M17x and Windows 7

What drivers for the 280gtx m with windows 7 64 bit?, i just tried the dell ones & borderlands is running at about 5 fps, thanks

 

Make sure you are not in stealth mode and Integrated/Hybrid Graphics are enabled in the BIOS.

 

Wow - what a thread!!!!...A good one though.
I REALLY need some advise.......................
Here's my deal; I made the mistake of ordering my M17X a few days before it would have came with Windows 7. I haven't really started using it because I plan to upgrade to Window 7 ASAP. But I'm AFRAID.
Right it has loaded Vista Home Premium 64 bit.
I own a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate Upgrade.
From what I'm reading it looks like it could be HELL to do a clean install. I don't want to loose all my Alienware bells & whistles.
1) What would be bad (or good) if I just do an upgrade?
2) If you think I really should do a clean install - can you point me to some directions that work (Batboy blog???). Like I said; I'm afraid......
Thanks for any and all advice!!!!
Jimmer

 

1) clean install is always better than upgrade due to leftovers of previous os.
2) after doing an upgrade you will have to install new drivers like with clean install so the same as clean install
3) after clean install follow dell directions for the order by which you install every driver.

 

I have tried to wade through this giant thread and search with no luck. I have a unknown device in device manager. The 9400 is disabled in bios,ricoh is installed, IR is also installed with the heck else could this be? Could it have something to do with alien FX?

 

maybe the creative camera which has no driver for win7 yet? install the vista one

 

this must be the device driver you are searching for

 

Camera not working / found after installing Windows 7.
Hi all - I notice further back in this thread someone else has the driver erroring out during driver install for the integrated Creative Labs web cam. It was working great in Vista. I just can't figure it out. Has any one come across this and solved it?
Thanks,
Jim

 

I am getting 60 fps on windows 7 64bit

did you install the sli profile update:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_multigpu_SLI_profile_update_v3.html

 

Did you do a Windows update? I think Windows update found my camera and installed the drivers for it because I didn't install any camera drivers seperately. It's working fine.

 

can any one help me, i just got my m17x wit the following specs, gtx 280m sli, 4gb ram, quad core 2ghz, 1200p screen and i just ram 3dmark 06 and i got 9k on the score !!!!!!! whats going on?? i updated all of the drivers and unlucky the same, on the nvidia settings the sli its enlabled and everything else its on stock settings

 

I had the same problem. Scrap Win7 and install Vista 64bit. The lappy will run 100 times better.

After doing that I got a 13k 3dmark and a 12k Vantage at default settings.

 

i have installed windiws vista 64 bit

 

I installed only the drivers it needed after I installed vista SP2 and all the updates. I didnt run installs on any of the drivers. I just pointed it to the folder except for the wireless and display drivers. I didnt install command center or the bluetooth.
I also just installed the app for the web cam. I didnt have to install drivers for the NIC card and sound card. I used the native ones.
I used the current display drivers off of the web site. I had Hybrid and onboard card enabled through the install. Once it was all setup I disabled the Hybrid option.

 

received w7 today http://kaifas.lt/IMG_7272.jpg

 

Thanks Douglaz.......camera is working! Yahooo!
I'm almost there..... right now just issues with WiFi (going up and down) and had a boot-up to a black screen with a blinking cursor this morning. I believe others have had these issues...hopefully some more research will clear it up. Fun, fun. Jim

 

hopefully my copy will arrive soon. once it does. full wipe and install and i'll post results

 

I did that and ended up regretting it due to so many problems under win7. Went back to Vista and have no problems.

 

Updated to Windows 7 (upgrade, but booted from DVD to be able to clean install). Only installed drivers which Win7 didn't recognize (nvidia chipset, alienware OSD, Geforce Drivers, Bluetooth, Media Card, Command Center). At first, for an unknown reason, it ate away CPU @ idle (35%). When checking in resource monitor, had something to do with the DPC process. The CPU issue magically disappeared after a night of sleep (? Win 7 indexing). Now performance is good/better than Vista. Memory usage is less than Vista, so no complaints here.

The master boot record fix for the recovery partition from Dell doesn't work (RAID 0, and mine got delivered with the OS on the second array). Is there a way to solve this (one never knows that reinstall will be required and win 7 checks for installed OS)?

 

is there a known issue with Win 7 and 186.64 drivers? My performance in Vantage is horrible..... getting lesst than 5000 points, in Vista i was over 12000....

Any ideas?

 

With all the Windows 7 nightmares, i'd say go back to Vista until everything gets worked out. You will always have issues with hardware and new OSs. Windows 7 DID just come out on 10/22 so expect a few months wait or atleast until Service pack 1 comes around.

 

Well my copy arrived today (speak of the devil)
Clean install on Win7 HP
Installed Chipset/video/sound + the AW bits (OSD and CC)
No issues what so ever
Ran Batman Arkham Asylum flawlessly
Used the Vid drivers from the Dell site.

 

Well i beg to disagree.... I have no issues at all with Vista runs 10x better than Vista on my laptop... my only issue is with Vantage not even real world gaming.

 

Well, suddenly my camera is just "gone" again. This happened after the PC booted into a black screen with just a blinking cursor. I don't see anywhere in Windows update to reinstall it.
Installing the Vista driver just errors out at 90%.
I never did see where it is or should be in Device Manager.
Anyone know where to find the camera in Device Manager?
Thanks,
Jim

 

Under Imaging Devices

 

Thanks for the fast reply. I thought that would be the correct location. Under there I only see facap, FastAccess Video Capture....by Sensible Vision. It was disabled; enabling shows an FA Virtual cam in YouCam....but not picture.....
Weird...huh?
Thanks,
Jim

 

Thanks for this advice - I seem stable now; but stuck at a low 54.0 Mbps. Any thoughts?

 

is there a video driver that can stop the login screen from flashing about 4 times. i could prob log on 10 seconds faster if not for this. i am using the 186.82 that batboy suggested and no dice...

 

Its not the video driver. Its a caused by the 9400 being active. Nothing you can do about it except:

Disable Hybrid and Integrated Graphics in the BIOS. Side Effect: Going to Battery will not kick you into the 9400 which = reduced battery life.

If you are going to go on battery for an extended period of time, just reboot and reactivate these two in the BIOS. Its a small price to pay, but you wont have the screen flash @ the welcome login screen and you will also reduce your thermal temps as the 9400 will not be generating heat. How I have my system set up.

NOTE: If you do follow this, be sure to re-enable these two if you are going to be doing any display driver changes. Always have the 9400 enabled when installing a driver.

 

that did the trick!!! thanks bat. that kinda sucks that we cant use the 9400 without bios change. windows 7 has been a hell of an experience so far. just out of curiosity why are you on the 186.82? do you ghet best results with them? i always did best with 186.12... thanks again rep coming.

 

I'm running perfectly well with Hybrid enabled - absolutely no flashing or black screens at the login prompt. Currently on the 186.82 drivers with only the occasional annoyance that the Fn-F7 to switch doesn't work, but that seems to be related to the power management settings in Win7, because if I reset it from "Power Saver" to "Performance" then back again, it works for a few sessions.

Don't take the advice of switching the 9400 off as gospel - for many myself included there's no issue any more, so my suspicion is that something else is causing the problem. Maybe it's firmware versions of the GPUs themselves - perhaps it's the power settings you have set (I always tweak mine from "Performance" then enable/disable a few things, Power Saver/Performance being one - if there's an easy way to extract what I have set up, I'll try and post these), it could be the nVidia driver settings though I have barely touched them on my system.

** Just figured out the "powercfg" command-line program allows me to export the settings for a scheme, so will try that out tonight when I get home **

 

@bjrebo: Glad to hear it worked for you. As I said, if you are on AC then there is absolutely no reason to have the 9400 enabled. Just going to produce more heat. As to your driver question, 186.82 is a winner in my book. With 186.12 I was having 'wake from sleep' issues (waking to blank screen) as well as performance drops in L4D and TF2. 186.64 is fine - but I prefer 186.82. Just my preference. If 186.12 works great for you then by all means, stick with it.


@ Taomyn: Its not a 'problem' its the display drivers being registered. In any case, yes, do not take it as "Gospel". If your system is running fine, then no worries.

 

Going to disable the 9400M myself as well. Get a blank screen for a few seconds when logging in. And considering i never use the thing on battery, i guess its a waste having it enabled.

Didn't install the webcam driver just as an fyi. Let windows sort it. Face recognition working fine

 

finally can the sli update 3 be used with 186.xx drivers without problem? nvidia says that it must be used with v191.07 WHQL display driver

 

Seems to work fine for me - using 186.82

 

Is your laptop joined to a domain, or just a workgroup? I actually had to revert back to the old CC because the Sense application would change the way I login (I'm used to it assuming the last person will login again, and simply asking for a password... With Sense, I needed to actually select the user every time.). Even with Sense never enabled, it made this change.

I was originally going to use the Facial Recognition, but found it to work only until you had ONE failed recognition. Thereafter, you'd get the "Not Licensed" error.

 

i tried red faction guerilla (dx10).

for 186.91 driver:

- with sli update 3 i got an average of 50 fps at high detail level. however the stuttering with sli update 3 very often especially after explosions

- without sli update and the same driver (186.91) i got an average of 32fps. minimum to no stuttering is a serious reason to prefer 32fps (without sli update 3).

for 186.82

- at the same detail level i get 25 -27 fps or even less so not playable.

this is an example of a demanding game. those are the games i like to try on.

 

Okay. Today is my birthday....you can have my b-day wish if you can solve this one....
Webcam missing and Vista driver fails.
I’m at my wit’s end with the integrated camera after doing a clean install of Windows 7.
*The webcam worked fine in Vista.
During the install of Windows 7 (Ultimate upgrade disk) this past Saturday I got this message at about 90% during the install of the Vista Webcam driver: "An error occurred while setting up the driver"
I followed the order of drivers on Batboy’s site. Everything else went okay (WiFi another issue for another time).
My webcam was not recognized; however – I did a complete shutdown and on start up the camera was suddenly working!!! Foolishly (?), I left well enough alone and didn’t install the Vista driver or look to see what was in Device Manager.
*On Monday after a reboot (I think it was Windows’ Update) the camera was gone. I removed all the Windows “auto” updates but that didn’t change a thing.
*In Device Manager: facap, FastAcces Video Capture is the only device. And it does not find anything new.
*In Programs & Features Control Panel – There is no Integrated Webcam Driver, Creative Tech. Remember; it never would and still won’t load.

I hate to go back to Vista now or start the install over……..but I don’t know what the heck to do.

***Does anyone know anything else I can try?
The fact that I did the clean install without formatting the hard drive related to any issues (seems a long shot)?
I spent a lot of hours already on this; and late into last night. It’s my birthday and I want my camera and Window 7 to work!!!
Thanks for ANY advice.
Jimmer
M17X Black Metallic / Core2 Duo T9600 2.8GHz / 4GB DDR3 1333MHz / 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M (NB10E-GT1) / 500GB 7,200RPM / Window 7 Ultimate 64bit (for now)

 

You sound like me when I was trying to get win7 to work on my m17x. Do yourself a favor. Just format it and put Vista back on it and save yourself the frustrations.

 

There's no need to get rid of Win 7 a much better OS than Vista just because 1-2 things arent working.... I have my M17x running with no isses whatsoever and Vista never ran it this well.... just FYI.

 

I am not sure why you are having all these issues... i did encounter some annoying issues my first Win 7 install with my Wireless Card however I was able to resolve the problem by.

- Backup whatever Data you need
- Perform a clean install of Win 7, when you get to the partition part, make sure you delete and recreate a new drive
- Once Win 7 is up do a system restore checkpoint (to save yourself from a clean install again in the future)
- Proceed on installing the drivers as found here (in this order)
http://m17x.blogspot.com/2009/10/current-windows-7-64-drivers.html
- CAUTUTION: I would uncheck Ethernet when installing the chipset... use the Win 7 ethernet drivers for now, they actually work well.
- Make sure you do at least a couple of System Resotre checkpoints in between and one when all the drivers are installed.
- Your devices should all be working, webcam included and all the featuresfrom Command Center should be operational.

This takes time, but it saves you time trying to find a root cause for whatever conflict you have now.

Happy B-day

 

ok press Fn+ F9 and then try again. webcam is obviously deactivated. can i have your wish?

 

Hi. I'll be shocked (in a good way) if it's that easy....I'll let you know in a few hours if you get my wish...at work still in the windy city. Otherwise so far a new clean install is the best advice so far. I'll keep my fingers crossed for this idea.
Jimmer

 

yes clean install is always the best solution. many of us took advantage of win7 free upgrade but i dont think anyone used it. i got the upgrade dvd too before two days but i will possibly never use it.


as for this trick i had the same problem even on vista. and it was what i just told you. waiting for your news. if you installed the osd application you will see when the camera will be enabled or disabled.

 

So I installed windows 7 and now when i try to open a game like wow it fails to find a sutible display device and just dosent open. Ive tried downloading the 260M driver off dell but the download keeps timing out and closeing, and when i download from nvidia it just says im not useing win 7 64 bit. How can i fix this i have a raid tonight and dont want to miss it .

 

Hellooo ladies! i got my copy of windows 7 the other day and was wondering if there are any probs with it. I recall having heard probs with the alienware cc and some video drivers.
I am aware of the thread at http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=393573&highlight=windows+7+problems
however, that was months ago. I also dont understand what everyones talking about having win7 from all those mnths ago but watever!

plz just post the kind of probs to be expected, don't want to be hit with a wall of text!

ty

 

Has anyone gotten theirs with the Windows 7 factory install? I ordered mine the 23rd, but it will still be a few weeks before it is delivered.

Just wondering if there is anything I will need to change out of the box.

I did not get eh ATI cards before someone asks... back on the 23rd, there was still a lot of debate on what these was and spooked me away from it.

 

My install of Windows 7 Ultimate 64 has gone fairly flawlessly. I did a fresh install (not an in-place upgrade) and everything seems to be running very well... except for one little annoying bug.

Here's the post I created on the Windows 7 technet site...

Technet

Just can't seem to isolate what is causing this. Freaken annoying.

I've created a little script that auto-restarts the WMI (and dependant services) that stops it occurring, but I would like to find a better solution.

 

Ok for everyone who has upgraded to or is planning to upgrade to win 7.

I would like to recommend the Nivida 187.66 driver from www.laptopvideo2go.com

Before installing this driver I was having a lot of problems with games, Dawn of War 2 would go down to 2 fps, Call of Duty W@W ran bad with AA and overall performance was poor, with stuttering in most games.

I had tried 186.40 (original win7), 195.39 (beta), 186.81(nvidia), 186.82 (Lv2go)

I have had one problem with this driver which is power dvd 8 doesn't like it and won't play blu rays (any help on this appreciated). Hybrid sli works fine tho

Otherwise this is a great driver, I can play W@W 1900 x 1200 max settings 4xAA, doesnt go under 60 fps, Left 4 Dead 1920 x 1200 max settings 16 x AA doesnt go under 60 fps, Dawn of War 2 same res reduced settings reasonable frame rate. (ill install more games tonight and let people know how they go)

I was going to format and reinstall vista 64, but now I have good performance I am finally happy with the laptop except when I want to watch a blu ray

 

Enjoy my B-day wish! Holy poop!!! So, so simple and right in front of my eyes! That worked and now the driver loaded.
I love you.....man.

Now I just have to tweek my WiFi......hopefully that's the worst of it left.
G'night.
Jimmer