M17xR2 | S3 Resume = Loss of Brightness Control via FN keys and/or BSOD issues

it is a pity to hear that bro.. and I also own Vaio VGN-A 790 almost 7 years and it is alive and rock solid.. just outdated and weak..

the sad thing that we will have to eat this Dell's cake

 

How convenient. That ToS limits our ability to thoroughly assemble and provide the necessary info to resolve this issue. After my tonsillectomy checkup, I am calling Dell again. This time I'm am looking for the complaints dept. in the states.

 

Hey there, Steve, sucks that there's still no fix for this issue.
May I suggest you reopen your thread using Chris's username or not at all, mention older different brand laptop instead of Vaio, I don't think the reason it got deleted it's the fact that they don't want to admit it. Try to contact a moderator there too

Good luck, mate!
Take care

 

Hey Katalin, have already resubmitted an edited post....maybe got binned as i used Chris' surname.....thats the only thing I could think of....
just hope they arent sweeping it under the preverbial "carpet"..... I get the strong impression that its censorship for their own protection.

 

Guys,

I just wanted to give you all a mini update.

Basically, because I have escalated this issue as far as I possibly can, I dont know what more I or we can do as a group. I emailed my exec rep today for an update on things. He got back to me with the response that he is liasing with Chris and Engineering to see what is going on. He has assured me (hopefully - yet to be seen) that he has escalted this to a very high priority....

I was told that he would get back to me after he has received a response from Chris or Dell Engineering no later than Tuesday 10th May 2011.

Lets wait and see what happens.......I will update the thread as soon as i hear more.....watch this space!

 

Thanks for the update, I didn't get anywhere with tech support yesterday he finally admitted that it is a known problem but says that it isn't the hardware it is the software and has something to do with the lights but there isn't a fix for it.

 

Thanks for the update.

 

Guys,

I just wanted to post ANOTHER mini - update. This one I feel is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT as I have "reverted" back to running my system on "everything Dell" (i have done this just to re-test that it is a specific Dell problem and not brought about by use of AMD referenve video drivers, which was what I initially thought was causing this problem almost 6 months ago). We all know that this is not the case and the problem is prevelant which ever driver is used be it Dell or AMD and it doesnt matter what bios is used either....official or test bios - the result is the same.

Due to my own circumstances, and after having escalated my own case to Dell Executive Resolutions, you may know that I was asked to flash my main system bios to that of A10 to see if that helped things. As you know, I was slightly sceptical of this approach as we know A10 does not work for this issue.

So, to be thorough and exhaustive, I went one step further to prove to Dell that this is a problem that exists on THIER drivers and bios version regardless.

I have done a few things tonight. I uninstalled the video drivers I had been using of late (which were AMD 11.4) and cleaned up after install.

I then downloaded Dell 8.763 via Dell Download Manager to be following the instructions Dell would recommend.

I also removed the synaptics touchpad driver I had been using direct from Syanptics along with the Scrybe stuff and downloaded the synaptics driver from Dell following the same protocol - Dell Download Manager.

I continued to install the 8.763 Dell Driver set followed by the Dell Synaptics touchpad Drivers and restarted.

I then proceeded to download the A10 bios and ensured that my system was fully charged and plugged in with no devices attached and no programs open. Proceeded with the flash and all went well. (I hate flashing bios at the best of times but needs must to show willing to Dell yet again!)

Ok, so at this point, after a restart we are good to go - my system is 100% Dell and 100% Dell drivers and BANG up to date with EVERYTHING.

On to testing sleep/resume and brightness. BANG.....yep, you got it...close the lid and open it back up and brightness adjustability for the internal screen is no longer controlable.

So.....conclusions....

Well, as I am now BANG up to date with all Dell stuff, bios, drivers ..everything...my current situation running A10 is now worse than what it was before running test bios X31 because the brightness is yet again uncontrollable after resume from S3 sleep. Havent really had long enough to test for network issues or other issues using A10 but I am "wildly" presuming that these will be ok as it only seemed to be tes bios X31 that brought about these problems - to the best of my knowledge.

Definetly not working...test bios didnt work, A10 certainly doesnt work...nothing does.

This is NOT just an issue using reference video drivers, it runs deeper than that and personally, I feel that its long overdue a fix given as my first post on this issue was back on 2nd January 2011.



Thought I would let you all know how my "experiement" with using "ALL DELL" stuff went.....

Steve.

 

I've been on the phone for 3 hours+ going in circles....3rd time calling to hangs ups. I've tried a fresh W764 retal install....as soon as I install AW CCC and OSD the issue arrises.

Still on the phone...............customer care said that I need to pay an extra 249.99 for support for AW software that came out of the box!!!


I'm sooooo tired of all of this back and forth and no progress

 

Thats ridiculous! - I can understand a charge for troubleshooting problems on a system that has non-factory installed software on it (i.e stuff that it didnt come pre-installed with) but thats just crazy....thats a typical crappy answer from a Dell rep who just wants to transfer you !

Oh, and my alienhead on/off button is now glowing and then not glowing on and off randomly every few minutes even though my battery is charged up 100% - its cycling through stages of showing charging and not charging.....another glitch with bios - this time A10 for me.....brightness still not working correctly either on A10 and stock Dell Drivers across the board and no other crap installed....basically im on a clean install too....

 

The problem lies between the Alienware Command Center, Alienware OSD & W764bit Power Management. 2 months ago I installed a brand new retail copy of W764bit. Everything was perfect until I installed the Alienware Command Center & Alienware OSD.

The person I spoke with today said they are aware of this problem and have received a memo from engineering that a fix is in the works.


steviejones133 can you change the title of this thread to not include the video drivers since they are not the cause of this issue?

 

steviejones - thanks again for your tireless pursuit of resolution to this issue. It seems you may have the attention of the right people now. Let's hope for a positive outcome.

Perhaps an exchange with an M18x will be appropriate if they are unable to cure the problem on the M17x R2 for us in a timely fashion.

 

Cant change the thread title - only mod's can do that.....Sky, you mentioned something about an internal memo - care to elaborate for us all? - when I last spoke to my exec rep, he said that he would "escalate" this and this was on Friday 7th May....he also told me that I will receive an update by no later than Tuesday 10th May - that seems a ridiculously short space of time to come up with a fix - if it is fixable at all.

Its my ermm....pleasure??? lol......well, Im certainly not wanting to hang around and play even more guinea pig to Dells "offings" for fixes....as I said to Skygunner, Ive been told the 10th and if there is nothing available then, I think I will be strongly pushing as this has gone on far too long...I reckon they will be "clutching at straws" to be honest....one minute its bios, next minute its OSD and CC etc etc....lets just wait and see.

I (for what its worth) am about to do yet another clean install as basically, I want to have my system absolutely bang up to date without any traces of anything other than what would be considered a completely stock factory M17x R2 with all the latest drivers and updates installed as a bare minimum.
Its probably a foregone conlcusion that it wont remedy anything but at least then I have a completely blank canvas which, technically, should work.

I want to be in the strongest position I possibly can be come Monday or Tuesday to say, "right, this is what ive done, still doesnt work....end of story...." and I dont want suggestions like "we need to take your system in to the depot for further analysis" because its 100% as clean and up to date as it possibly can be.

 

All he could tell me is that yesterday morning his team received a memo from engineering about this issue. I believe him because all 3 of the people(AW tech) I talked to yesterday knew exactly what I was talking about without making me jump through a bunch of hoops.

Actually for the past 2 days, half of the AW techs that I talked to knew about this issue.

steviejones133 can you think of a more up to date title and request a mod to change it. It is very important!! We all know that the Video drivers have nothing to do with this issue. But because it says so in the heading some techs go straight to uninstalling our official drivers and installing the old Dell driver wasting everybody's time.

If you manage to get a India Dell tech just hang up and call again because you'll be on the phone for 3 hours+ going nowhere.


Don't bother with a clean install. I've already tried that. If you want to get rid of the problem uninstall OSD & AW CC>reboot>run CCleaner>reboot.

^This fix is unacceptable at this point because it causes more problems than it solves and it also causes us to loose too much functionality. When you call make sure your already on Dell video drivers & A10 bios to save a whole lot of time on the phone troubleshooting.

 

I see that we are seriously on the same page

Maybe putting this in bold will help the engineering deptartment?

Since the AW Command Center is a part of the problem maybe they could update it to look as snazzy as the R3's AW Command Center. The R2's is a little long in the tooth.

I forgot to mention that after a fresh install, installing OSD or AW CC causes the issue. What needs to be conveyed to engineering is that Prolonged use after resumming from sleep results in BSOD without a memory dump causing the loss of unsaved data this usually happends an hour to 2 hours down the road. I don't believe engineering is aware of that part of the problem because most AW techs that know about this problem think it's ok to go without being able to control the brightness even with a extremely dark screen.....but then I tell them about the BSOD that follows down the road....and then the tone changes to yeah that needs to be fixed.

 

Well guys - Im back with a brand spanking new clean install with all Dell official drivers (including video drivers just for fun) for my M17x R2.

Did all the windows updates (which took FOREVER as I had to do SP1 and .net 4 etc etc - took about 4 hours or so overall!) for my system.

I know you said not to bother Sky, but I want to be prepared when I consult tomorrow or Tuesday - I want to be in a position where i can say "look - here it is - clean install - all dell drivers blah blah blah)

Anyway, on to testing.

Close the lid to sleep. Open it up again and BAM - first time lucky for me that the brightness goes uncontrollable after just one sleep/resume! (saved me from testing some more lol)

Letting the system idle now - waiting for the bsod.....it will come sooner or later, I just know it.

Oh, side note....as you all know, i am also on A10 - just incase some Dell chap reads this!

Also, the alienhead on/off button is playing up again...cycling through different states of charging...one minute its constant indicating full charge, the next its glowing indicating charging! - I know the battery is 100% as its been plugged in all day whilst ive been clean installing. I have since taken some vidoe footage of this anomaly and hope to post it up as soon as I can. Basically, it confirms that the system is at 100% and when I pan the camera over to the on/off button, its pictured "glowing" as if its charging.

I recall myself and AlexNvidia experienced this a bit further back in this thread - shame Alex hasnt been around to post....hope he hasnt kicked the bucket!

So, there we have it. I will PM Batboy to see what we can do about the thread title.

Conclusive evidence that indeed the R2 is a bag of poo - when it comes down to putting it in a sleep state, at least! - cant be doing with a laptop that I cant close the lid on, leave for some time to conserve power etc only to find total system failure occuring randomly....and losing funcionality that should be standard.

 

Thread title changed to something "more appropriate" - thanks Batboy.

 

Sorry to revive an old thread, but this issue just came up for me as well. VERY annoying. I can adjust my brightness successfully via the power options still, just not the function buttons. Is this the case with you?

What's so obnoxious and weird about this is that it's a new issue! Why the hell does a new issue come up with no system changes??

 

Thanks all for chasing this problem with Dell so hard

I have similar problem with my R2 on Linux, so I think this is more likely to be hardware (BIOS) or AMD driver related.

Last week I installed Ubuntu Linux 11.04 on my M17xR2 (A10 BIOS), with AMD driver installed through Ubuntu's driver repository. After the first suspend/resume, (which works fine through Fn key, close lid, or press power button), I am unable to suspend the 2nd time through Fn key or close the lid. And more importantly, press the power button after resume will cause system to shutdown immediately (like lost of power suddenly).

I also noticed that disable some of wireless/lan/1394/bluetooth/audio from BIOS (forget which combination I used) cause a blank display after resume.

So this could eventually a hardware/BIOS related issue. But it's also possible that some power management code in the driver (not necessarily AMD, could be broadcom) is causing the problem.


I will try more tests on my Linux installation tonight. In the mean time, could you guys try to disable wireless/lan/1394/bluetooth/audio from BIOS, and see if it comes with different result on Windows?

BTW, my R2 doesn't have any issue with all Dell clean Windows 7 install.

 

I also can confirm this issue on a R3 with Dell video drivers.

 

You know, this has been going on longer than I thought. Obviously, I started this thread at the start of the year but I was thinking about it last night and I remember asking if anyone had this problem earlier than my original post.....I thought maybe I had posted on someones thread about it but...yep....I did start a thread about this earlier than this one! (just it didnt get many hits/replies)

I searched the threads I started and found it.

So, here it is....more proof that its been going on for EVEN LONGER!:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-not-working-fn-f4-5-after-10-12-install.html

Exactly the same problem but I think I thought it was because of drivers, as we all did.

This thread was started on 19th Decemeber 2010 for anyone who likes to keep track of issue/problems like I do......

ALSO, for you guys interested in this "behaviour" of the on/off button changing charging status randomly to and fro whilst plugged in AND on 100% battery, here as some vids I took which show exactly what I mean...sorry for the background noise, the TV was on in the adjacent room and it was late, well about 10.30pm ish as you can see from the taskbar clock!

 

Yep, I have been having this EXACT problem since I got my FIRST R2 back in October 2010 (I think about then... need to log into dell to see for sure).

I have had 2 system replacements since..... first one due to a NBD onsite repair tech destroying my system and the 2nd due to 4+ repair attempts to "solve" this issue.

I also went back to the A10 bios since I could not deal with the loosing network connection issue and still have the brightness, trackpad and "power" issue.

This power issue was apparent in the test bios as well, so nothing new here.
When I am watching a movie or something, this is annoying as the brightness will suddenly change because it "looses" the adapter (which is still connected and powered on).
When playing a game it is worse as it will go to a low power state since it thinks the adapter is gone and will take a while to re-enable it again.
Sometimes it flashes orange (like it is charging) even when the battery is at 100% and still sees the adapter.

Basically the R2 is just messed up.
Dell really needs to just fix this (new bios, drivers etc..)

If not, I will stick it out as long as I can then demand a 18x (if they actually put a decent screen on it).

I am just at my wits end and just trying to get by with this system for as long as possible (I still have 3 years of full warranty on this system).

Heck, I have found myself playing more games on my 2011 15" MBP in bootcamp lately due to the frustrating issues on the R2 (that makes me SAD)

D.

 

We got our current rigs at around about the same time D....think I got mine in September 2010 (this one anyway...the other FOUR were a few months before.....replacement after replacement....)

Believe this when I tell you that I havent even had the heart to play a game on my Alienware yet....i have used some for testing purposes but as to using it for "enjoyment"....nope....have been too busy with trying to resolve all these issues its got....

I, like you and many others, am fed up to my eyeballs of this whole thing....we agreed to test the bios for Chris and we had the required number of people come forth to test out....have we heard from Chris on this post after to find out??? - hahahaha, dont make me laugh....that test bios was just like passing a hungry dog a bone, it will keep him happy for a bit but it will put off the inevitable from happening which should be getting our multi thousand pound purchases working trouble free and in a REASONABLE timescale.

I DO NOT CALL MONTHS A REASONABLE TIMEFRAME!!!!!

So, left here, like you, clean install, all stock Dell Drivers, ditched X31 in favour of A10 (which causes MORE problems).. everything .... lost track of the number of OS installs ive done.....AND what am I doing whils im sat here....of course, im spending MORE of my time TALKING about this sodding computer and its problems.

I just wish I could take a break from it all but my head wont let me - no matter how I try and blank it out to get some reprieve from it, its there....niggling away...the thought of my crappy M17x that I spent thousands on when I should have bought something else.....on top of that, the worry that it wont get fixed and Dell do nothing further about it and I am stuck with a lemon for a laptop.....

 

There have been reports from R3 owners that experience the same brightness/sleep problem here in the forums and in other sites.
At the moment we have a R3 in our home that suffers from the exact same problem.

Post#289

Specs:Alienware M17x-R3 - Intel i7-2630QM, AMD Radeon HD 6970m 2gb, 8GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1600Mhz, Windows 7 Home Premium x64

Post#294

Post#368

Specs:AW M17XR3 - 2720QM, 6970m(@800/1100), 1080p, 8gb, Crucial C300 128GB, WD 500GB 7200RPM, Intel 6300.

M17x-R3 brightness control problem - Alienware Forum - Alienware Club - Dell Community

M17x-R3 brightness control problem
Posted by DirtyScrubz
on 30 Mar 2011 7:27 PM

There is a problem with the M17x-R3 where the brightness controls (FN+F4/F5) stop responding. I see the OSD but the actual brightness does not change. If I go into the power management window, I can adjust the slider just fine. Also, if I use hybrid mode (Intel IGP), the brightness works for the Intel IGP just fine. Currently I am using the AMD 11.4 reference drivers but this also happened to me with Dell's stock shipping driver. This is the second time this has happened to me and the only solution I found was to restore the entire system's image.

For reference, my system configuration:
1. AMD 6970M graphics + Intel IGP
2. 2630 QM processor
3. 4 GB DDR 3
4. Standard dvd drive
5. Intel wifi 6300
Thanks.

 

Did you all see that I DID start a thread on this very problem back in December 2010 a few months after I got my FIFTH R2....(with refund money after four replacements from my initial purchase in June 2010)

Regarding the sleep/brightness issues....it is obviously apparent (and I had noticed it before on the thread for the R3 that got merged with my thread for the R2) that this problem persists also for owners of the M17x R3 - as indicated by SkyGunners' quotes from said thread.

THIS GOES TO SHOW THAT ANY SOLUTION OFFERED BY DELL WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT ICLUDE THE OFFER OF A REPLACEMENT SYSTEM FOR YOUR R2 WITH THAT OF AN R3 IS ONLY GOING TO BE EXPONENTIALLY EXPENSIVE FOR DELL AS THE SAME ISSUES ARE PREVALENT ON THAT MODEL TOO.

IT ALSO GOES TO PROVE THAT REPLACING YOUR EXISTING R3 WITH ANOTHER R3 IS NOT GOING TO RESOLVE THE ISSUE

 

I will have to run a gamut of tests on my R2 to see if this happens to it or not. I have used sleep mode, but recovered successfully after opening the lid and I was able to adjust brightness, etc without issue. I'll report back with what I find.

 

I can GUARANTEE you that after a few lid closes, you will experience the lack of brightness control via Fn&F4/5......anyway, thanks for testing out...the more people do this, the better. I know it sucks but hey, wouldnt you rather KNOW of a problem and do something about it than not know about it at all.......

Let us know and thanks again for testing out for this issue on your rig.

Regards
Steve.

 

This is one of the reasons why I just jumped over to the R3. As much as I liked my R2 more in terms of the chassis and dual video cards, I didn't want that headache anymore. I also, have helped Dell Chris M test out a LOT of BIOS updates, not only on the R2, but desktops as well. I don't mind at all helping out the Dell engineering team, but when this problem has been going on this long, I doubt they are going to fix it.

From my experience, if the newer model notebooks come out, they ususally stop supporting the older ones. This has happened to me a LOT.

If I were you guys, I would get them to exchange your machines for a new laptop, like an M18x. I should have kept my R2 and fought Dell on this issue and have them replace the notebook, but I just did not want to deal with them anymore. I sold it instead and bought a new machine.

I give kudos to everyone still aiming at getting this issue fixed. Steve, Mr. Fox, etc. You guys had been great help to me when I experienced this issue.

But I would really try and ring up Dell and get them to give you a machine without flaws, or at least, if it has issues, that will be fixed since its a newer machine and is not EOL like the R2.

 

Small update on my case of the issue: The brightness functions work again after a reboot.

Even more interesting though is that last time i used my laptop, the function was not working. I put it to sleep and came back later to find the function started working again after no reboot, but just upon returning from sleep! This inconsistency is very weird.

 

This isn't right for them to stop supporting the machine as it is an issue that has been going on for a long time but do you honestly think they are going to start replacing the systems that would cost Dell alot.

Tech support replaced my lcd, lcd cable, mainboard, video cards already this issue isn't fixed now they are replacing the mainboard again tomorrow because the last board caused more problems.

 

I think that they have no choice but to address it. This issue has found it's way into the R3. The R3 is in a better position to receive the most support in a timely matter.

 

I dont think it s about "who's had what replaced or why".....the issue is here that the problem we have cannot be simply rectified by replacing a part.

With that in mind, it is only Dell themselves that can provide a fix for this issue as it is not hardware related. If it were hardware related and we WERE able to have parts swapped out to rectify, that would be great but no amount of changing my gpu's or my MB or any other part is going to make this issue go away - that would be stupid of Dell, financially, to throw money at replacing these parts that they KNOW do not require replacing.

I tell you, If it were as simple as hardware, I would be first on it, asking for the correct parts to rectify it because I LOVE my R2....thats why I bought it....for the main reasons that it had dual gpu support, came with an outer case like a tank - being aluminium....and lots more besides.

Now its EOL, the support WILL drop off and unless these issues for R2 owners arent sorted now, they never will be sorted. If it was hardware, I could simply sit back on my XXX year warranty and request new parts as and when but the thing here is that in 12 months, when the R2 is def not supported as its been EOL for a while, who would fix my non-hardware issues? - NO ONE!

So, the bottom line of this is that unless we R2 owners get this fixed or addressed NOW, we might as well kiss goodbye to any hope of every getting it solved and be forced to put up with a system with these issues....OR, we can do what we are doing now and protest for a fix or something else.

We arent doing anything out of line, we arent demanding the next best thing simply because of our issues, we are simply demanding what we paid for which is a fully functional laptop.

I wonder if Dell have the "game" to step up and "play" ball or will they just take a knee in the last few seconds of the game.....

 

Only did one sleep mode close. I will try more. Left it in sleep mode with 22% battery (no charger) and woke it back up by lifting up the lid. Brightness controls all worked. Going to put it to sleep again while I play L4D2 on my 360 online.

No problem, I like knowing the good/bad about my stuff. Glad I can help the community. Sleep # 2 coming up....now.

 

Ok, went through 3 sleep cycles. During one of the sleep cycles I actually pulled the power cord, moved the laptop to my bedroom, then powered the laptop on. Tried increasing/decreasing the brightness with the fn/f4 and fn/f5 keys...works fine. Only thing I could think of is maybe a longer sleep time.....also, maybe I should leave a web browser window open running some kind of flash advertisement and then closing the lid then....who knows. Later this week I will test out a longer sleep time like overnight or something. See if my controls stop working then.

So far, 3 for 3, no issues.

 

For testing purposes, when I carried out my testing of this, i did the following:

Laptop plugged in
Windows IE open with a few tabs
close lid to sleep
leave a good 5 to 10 minutes
open lid to resume

Simple as that really. I know you are 3 tries "in" and it hasnt happened yet....sometimes, when i tested, it wouldnt happen for maybe almost a dozen sleep/resumes but the constant thing was that eventually it WOULD happen.....and then afterwards, even more randomly, I would get a unecpected shutdown (i would leave the system idling and come back to it to find it had rebooted after a bsod)

All i can say is carry on testing....it will happen....

 

Have you heard anything from Dell regarding the issue?

As soon as I get my mainboard replaced hopefully today I will do some testing again but I do know that it didn't matter how long my system was asleep it wouldn't work, I would usually turn it off, take out the battery drain the power with the power button restart the computer and then most times it would work again but very frustrating that it does this all the time.

 

All I know is that they still do not have a fix for this issue but that it is being worked on - I believe (from an official source) that Dell are working on a bios release that may or may not fix the problem.

Wether it does could be anyones guess, and there is no ETA for such a possible fix.....yet...

 

I had my mainboard and ac adapter replaced yesterday it fixed the problem with the system not seeing the dell adapter but the brightness/sleep issue didn't get fixed.

I called tech support again last night explained what was going on and that it had been going on for quite awhile, this time I wasn't asked to jump through all the hoops of troubleshooting as the tech said that they are aware of the issue and that currently there isn't a fix but that the engineering dept. is working on it and there should be a fix in the next week or two.

Tech support said they were taking the service tag of the machines that aren't working documenting the problem and submitting it to the engineering dept. He mentioned that they have had 127 customer's call in with the same issue since the beginning of May so it looks like they are going to do something to resolve the issue.

 

Thanks for posting that info. At least they are keeping track of how many people are experiencing this problem. Most R2 owners don't even use the sleep mode to experience this problem. There's probably alot of R2 owners that read this thread by way of google search that haven't posted here or signed up to post here.

 

Agreed. At least they are, or seem to be, taking this issue seriously now. I dont know how or why but when I contacted Dell Executive Customer Resolutions Team, at first, they didnt seem to know anything about a test bios and my rep certainly did not know of Chris.

I explained all the problems associated and I also emailed him a very comprehensive email which included posts from this thread, emails to and from Chris (from myself), links to the direct download for the tes bios, results from the test bios and everything I could think of.

I was told that he would get back to me by Tuesday (yesterday) which he did, as promised, with an update.

He has liased directly with the Alienware Engineering Team about this problem. Although my latest correspondance indicated no ETA on a fix, it did show that they were working on it.

Maybe now that is has been escalated to the very highest level, they are actually taking it seriously. I hope this is the case because for ANY R2 owner, this problem needs redress.

I cant indicate a timescale but all I can say is that they are working on it.

 

Good! I hope they are working on a fix and not just talking. This is way past due.

 

Not sure if it's been mentioned in this long thread already, but the loss of brightness control also affects the M17x R1 models. I've been dealing with it for a long time with no solution found. Unlike the throttling problem which has been solved with R1 bios A07, I've pretty much learned to live with the screen brightness issue.

The most annoying thing is that the problem manifests itself intermittently either resuming from hibernate or sleep. Each time it happens, the display is on full brightness mode with no way to dim the display, other than rebooting. I guess that's better than the alternative of being too dim. Sometimes (maybe 1 in 10), I can restore brightness control by sleeping and then resuming.

I will say that I've only noticed this when running in stealth mode with the integrated nVidia 9400m. Using the dual ATI 4870's, I don't recall having the problem.

 

Still not having any issues. I don't really travel much with my M17x, but will try it out this weekend and see if I can duplicate this issue on my M17xR2.

 

Hi Guys,

Just thought I would update once more....I still havent heard anything from Dell regards to a timescale for a fix for this...still all I know is that is supposedly in the pipeline but who knows how long it may take. If I do hear anything, I will update the thread again.

 

Thanks for the update, I haven't heard anymore on this matter either.

 

Update: So here I am almost a week later I have been offered 3 very nicely configured R3 replacements. All of the replacements have been canceled one after another. Today I called in to ask why hasn't my replacement shipped, I was told that it was canceled 3 times from 3 different orders because of the review dept. The only option that the manager gave me is a refurb!!

I am soooooooo disspleased!!! My current unit has issues with hardware(motherboard) other than the known software problems since last year that has not been rectified!!!
This is the same thing Mavericke_m15x went through in his http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...omer-care-experience-ever-not-first-time.html
I have been on the phone for over 48 hours over the last 5 months and have had 3 replacements canceled and this is the best they can do!! Lame I will be seeking help from the BBB(Texas) and corporate Dell. This is ridiculous.

 

skygunner27 - try using this link for escalation of your problem: Dell Unresolved Issues. Be sure to provide the information needed in the web form.

 

Still no fix.................

 

Tomorrow I receive my replacement unit....I will post if it exhibits the same behavior. According to quite a few AW techs not every R2 has the sleep brightness issue. But out of the 3 I had, the one I saw at Bestbuy and a friend of mine all have this problem. That's 5 for 5. Where's our Dell representative to help sort out this mess? I see that he is active in the Dell forums....but not here and with this particular issue in the Dell forums.

 

I really hope your replacement is free from this problem mate....I woldnt hold your breath mind!