M17x R3 Problems

Sorry to start a new thread but your old one was locked and I haven't been able to find my specific issues yet.

Problems
-Driver Power state failure at rare unpredicted intervals
-Randomly goes into sleep mode without any prompt
-CD rom drive sometimes spazzes out unless fed CD/DVDs
-Screen flickers sometimes as I hit some keys.
-The hotkey panel up top for volume/fast forward/mute/etc is coming up on one side. I think it can be glued...

I've called alienware once so far and gotten transferred 3 times upon explaining my problem and having to give out my information to each new agent. It sucks, in the end we just reinstalled the nvidia and intel graphics drivers which took forever that I could have just done myself. So hopefully I can find some answers here from users experiencing the same problems.

My specs are below, also I attatched the 3 current minidumps I have in a zip file from the DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE bluescreen I keep getting.

Code:

Processor Intel® Core™ i7 
[INDENT]2630QM 2.0GHz 
2.8GHz Turbo Mode, 6MB Cache[/INDENT]

Memory 	
[INDENT]6GB DDR3 at 1333MHz (2DIMMS)
[/INDENT]
Display Panel 	
[INDENT]17.3-inch WideHD+ 1600 x 900 60Hz WLED[/INDENT]

Video Card 	
[INDENT]1.5GB GDDR5 Nvidia GeForce GTX 460M[/INDENT]

Hard Drive 	
[INDENT]640GB Raid 0 (2x 320GB 7,200RPM)[/INDENT]

Optical Drives 	
[INDENT]Slot-Load Dual Layer DVD Burner (DVD+-RW, CD-RW)[/INDENT]

Sound 	
[INDENT]Internal High-Definition 5.1 Surround Sound Audio[/INDENT]
	
Wireless 	
[INDENT]Intel® Ultimate N WiFi Link 6300 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO Technology[/INDENT]

 

I am getting the same model with the same video card in a few weeks, so I hope I don't run into issue like yours...

-Driver Power state failure at rare unpredicted intervals
-Randomly goes into sleep mode without any prompt

Are you using the stock image that came with the machine? Also, when you reinstalled the drivers, did you do a driving cleaning before hand? That may or may not fix it, but its a good start regardless. Also, IMHO try to use furmark to check out your video card to see if it has any issues.

-CD rom drive sometimes spazzes out unless fed CD/DVDs
-Screen flickers sometimes as I hit some keys.

Loose connection connection maybe? Does it happen at the same time or it happens randomly?

-The hotkey panel up top for volume/fast forward/mute/etc is coming up on one side. I think it can be glued...

Known issue - request a replacement or you can try gluing it down like another member did.

 

-Are you using the stock image that came with the machine? Also, when you reinstalled the drivers, did you do a driving cleaning before hand? That may or may not fix it, but its a good start regardless. Also, IMHO try to use furmark to check out your video card to see if it has any issues.

Stock image? As in the BIOS? The alienware rep seemed to think the bios was the most recent version when he checked it. As for Furmark I'll look into that next. Although I really wish I could figure out what's causing it to enter sleep mode...maybe that panel that's coming off up top has a key for video card switch or sleep mode? The flickering that happened before seemed to happen from a lot of different keys though. F keys, and sometimes just tapping the touchpad.

 

I'm not really sure what to do with Furmark, Is it just a standard gpu benchmark? lots of mentions of burning and fire so I just thought I'd check in first : )

 

Stock image as in the windows image that was shipped with the laptop.

I am not sure about the flickering, but to be honest, it sounds like something is loose, or touching something else maybe causing a short.

Yes, basically it give your GPU a nice wake up call to operate 100% therefore giving a glimpse into any heat or GPU issues.

 

About the flickering and power state failure, After some extensive testing I noticed that the left side of the laptop marked with an intel sticker was getting hottest during some gaming. Eventually this led to a power state failure. I assume the intel graphics took over at some point during my previous sessions (It happened playing Team fortress 2) But it seemed to run hot constantly while playing Ragnarok online until I switched it in the nvidia control panel. Now the left side feels nice and cool like it isn't under much stress. As for the flickering I know a bit more about it now and you probably have the right idea.

I notice it most when I reach my hand over my touchpad to hit certain keys. I guess its my wrist hitting something there that triggers it. although the keys do nothing. feeling around I noticed a bit of a wobble like something's loose on the underside of the laptop. This long rectangular surface where I assume the battery is held when pushed on even slightly rattles like its fairly loose or wasn't screwed in properly. You can be the judge if that's normal. But tapping it alone doesn't seem to trigger the flickering. Although I was able to replicate it a bit putting my palm on the right side of the touch pad a bit. Touching it with my bracelet on seems to do it everytime. Go figure, I have a magnetic ionized bracelet so that probably isn't very healthy. I don't think taking it off ever completely solved the problem but did reduce it, I'll report back once I find out more. It's sounding more likely that I'll need to send this in for repairs D: Sucks when you pay 2000$ hoping to have all the work done for you and can't go a month without problems.

 

Largish update, bracelet was causing the flickering when it was moved too close to the laptop. The BSOD DRIVER_POWER_STATE failure however was not, and after doing some investigation last night and getting the windows debugging tools here's what the debugger had to say about the most recent log:

-So the argument is a device object is blocking an IRP for too long, Not sure what IRP stands for.
-The image name is PCI.sys and the bucket ID is VISTA_DRIVER_FAULT so I can assume it was a vista driver that caused the issue rather than hardware. The other useful thing about this information is it helped me find someone else's post on this very forum (Where were you earliar google?) who was experiencing the exact same problem: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/562420-m17x-r3-bsod-6.html

It looks like their solution involved the Nvidia 267.64 Driver

But they mention default drivers from nvidia won't work since they're modded by Dell. So that means I need Dell's own version?

I'm checking out the Dell site now, let me know what you think. I'd like to fix this then make the information available to other R3 users who get stuck like this too.

 

"-CD rom drive sometimes spazzes out unless fed CD/DVDs"

Your CD rom drive is hungry...?