M17xR3 Fan and Screen Issues

I got my M17x delivered yesterday and everything on the outside looks okay aside from one small issue. However, I have noticed several other things that may or may not be issues.

The first thing I noticed is a black bar at the top of my screen. When I fullscreen a video, or play a game, or drag icons/folders/whatnot to the "black bar", they show up there, so I know that the pixels aren't dead. However, it looks like: http://piclair.com/data/p4imb.jpg

As you can see, where I believe the folder's transparent top should extend, there is a black bar. Likewise, when I click and drag on the desktop to make a highlighted box, this box gets cut off at that bar. When I drag something to the top (Windows 7 gives the fullscreen result an outline), the outline does not encompass this black bar. Is this an issue with my computer or is it supposed to be like this?

The other issue I have is that my fan doesn't appear to be turning on correctly. I was playing Starcraft 2 earlier on minimum settings as I don't have an external fan and after I played for about an hour, the GPU was reading at 106 degrees Celcius in HWMonitor. However, during this time, I had noticed no noise coming from the fans at all, leading me to assume that they didn't turn on. Is there any easy fix to this or should I call Dell?

 

Call dell!!! Your GPU temp shouldnt be going above 70c. Try to confirm that the fan actually is/isnot working before you call Dell.

As for the black bar, im not sure why, but i definatly not meant to be like that. Looks really irritating though! Prehaps try adjusting the resolution in control panel? highly unlikely but worth a shot.

What are your specs?

 

The black bar should not be there. That is an issue with your computer.

You MUST call Dell about that fan issue. 106C is overheating, call them and make them either replace the whole computer or replace the fans.

 

The black bar wouldn't happen to be a cause of him having the 1600x900 screen, would it?

 

The screen ress will not cause the black bar. I would guess it is a faulty GPU.

 

Update on the screen issue: it is apparently not a black bar, but rather, a darker shade of the colours in the background. With the default Windows 7 background, it now looks like this: http://piclair.com/data/axaxj.jpg

It appears to be caused by me opening HWMonitor. When I first start up my computer, it does not have the problem, but upon starting HWMonitor, it moves everything down. Has anyone else heard of this?

My graphics card is the 6870M. My computer is also flat on the desk (ie. no space between the desk and the laptop) so I had assumed that the fans were unable to pull in air. I will run more tests and update whether or not the fans turn on.

E: Just ran SC2 on Extreme for about 5 minutes, with muted sound. Fan definitely turns on, PCWizard reports that it's at 30%, and went to 60 degrees C after the 5 minutes. Is it possibly just that there isn't enough air getting to the fan? Even so, I thought that the system would just shut down if it went over a certain temperature, so 106 degrees worries me. However, I also hadn't capped framerates on SC2 for minimum settings (as I had come from a computer that could barely get 20FPS on minimum), so that may have been another cause for the heat.

I don't mind a loud fan if it will allow me to play my games without overheating the computer, but is it just that the computer thinks that it isn't hot enough yet to increase fan speed? If so, will upgrading my drivers/BIOS to the latest versions possibly fix the issue?

I also have gotten the bar at the top of the screen without running HWMonitor now. All I have run is PCWizard and SC2, so it may be any fullscreen application that causes this to happen. I will restart and check again.

E2: I ran SC2 in fullscreen and the bar did not appear. However, once I opened PCWizard (with SC2 still running in the background) the bar appeared. Could it possibly have something to do with programs reading the temperatures from my sensors?

 

The R3 that I am on right now has the exact same problem with the bar at the top of the screen. I noticed that when I first turn on the computer, the bar isn't there, and whenever a UAC prompt comes up (doesn't matter what program), then the bar is there.

 

i have the same issue with the bar

 

You all on AMD cards?

 

nope im running a 460m

 

Fan issue has been resolved. Managed to run SC2 on Extreme settings for 2 hours without the GPU going above 63 degrees. The CPUs maxed out at about 74 degrees, but only for brief periods of time; they averaged about 60-65 degrees.

And to expand on the UAC issue: I don't get the bar when I run PCWizard without anything else running. However, with SC2 running, it creates the bar. HWMonitor, on the other hand, causes it every single time. Anyone else heard of this issue? Google hasn't been particularly helpful.

 

I posted this in around thread, but the bar could be caused by a system service. I found this out in my new r3 3d.

There is a service called "SoftThinks Agent Service" once you disable it and restart it should stop alienspawn from starting, as well as "Toaster.exe" and the transparent bar on top of the display.

 

Thanks a ton, that solved the problem.

 

Thank You!!! That solved this problem!

 

Same issue here as well (the GPU fan not starting).

It started today, a game (Portal) was performing slowly which I thought was awkward. I touched the back of the laptop and burned my hand. Ouch! GPU-Z reported a temperature of 102 degrees C.

I turned off the laptop, then on again. The fan turned on and started to cool the GPU. Now it works fine again.

This is annoying because it's the first time it does it after about a month of usage. I had a similar problem with an Inspiron 9400. I have no idea why Dell's BIOS SMI's code can behave in that way.

Dell engineers should really read this and stop using software driven fans.

 

Hi,

Did anyone find a solution for the fan problem?

I have had my Alienware for around 5-6 months and over the last few days the fan has stopped working properly. I can't think of anything I have installed that could have caused the problem. Basically sometimes the fan will kick in to control the GPU temperatures and sometimes it just doesn't do anything. Rebooting or switching to the integrated GPU and back will restart the fan and it seems to work for anywhere between 10 mins and 8-9 hours after that.

I am currently in touch with Dell trying to get it resolved but was interested to see if anyone had a solution that didn't involve sending my machine back for repairs when I'm not totally sure its a hardware issue.

Thanks