M17X-R2 Battery/Boot/Lock-Up Woes

Please post in the A06 thread. I've looked over the other posts and don't see anyone reporting this - might be worthwhile to share in that thread as others may have input...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/497992-m17xr2-bios-a06-discussion-thread.html

 

Got my computer back from dell today, still not fixed. It's like they didn't even acknowledge the issue at all.... the repair sheet shows they replaced the MLB (motherboard?) and keyboard (...?) during repairs. It turned on the first time, but then turned itself off at the desktop. After installing latest drivers, it is back to shutting down at the windows splash screen again. This happened on A00 BIOS, which is what was on my computer when they shipped it back.

Tried updating to A06, same deal. Seems that now when the battery is full it will get to the desktop but shut off soon after, and when the battery is anywhere less than ~85% it shuts off at the windows splash.

So since it happens on A00, A05, and A06 I'm starting to think that maybe this isn't just a BIOS issue, but has to do with a specific system config or something since all of us with the issue seem to have 920's and crossfire.

Anyone else having any luck with anything regarding this issue?

EDIT - I tried a system restore (to see if it was something with any of the drivers I just installed) and after this, when re-flashing the BIOS the system got stuck saying "Shutting Down". It stayed there for about 15 minutes with fans on full blast then gave me a blue screen. Now the computer won't turn on at all, not even the alienhead or BIOS. Nothing at all. Did something go wrong with the BIOS? I didn't think system restore would do anything that would affect installation of the BIOS... or did something else go wrong? Is there some way to recover?

EDIT 2 - The first edit may be poorly worded, so I fixed it a bit. I did a restore, then tried flashing the BIOS again. After flashing the BIOS, it got stuck "shutting down" then BSOD. Now nothing at all happens when the power button is pressed. Recovery from a bad BIOS flash steps don't do anything, nothing ever shows up at all. Is this computer now a brick? Called AW support, they basically just said I'd need a new mobo.... again...

 

I went through what you are experiencing: will not power up, no light, no sound, nothing (I have two power adapters and two batteries). I tried just about every methods I can find but did not help. Ended up having the motherboard replaced twice and a whole new set of video cards (the computer does not even have the service tag entered yet; the tech. did not do it). It's a pain. Good luck.

 

Looks like A06 BIOS will resolve this issue. Per engineering, there was some sort of bug that could cause a no boot on battery if you have a specific configuration (920xm) with turbo mode enabled. Unfortunately, I just found out about this late last week.

Please flash to A06 and let me know if you continue to see problems.

Thanks!

 

Didn't swg1251 say he used A06 also, and it did not fix it?

 

I didn't get to test it much, but it didn't seem to help in my case. I think I only did three tests with A06 before trying to re-flash (some tech told me earlier that sometimes it could take multiple flashes for it to work properly...?) which failed and gave me a now useless computer...

Anyways, in those tests I thought at first that it had helped since I got past the windows splash and to the desktop, but as all my programs and such were loading, the computer shut itself off. This happened again the second time. On the third, the battery wasn't fully charged (probably at about 70% charge) as I had been testing out the second issue from the OP which seems to be more or less resolved. This time, the computer shut down at the windows splash screen again.

Unfortunately after my bad BIOS flash I can't mess around with settings and test anymore, as the computer doesn't respond to anything... Will update if I end up getting a new mobo/replacement again.

Others who had issues with A05 and now have A06 please continue posting results.

 

Have since flashed my laptop with A06 bios but still have the issue of no POST/BOOT if the machine has been disconnected from the mains for any length of time. It will not boot from mains or battery if it has been off the mains. The only way I can get it to work is fire it up on battery, pop the battery out for a second, replace then reboot, with or without mains power and it works fine. Dell support intends to send around a techie to look at it.

 

Hey Guys!

Based on your forum I've purchased an M17x R2 with a 920XE, 8Gb 1333, Bluray burner, 4870's in xfire, 2 x 500Gb HDD's, 1200P RGB and Win 7 Ultimate for AU$2000 inc shipping etc the reason its so cheap... It has these same faults! So I'm hoping that I can get her going ok... If so I think I owe you all a beer

Cheers,

Steve

 

What level is your battery charge at when this happens? Does it vary? Is the battery below 50%? What you describe sounds odd.

 

It is not odd because it happens to me to (I just began noticing it because I usually always keep my machine attached to the mains). I can have a full charge, unplug from mains and run it on battery only to have it shut off 10-15 seconds later. This is annoying because now I can never run it on battery. I'm currently on A05 running stock everything.

 

Is it true then that the 920 x CFX combo is too much for the battery to handle? Is it a bios issue or driver issue? Oh! another thing is that I suddenly began to get an IR consumer devices error that pops up occassionally and then bluetooth becomes disabled? This is weird because it also used to happened to me on my R1?

 

I've never had any sort of IR error or anything like that and my bluetooth doesn't disable itself either. However, as you said earlier, my computer does often shut itself off while running on battery, especially when trying to do anything that requires a lot of power.

The tech I spoke to last night about it (the call was supposed to be for escalating my case and discussing a refund/replacement since I've had three major 'repairs' done, ended up being the same as any other call) basically told me that this configuration is in fact too much for the battery to handle. He then proceeded to order me a new battery about 3 minutes later, assuring me that it would fix the issues I've been having . I've already had the battery replaced and he had just plainly said the battery can't handle this config... ... ... He did try to explain to me that it was some new revision of the battery, although I'm not quite sure I believe that.

The way the tech explained it to me on the phone also made it sound like a replacement system with the same config would have the same issues... this isn't looking good... Although if a replacement is the only option for this issue, at least if the replacement system is faulty it can be returned/refunded like a normal order. Then it would be possible to go with a different config or a different system altogether and finally be rid of these issues. The problem is that that would take a long time to go through with, since it takes a few weeks for each order to be built and shipped.

Anyways, I'll update once I find out how that goes (the battery should be here tomorrow) and if it doesn't work (I'm almost positive it wont...) then it sounds like this config is pretty much screwed when it comes to battery. A06's release notes looked promising, but didn't show any difference for me... so unless there is some update that can somehow fix this, I think this config just may not work out...

 

Agreed, I think that the 920/CFX combo is too much for the battery to handle and probably would have been better off getting either the 820QM or 4870's due to TDP. My system is a brand new replacement for my R1 and the specs are equal or a bit better than my R1 (I miss my QX9300 I think it's funny that the tech told you those things when he doesn't even truly know himself, but if they do happen to male a revised battery that can handle the TDP then I need to make a call myself and get my hands on one. Overall, the current problems aren't that big a deal (knock on wood) and I can tolerate them for the most part. So I think that I am going to keep my config and hope for the best.

definitely post your findings when you can.

 

Can you guys who are experiencing this problem please ensure that you are at A04 BIOS for the R1 and A06 BIOS for the R2? Does this occur if you have turbo mode disabled or only if you have turbo mode enabled? Is anyone experiencing this problem with the stock Dell drivers or do you all have the ATI 10.x drivers installed?

A06 BIOS is supposed to fix the problem with booting on battery only with the 920XM/940XM procs.

 

Well the new battery is here and it made no difference at all... waiting for the tech to call now...

The battery seems to be the EXACT same as the other one, right down to all the numbers and barcodes on the battery...

A06 does seem to help a bit with the issue, but the issue is not fully resolved with it, at least in my case.

With A05 if the battery was anywhere under ~80% charged, it would shut itself off every time I tried to boot. With A06, I can usually boot until about 50% or lower of my charge remains. Also, with turbo boost disabled on A06, the computer will manage to boot about half of the time while the battery is below the point that the computer normally wouldn't boot at with turbo boost enabled.

The video drivers don't seem to have any effect as I have tried uninstalling or trying different versions many times, usually while on the phone with tech support. Not having the 10.X drivers installed does seem to resolve the issue mentioned in my OP about the computer hanging for a couple minutes after loading the desktop, although that may have been a mobo issue as well since I haven't had that problem since any of my replacements.

 

@ erawneila,

I am still using stock drivers on my R2 (A05, 8.692.2) because of all the commotion from majority of others using the newer A06 and 10.x (speaking of, when is Alienware/Dell coming with their own 10.x drivers and bios version A07?) however, I am not opposed to updating just waiting for all the bugs to be fixed before taking the plunge. I have turbo mode enabled when experiencing these issues and have yet to turn off turbo mode to see if the issues still exist. If you don't mind explaining what turning off turbo mode has anything to do with the battery issues that we are experiencing?

 

@ swg1251

That sux to hear that the battery was in-effective to the cause, especially after everything that he/she explained to you?

After reviewing what you have said about A06 I am still not comfortable switching over just yet. Still waiting for the mythical A07 to be released and hopefully with all the enhancements and bug fixes, just without all the bugs lol!!

Have you by chance installed the new 10.x driver package yet? If so has it fixed any of the issues that we're experiencing?

 

Hello All:

I have an M17x R2 with a 920XM and two 4870's, and I had the exact same problem--could not boot from battery. The computer would get to the "Starting Windows" screen and would then short out. Plugging it in would allow me to restart and boot, but I never could boot on battery.

After a month and 12 hours of tech support calls, they replaced the battery and the motherboard. Didn't fix it. So I had to ship it out to them to replace the two 4870's because they thought that the "electrical" issue was caused by them.

They returned the computer to me with the A00 Bios. I immediately updated to A06, and (knock on wood)--the computer boots from the battery just fine now. I have not tested it when the battery was any lower than 80%, though, so maybe I still have an issue and do not know it. For now, though, I am a happy camper.

 

It is strange that the R2 has battery booting issues and that they have not truly been acknowledged yet by Dell. However, I am glad to hear that your issue got partially resolved though. I am actually quite happy with A05 for now as I have not experienced too many problems other than booting on battery, this however is unacceptable because its a notebook and the purpose of owning a notebook is for portability and convenience.

 

Exactly. The computer works fine on AC power, butwhat's the point of getting a notebook that can barely/not even be used on battery? Especially when a better performing desktop could be purchased for less than half the price?

This is why I am still pushing for a refund...

@hankdennemann, that's good news, maybe A06 does help after all? It hasn't been working in my case however. Still gives some hope that if I do end up getting my system replaced with another M17x, the issues could be non-existent. Good to know that it doesn't affect all R2s with this config.

Maybe an A07 BIOS could fully resolve it?

 

Let me talk to engineering - they've previously advised that you need "sufficient" battery life to boot/resume on battery only. 50% certainly would seem sufficient to me, but let me get the official answer...

 

I'm working closely with engineering to get some newer ATI drivers released ASAP - see other threads here. I don't yet have an ETA, but I'm optimistic that we can release a beta soon. A WHQL'd driver is a bit further out.

A06 should fix the battery boot issue. I didn't have the time to study the specifics, but there was basically a glitch in the BIOS code that had an issue with certain configurations, especially the more powerful processors. I tried on a failing system in house and it resolved it beautifully. In regards to the problems some people are having with ATI cards, I'm wondering if this could be related to using the reference drivers. We'll find out once we get some Dell beta drivers out. I'll keep you posted.

 

We have brand new ATI drivers in house and need to do some sanity testing on them. Once this has been completed, we'll release as beta drivers and seek your feedback. I'll post here once we promote externally.

 

Brian, do you know if they're based on 10.7?

 

Brian, one more question. You say you have new ATI drivers does that mean engineering is working on making a Dell driver based on the newer ATI drivers which resolve a lot of the game issues encountered with 10.5 Dell driver but will still not let us use catalyst monthly updated drivers.

Is engineering also preparing a vbios update as to let users install the monthly ATI catalyst drivers?

 

Aaaaaaaand... do they use the 10.7a hotfix?

-Ash

 

@ 5150Joker,

From what I gather after speaking to brian, the new ATI drivers are going to be beta 10.7's and not WHQL's and should fix the issues that the reference drivers are causing as of late.

@ Joebarchuck,

Yes, the new drivers are based off of the ATI reference drivers and will more than likely solve majority of the problems that the reference drivers are causing and then some. As of the other question in reference to the driver not allowing the use of catalyst monthly update drivers is unknown?

I have requested that research and developement create a vbios that will allow the use of SLI, however I have spoke to a tech support agent today and was told that a beta 10.7 driver is in the works and that Dell/Alienware is releasing a new vbios update and firmware update WoooHoooo!!!

 

Did they really mentioned the words vbios update?

If so that is exciting.

 

Not sure he knows the difference between bios and vbios.

-Ash

 

this certainly looks to be good new then, but I'll wait and see...

 

They are actually newer.

 

Yes they did and they explained that it might contain an SLI update as well!

Actually I do, and they are creating updates for both!

 

Brian, can you confirm the above?

Thanks

-Ash

 

Possible solution on my end...
I was having this same issue when starting up the computer would freeze...
So I was trying to think if there was anything I changed in the bios that could have caused this. All I did was disable the battery alarm and increase the voltage to my Memory (on my last laptop I would have random blue screens because the memory wasnt getting enough voltage.

First I restarted the battery alarm to no avail, but after putting the voltage of the memory back to 1.5v the issue has completely stopped. So if any of you have changed this or if it is set higher you could try putting it back or lowering it.

my specs:
m17x-r2
17 720
4gig memory
1 tb HD (500gb x 2 in raid0)
Single ATI 5870

 

Sorry - confirm what?

 

I'm still waiting on a number, but it definitely is sounding like you need to have at least some level of battery charge to resume or boot on battery, which are the times that the most current draw occurs. This will likely vary by configurations, requiring more power for higher end configs. I still don't have a number, but if you guys can try to keep track of when you can and can't boot on battery, that would be helpful to validate.

Also, make sure you have the latest BIOS revisions if you are seeing this on M15x or M17xR2 - the new BIOS revisions did fix some issues with this on specific configurations.

 

Never mind, I found the info in another thread.

Was wondering if there was an upcoming bios update, but it seems there is.

-Ash

 

I think we need to break this into two issues.

If anyone is seeing a no boot situation on AC power with BIOS A06, please let me know.

For the issue of not booting on battery, engineering has made it clear to me that the system needs a surge of power when resuming or booting, so some level of battery power is required to do so. Once booted, you can run on less battery power without problem. I'm trying to get them to define that threshold.

 

Brian, I seem to have both issues and am currently running A06. I just noticed today when my power cord was unplugged and I tried to start up. Nothing but a blank screen and the battery should have been fully charged.

Also sometimes when starting on AC power it won't boot. Especially after an unsafe shutdown. The quick way I found around this is to hit the power, wait a few sec, power it off, and then power it up again and it'll load. But it seems like it starts on every other "power on." Primarily I found this when the computer would freeze or crash. Simply found out due to benchmarking and crashing the system., but it does happen other imes as well, like after changing setting in the bios. Not sure if thats helpful or not.

Maybe if you can slip in a word that in the future bios we'd like to see a 225mV and 300mV increase for the cpu to go along with the 75mV and 150mV list Had to try right?

 

And while they are at it a 400w powerbrick option to go with it

-Ash

 

Are you running the ATI 10.7 reference stack or the Dell beta drivers? If so, then we've seen this before. Does this happen with the Dell A00 video driver stack?

 

Hmm, I'm running the Dell 10.8 Beta drivers (8.761-100727a-103338E-Dell). Not sure if there has been an official 10.8 release yet, if so I'll download it soon, but internet here is so slow so I havn't done much with it.

 

Looks like you guys are correct about the 50-70% battery charge level required. I have been able to get my systems here to fail anywhere below as much as 70% charge, especially for really high end configurations. The amount of battery required seems to vary a bit from system to system.

I spoke to engineering about this and asked that they improve this. For the short term, they are trying to get the number to 50% for the next BIOS. For the longer term, they are trying to get the number way down, but you know how these things go. I'll keep you guys posted out here as things develop, but for the time being, better keep that battery level pretty charged if you are planning on running or resuming on battery only... Sorry...

 

Yeah, those issues you are seeing are almost certainly a result of the beta drivers - that is why we pulled it from the web. The new version should fix those issues. Hoping it will be out later this week. Fingers crossed.

 

Sounds good, definately lookin forward to it. Didn't realize it was pulled. I always keep copies of the old driver versions. Thanks again Brian

 

See my other post somewhere in this thread... You are going to need between ~50-70% battery charge to boot or resume for now. If you have the higher end system, assume more towards 70%. A08 BIOS will improve this to some degree and engineering is working to dramatically improve this in A09.
Disabling overclocking, turbo mode, memory overvoltage, etc will help for now as it reduces that draw on the battery when the system resumes or boots.

 

Hi Brian,

Just an FYI.

I have a new m17x-R2 running A09, 8.763 Final and A01 VBIOS. My system does not wake from sleep (blank screen, no disk activity) and when I remove the AC adapter (plug from rear of laptop), I get a BSOD.

Interestingly, I don't get a BSOD when I leave the plug connected to the laptop and unplug from the wall socket. Go figure.

In order to boot the system following sleep, I have to remove the AC adapter and battery.


M17x-R2 Black | i7-840QM | 8GB-1333MHz DDR3 RAM | ATI Mobility Radeon HD5870 CrossFireX | 17" 1920x1200 RGB LED | 1TB Raid0 7.200rpm HDD | Bluetooth 370 | Intel WiFi 6300 | Windows 7 Ultimate

 

Hi Brian,

A couple of senior members directed me to the voltage settings in the BIOS discussed here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...0-gpus-5870-vbios-discussion-non-beta-32.html

Sleep/Wake now working.

Cheers,

M17x-R2 Black | i7-840QM | 8GB-1333MHz DDR3 RAM | ATI Mobility Radeon HD5870 CrossFireX | 17" 1920x1200 RGB LED | 1TB Raid0 7.200rpm HDD | Bluetooth 370 | Intel WiFi 6300 | Windows 7 Ultimate