I thought I got jipped even at $275 lol)



Well so far:

So far I have managed to get the video card running the games I was playing properly and now it looks good on max settings and isn't choppy, except for minor lag spikes here and there it seems. The game was using hardware memory and I guess it just couldn't handle it properly or the hardware didn't have ENOUGH memory to do so. I figured a way to get it to use the system RAM instead and now it works pretty dang good. Still would like to update the drivers to the most efficient ones though considering these are as far back as 2011.


The PROBLEMS that I am having now are down to:

-- Can't update the BIOS
-- Updating video drivers & graphics card drivers, I get errors.
-- Monitor very dim
-- Windows Explorer freezing randomly. I think a fresh install will fix this though, but I need to get all the proper updated device drivers ready first. I might run a program like 'Driver Genius'
-- WiFi card seems to cut off periodically for no reason. I read there was a fix for this on the newer M17x machines, but don't know if it'll work on mine. It needs you to uninstall certain thigns (I don't think I even have) then supposingly fixes it,
-- (possibly because of ^^) Pages on the internet load extremely slow. I have another laptop that I can load at the same time and it loads almost instantly while this one trolls along and loads like 1 or 2 photos at a time in sets, then finally loads the background. Other laptop takes 4 seconds to load the page, this one took 17 seconds.

 

Hey, I just noticed this when I turned on SLI.

1st GPU
BIOS Version = 62.92.2A.00.11 (P0398-0003)

2nd GPU
BIOS Version = 62.92.2A.00.07 (P0398-0003)

I'm wondering if it is bad if they both show a different BIOS version? Shouldn't those match???



As for the hard drive...
The hard drive installed now
ST9160823ASG = Seagate 160GB SATA/300 7200RPM 8MB 2.5-Inch Notebook Hard Drive, G-Force Protection ST9160823ASG

I need to replace it, so which of these would acually work???
http://www.amazon.com/Scorpio-Black-Cache-Mobile-WD5000BPKT/dp/B004LR1RPK/
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Scorpio-Internal-2-5-Inch/dp/B003TOE4PQ/
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Black-Notebook-WD5000BPKX/dp/B00DSUTWMQ/
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Scorpio-Cache-Notebook/dp/B003D18DM0/

 

The VBIOS's should be different as one is master and the other is slave. As for your hard drive choices any of those will work but the first three will perform better than the last one. If you realy want performance you could look into an SSD instead.

As for your screen being dimmer than a new laptop I will repeat what I said earlier in the thread - the old type screens are not as bright as the new ones. I have the M9750 and its screen is much dimmer than my M17x at full brightness, they used the same screen in the original m17x. The old screens are lit by CCFL tubes, whereas the newer ones are LED lit - the LEDs can be much brighter. Do not expect it to ever be as bright as a new LED lit model.

Also in regards to not being able to update the BIOS I cannot find any BIOS update for the original M17x (Area-51 M17x), all the drivers and downloads are here If your trying to flash the M17x-R1 bios you will probably brick your system as it is not compatible.

 

Thank you for the clarification on why it's so dim, it explained a lot. Also thanks about the BIOS because I was trying to force the M17x BIOS I had found thinking it was the right one, not realizing that so much had changed when DELL took ownership of the company. Basically saved me from wasting time on something with potential to mess things up.

I was, however, able to update a ton of drivers by running DriverIdentifier to find the newest versions. Sometimes the drivers will pull up newer versions based on hardware ID + version, so you have to be careful which ones you download. Once, in the past, I downloaded some stuff that was wrong even though it claimed compatible and got the blue screen of death. Luckily it booted fine and I was able to re-install the older version of that drive, but it was a good lesson learned. I started using the version number and searching manually to find the proper compatible versions and all is well. The WiFi is working much better with the updated version, along with a few others. Also the graphics card is performing better with the 357.50 BETA drivers.

^ If anyone else has an older model and wants the list of drivers that I'm using (so you can update to them if you want) let me know and I'll post them.

I do like the SSD drives, but from my experience, they are not good for constant read/write sessions and they die much faster than the regular drives. At first I was thinking I should get an SSD for the OS itself, then install everything else to the 2nd drive instead. My biggest thing I'm doing is trying to set this machine up to take over as my main machine then either keep the other for backup or sell it. The Alienware (though older) is much stronger processor wise and has a video card, which would be great for many things, but my HP Pavilion g7-1150us seems more reliable at the moment because everything just works and the laptop seems to still be supported enough that i can get updates on many things with no issues.

 

I havent had an SSD fail on me yet and i've used them for some years now along with fitting them to many other systems. You are correct however in that if you continually write to them they will wear out faster than a regular drive. Maybe consider one of the seagate hybrid drives - havent tried them myself but they are supposed to be a bit faster than a standard one.

I'm surprised you have a g7 that still works - i've seen plenty of those have issues with the screen cable. Also seen plenty have graphics chip failures.

 

Really? Wow, I didn't know the HP Pavilion G7s were that problematic. I've had mine for quite some time, but that could be because I have OCD and baby all my stuff so much because of it. That and it almost never leaves the house, so it's pretty much stationary and on 79% of the time if not more lol. I've never in my life had a laptop just die on me completel. The most maintenance to the hardware I ever do is take them apart and get any dust out with canned air & wipe down certain components with 99% isopropyl alcohol .

I have everything on the Alienware running pretty decent now, except I discovered that when I plug my headphones in it wouldn't work. If I wiggle it a bit and pull it almost halfway out it'll work fine, but if pushed all the way in it doesn't work at all. I also discovered what the little speedometer button does (part of why games were running so horrid before, because I turned it on and didn't know it was supposed to be off), but what is the UFO - flying saucer touchlight button for? Also, the light-up part for the volume... How does that work? If I touch it it brightens up, but when pressing the plus or minus sign, or swiping my finger across it, it does nothing.

After I decide on which HD I'm going to use, and backup all the drivers that seem to be functioning properly, I'm going to put in the new harddrive and install Windows to it, and run it like normal. I figure I'll keep a separate copy of the OS on both drives and use the new one as I would normally, and the one that is currently in it can just be reserve for emergencies, or I might make that one multiple OS's on THAT HD and just keep Win-7 Ultimate on the new one.

 

The UFO is supposed to open the command centre if you have it installed. Basically lets you change the lighting, just like on the newer models. I would imagine you don't have the hotkey software installed properly - as the + and - should control the volume it's lighting up to say it recognizes your pressing something but the software isnt there to translate that for the OS. You'll probably find the software you need from the drivers page I linked earlier in the thread.

As for your headphone jack problem that is on a seperate daughterboard and quite cheap you can pick one up here

 

I think I love you sir. Thanks for all your help. :-D

By the way, is the driver you are referencing the ATK hotkey stuff?




Hey hey, lookie what I found. :-D

http://ftp.dell.com/Pages/Drivers/alienware-m17x-all.html

 

That page is for the post Dell M17x - you need the drivers from here

The ATK hotkey software should get your volume keys working. Also make sure you have the sound driver installed.

 

Ah, so ATK must mean like Alien Touch Keys or something, gotcha. Well I guess that's it for now. Thanks a million my friend!!! I'm going to order that HD & audio jack with my next commission. I'm about to go test some of the other stuff to see if the HDMI and see if it has a TV Tuner and test a lot of the other stuff I see on it.

 

I changed my mind on the hard drives. I think I'm going to do:
1st bay = 160GB or 320GB SSD HD (will be for OS's)
2nd bay = 500 GB SATA (will be for data storage & cache, etc.)

I was told by DELL that it would only support SATA, not SATA II or SATA III. You mentioned that any of those I listed will work, so I just want to be sure. I know it has to be max height or something of 9.5" and that's the only measurement I have.

 

All the sata standards are backwards compatible but this system is SATA II - it'll work with SATA, SATA II or SATA III no problem but only at SATA II speeds. As long as the drive is no taller than 9.5mm it'll fit just fine!

 

Awesome, thanks again. Hopefully this is my last post in regards to everything, as you have pretty much got me up-to-date on everything now. Going to order the 2 drives and the audio jack and all should be well from that point forward.