M17x R3, R2, etc. official Win 8 driver support?

I was wondering if anyone here, or perhaps an Alienware rep, can confirm whether or not we can expect official Windows 8 driver support for older M17x models, such as the R3, and if so, possibly a time frame for that support?

I realize the retail release is still a week away, and that for the most part Windows 8 does work fine with existing drivers (updated ATI graphics drivers for the R3 would be a godsend, however) but I'm still curious about this...

Thanks in advance

 

Curious about R2 support as well with Win 8

 

We don't have official information yet, until it gets released, but as far as I know, the R2 and R3 models shouldn't have any problems with the drivers. I'll look into it and try to get more information tomorrow.

 

Thank you, I appreciate that

I have MSDN, so I've been using Windows 8 for awhile now on my R3. I have the Radeon 6970M and it's been my experience so far that the Windows 7 Dell drivers for it don't work (the system blues creens and is unable to start after the drivers are installed) but that otherwise everything is working fine.

So I'm mostly just hoping to hear we'll get some official drivers for the Radeon

 

R4 has some drivers up for windows 8 including new bios M17R4A09WIN64.
But the bios is somehow undownloadble..

 

Please push for a bios for the older models, what we want really is to know that the company still supports us - especially since these machines don't come cheap

 

I have been running the final Win 8 Pro for about a month and in my experience all Windows 7 drivers work perfectly with Win 8 on the R3. The vast majority of drivers were installed automatically with Windows 8 and the few I installed from Dell worked fine. I have an nvidia card and the latest verde package works great for me. For me there wasn't any driver issues at all and Windows 8 is fully functional.

 

Well, we're two days away from the retail release, so hopefully we'll have some answers soon! I've noticed a few more Win 8 drivers showing up for the R4, but none for the R3 as of yet.

 

its actually out tomorrow

 

Plenty of Windows 8 drivers are put up @ Dell right now. They're just not downloadable, as always with Dell !!

 

You could try disabling IGP with the new A12 bios from dell if you don't need the power-saving feature That way you should be able to use the official drivers from AMD (if those are win8 compatible ;-)).

 

Unfortunately I have tried that and it results in the screen having a maximum brightness of about half what it should normally be. Dell is aware of that issue too, so hopefully there's something in the works to solve all this stuff

 

My bad, could've checked the A12 thread for your name

 

I'm going to side track just a smidge here. Since AMD is now doing a unified driver model (like nVidia) and has detached the Intel drivers from their set will we be installing the Intel GPU driver first then installing the AMD ones after that separately like how it is done for nVidia?

 

Hey guys,

I have an update, the models that are going to have official driver support by Dell are:

M14x r1 and r2
M17x r3 and r4
M18x r1 and r2
x51
Aurora R4

 

Yeah, a lot of drivers are listed under Windows 8 on the Dell site, and I appreciate that... But they NEVER Download... EVER. Your download portal is essentially broken! Could something be done about that first please? Your 'delivery-to-customer' mechanism is down.. Think it ought to be a top priority, but this has been a problem for quite a while. Also, I'm not the only customer in the only country that finds the Dell driver download portal site to be broken. Ask around, Natalia. Also, I don't understand why the site is so overly IE-friendly. Sometimes I have to extrapolate your FTP download link from the HTTP download link that I capture from your site. Sometimes the file exists and most of the time it does not. I think this issue needs to get it's due attention from Dell, and addressed swiftly.

 

Thank you for the update! That is great news.

 

follow this link Dell Computer Support for Windows 8 Upgrade | Dell M17 R3 doest not support win 8

 

That article is from August and appears to be about purchasing upgrades to Windows 8 for computers currently sold by Dell and is not necessarily about driver support.

 

when your trying to download from the dell site are you using Internet explorer? I could only get the downloads to work when using IE instead of chrome or firefox. I also had to go specifically to the manufacturer sites for some drivers to work on Windows 8 on the R3. Bigfoot's wireless card was one, i also used the m17x r4 software for command center and the osd application.

 

Having problems downloading from all 3 browsers.

 

According to the Official Dell Support site, the M17x R3 and R2 are unsupported for Windows 8. Did they not test the system, or was it tested and found incompatable with Windows 8? Does this seem right to anyone else? We purchase their very expensive hardware, yet they drop all support for their customers within a year (i.e. new product release). I am using the Release Preview with no issues, rather it actually works better than Windows 7. Does anyone have advice for Windows 8 drivers?

Dell Computer Support for Windows 8 Upgrade | Dell

 

i have the full version of windows 8 PRO i can report NO!!! issues at all with my system i am using the 306.93 drivers from NVIDIA and the latest Intel HD 3000 FROM INTEL both have windows 8 support and am using default dell drivers for everything else again no issues

 

Does anyone know if the 3D controller on M17xR3 works in Win8? That's the only thing keeping me from upgrading now...

 

Ok. I have an M17X R4 and for my service tag I need the following (according to Dell's driver website):

Alienware OSD Application
Sound Blaster Recon3Di - Creative CT9570
Realtek RTS5209 Card Reader
Intel HM77 Panther Point Chipset | Intel Panther Point HM77 Chipset
Intel Management Engine Interface
Dell Wireless 380 Bluetooth4.0 Module
Synaptics Touchpad
Intel Rapid Storage Technology
ST Microelectronics LNG3DM Free Fall Sensor
Intel(R) IvyBridge HD Graphics

The ones in GREEN I have successfully downloaded from Dell's website. The rest, will fail every time with an error 103 in status bar. However I have found a couple of drivers elsewhere from their manufacturer websites:

Realtek RTS5209 Card Reader
Intel Management Engine Interface
Intel Rapid Storage Technology

Hope this helps some of you. I'm still digging for the HD graphics driver, I haven't bothered too much with it at the moment as I never use it.

 

make sure your using internet explorer and you right click on administrative mode. Dell and HP drivers have tendencies to need to be run in administrative mode.
.

 

for the intel graphics driver you can get a windows 8 driver from Intels website

 

im unable to download all except touchpad.
normal way says file not found and download manager fails.

dell fix youre stuff

 

I am still shocked to see that Dell will not support Windows 8 for the M17x R3. The system is less than a year old with hardware far above the Windows 8 requirements. I paid a lot of money for a system to last at least three years (Master's Program), but to see that Dell is refusing to support any upgrades does not make me want to purchase another Dell in the future. If any Dell representitives are reading this forum, I would love to know what (if any) compatability testing was done and the results which caused Dell to state that my M17x R3 is an "unsupported system type... and [is] not recommended for upgrade to Windows 8 by Dell."

 

An Alienware rep in this thread one page back said the R3 will get official driver support for Windows 8 from Dell. I've already pointed out that the page people keep linking appears to involve only systems currently for sale and their eligibility for Windows 8/Windows 8 discounts.

 

Cheesy: You are actually wrong. The link that I provided shows the "Alienware computers available for purchase between October 1st, 2011 and October 26th, 2012 that have been tested with Windows 8." The M17x R3 is listed, but under Supported it says "NO". Alienware-Natalia-J said on page 2 that it would be supported. Maybe she has incorrect data, or Dell changed their mind. If she is still here, maybe she (or another rep) has an update for a support date...

 

That page was last updated in August, so let's hope the Alienware rep's information is newer. Maybe they can clarify.

 

I've been running Windows 8 Pro on my M17x R3 flawlessly. Mind you I don't have the 3D screen. The only issue I had was I had to do a manual install of the newest Windows 8 Intel HD 3000 driver after the upgrade. It became corrupted/missing for some reason. Once that was installed everything was good to go.

I should also mention I updated my touchpad drivers to a non-Dell version from HP supporting Windows 8 gestures and it worked out quite swimmingly

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/694398-windows-8-touchpad-gestures-working.html

If you need help on the Intel HD driver go here: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...sion=Windows 8, 64-bit*&DownloadType=Drivers

 

+1, no issues so far on R3 with Win8 x64.

 

I think the only major issue for the R3 is that there is no official driver solution for models with Radeons.

 

Using Win 8 Pro x64, I have problems with the AMD's Catalyst video drivers on a clean install. After I install them, my M17x R3 wakes from sleep with a blank screen, need to do hard restart to fix once it happens. Nice thing is switching worked fine. Hopefully that problem gets sorted out. But since sleep is very important for me I uninstalled them. I'm currently using AMD signed drivers provided thru Windows Update, no Catalyst or switching, but sleep works.

Also have a funny thing going on with RST. It's reporting 3 Gb/s for my SSD in Port 1. Was getting 6 Gb/s in Windows 7. I did install 11.6 so that might be the problem.

 

There is none major issue with Radeon drivers in windows 8. I installed official Dell drivers after fresh windows install and then 12.11 over them without any problem or BSOD.

 

Which version of the Dell drivers? Latest ones for R3? Do switchable graphics still work?

I'll check it out. I haven't tried 12.11, but with prior versions it's either been blue screens or no switchable graphics.

 

All official Dell drivers and for VGA, I installed official dell drivers and then 12.11 beta on top of them and yes switchable is working as well.

 

I don't even know why I didn't try that route. I installed the official dell drivers, then 12.11, switching and sleeps works. Installing just 12.11 would allow me to switch, but again, blank screen after wake up. Thanks

Edit: Doing a bit of digging, I'm noticing the end result is a bit different between the two install methods. Doing just 12.11 only I recall I had a much newer 2012 dated intel driver, doing the official dell, then 12.11 beta 4, I have a ATI provided Intel driver dated 6/9/2011.

 

If you are seeing old ntel driver dated 6/9/2011 then, if you check your windows for updates, you will find latest intel driver over there but I didn't install it since I dont need them.

 

When I was researching the issue earlier, I read over on leshcatlabs.net that someone was having the same blanking issue after wake up on Windows 8 that I was having. Obviously they were using Leshcat's driver, but I had the same exact problem with either Leshcats, 12.10 and 12.11. Anyway, this post stated that they where able to solve it by installing an older Intel driver. Just coupling my experience with that comment, I am going to leave the older intel driver alone since it does appear to be working now.

 

I had good experience with leshcatlabs drivers on win 7 but since official Catalyst installed without any problem in win8, I didn't try leshcatlabs ones on it.

 

how about gaming, do all games work well. because when I try with win 8 RTM a few game such as Sniper Elite v2, Fifa 12 they some time crash/freeze. It does not happend on win7 :-s

 

So far they are working well, just got Need for Speed Most Wanted, working perfectly. Dishonored had some issue but it resolved by playing it in win7 compatibility mode.

 

Ok, so this is the official list of computers that are going to be completely supported by Dell to run Windows 8:

*M11x r3
*M14x r2
*M17x r4
*M18x r2
*X51
*Aurora R4

I apologize for misinforming you guys before but it was a misunderstanding, only those models will have driver support on our website, models like the M17x r3, M14x r1 and M18x r1 should be able to run windows 8 with the native drivers and the drivers released by the different manufacturer's (Nvidia, Killer networks, etc.) but are not officially supported by Dell.

 

That does not sound like good customer support. We pay a lot of money for these computers, and Dell basically decided that in order to get continued support we need to buy a new computer every year. That seems like a load of BS!

On a quasi-side note, does anyone know how Dell will replace a broken laptop under the Accidental Damage Complete Care plan? Say my M17x R3 is 100% damaged, do they have a stock of new M17x R3s somewhere, do they replace it with a refurbished M17x R3, or will they replace it with a new M17x R4 having comparable pricing/specs? I only ask because now that the M17x R3 is no longer supported, I need to be sure I will not be left out to dry in the case of a destroyed laptop.

 

I'm usually a huge critic myself, but shockingly enough, I'm with Dell (and Natalia) on this one. It's not always feasible for a company to provide continued support for every individual product that's made, especially for companies like Dell, Samsung and others which have wide arrays of products. Almost every company does this, and understandably so (most of the time). You know what brands I'm talking about. The individual vendors like Intel, AMD, nVidia and others are there to provide you driver support for your hardware. Dell is only a middleman and it's a waste of effort for them to support you when you can support yourself. In the end, it's a business. Also, about the money we paid. We all got what we asked (/bargained) for, so be content. I've been using Windows 8 RTM for a while now, long before Dell provided the driver downloads on their (broken) site. I scavenged the net for every driver and have had a stable running system for quite some time.

 

^
Same. And completely agree. Yea shure some of the links didn't work via the website. Its called google guys. Have had win 8 the second it got released and after a few hours everything including the switchable graphics is working. Huge fan of Win 8.

I work in retail. Honestly the majority of people I deal with don't even get as far as getting to the manufacturers website and downloading the updates. They just assume its broken........

Tip: Go to the dell website and look up what model you have. Find the version numbers for whichever hardware/software you need to install and google it. I managed to find a mirror for almost everything that was uploaded by many awesome people.


Alienware M17x R4 | Intel i7 3610 | 32GB Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz | 120gb Mushkin mSATA SSD + 120gb Intel 520 SSD (RAID 0) | Nvidia GTX 680M 2GB

 

^ Pretty impressive for a first post, there.