New M17x R4 w/3D, SSDR, & Big Problems

I JUST bought my first Alienware system from Dell, but they don't seem to want to support Alienware just yet, in fact they refer us here...

So I bought the M17x R4 with the NVIDIA 3D Vision Bundle (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M) and 1TB SSD RAID 0 ... I've had it less than a month.

My computer has "crashed" several times since I bought it, and I say "crashed" that way because I'm not familiar with Alienware or 3D or RAID, so I'm not totally sure what's happening. Whenever I use the 3D for a movie, a 3D photo or game, I close the program, whatever's using the 3D, put the laptop in hibernation, and when I bring it back up to use the 3D again, my screen goes black. I've waited to see if anything happens (it doesn't), I try to shut whatever program down through Task Manager, but I have to Ctrl+Alt+Del to get to the Windows lock screen just to OPEN Task Manager, and then it falls behind whatever program's blacking out my screen. So my only way out is always to either choose the "restart" option from the Windows lock screen, or force shut down by holding down the power button. This is where it gets scary (for me anyway). When the computer reboots, the RAID screen comes up first as usual but it says the following (or some variation, it changes slightly sometimes):

Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology - Option ROM - 11.0.0.1339

RAID Volumes:
None defined.

Physical Devices:
ID_____Device model_________Serial #_____Size_________Type/Status(Vol ID)
0______MTFDDAK512MAM-1K______________476.9GB______Offline Member
1______MTFDDAK512MAM-1K______________476.9GB______Unknown Disk
Press CTRL+I to enter Configuration Utility.....

If I don't press Ctrl+I to enter the Configuration Utility, it takes me to the ... PXE Boot (or whatever it's called) which of course isn't available, so it tells me to reboot again. But again, I get some version of the error above. So I press Ctrl+I and what I see is everything's "green" and all the errors are gone. So I exit and continue rebooting. About half the time it reboots successfully into Windows. The other half, I get a black screen again, sometime before the login screen, and I have to reboot again. I get the same error as above, I hit Ctrl+I and all looks well, so I exit and continue booting, and everything's fine. It always works after the second try.

Another thing I noticed is after my computer hibernates (when I'm not using the 3D), when I bring my desktop back up all my windows are resized and moved to the top left, like it adjusted my monitor settings while in hibernation. It doesn't seem to happen when my computer just sleeps.

I feel like I've switched from PC to Mac (because I really am very knowledgeable when it comes to computers, I swear, I'm just not familiar with RAID), but really I've just switched to Alienware, 3D and RAID...I'm at a total loss. I've never bought a computer and had it not work properly out of the box. Any ideas why this might be happening? Anyone else having this problem?

Any insight would be wonderful!

 

welcome to NBR! sorry to hear you are having problems with your new R4! have you updated your BIOS?

i have similar specs as your rig. i received mine 3 weeks ago with BIOS A04

i'm assuming you received yours with the same. anyway A05 was released to address nvidia 3D and 680m issues.

Dell M17xR4 BIOS A05

hope this helps your situation!

 

Oh, awesome! Thanks so much for the speedy reply! I'm at work but I'll check my BIOS tonight and update it. I was quite sad when my otherwise totally beyond awesome computer crashed on me, so I'll just be thrilled to resolve this. Thanks again! I'll post the result once I've updated and tested the 3D. :smile:

 

Wondering is hibernation is worth the effort. Most modern systems resume from sleep just as fast as from hibernation. And if those are Crucial SSD's, as I think those numbers indicate, well, many SSD's don't seem to recover from hibernation as they should (and in any case, hibernation adds a lot of writes to the SSD that you ought to be skipping if you are trying to maximize their lifespan).

Bottom line: If your BIOS is up to date, try sleeping the system instead of hibernation. On my laptops with SSD's, I've always disabled hibernation.

From Microsoft:

Even if the additional wear on the SSD is not an issue, hibernation itself seems to be a troublesome bit of software for an awful lot of users (and has been in the past for me as well).

Try sleep instead, and see how it works out.

 

+1

i agree with echo. sleep is good.. or even just shutdown.. SSD + i7 processors = super fast bootup

also check out this SSD optimization guide

 

Thanks for the input. I've actually never used hibernation or sleep on past computers, typically because I needed them up and running network stuff. This one was already set up to go into hibernation out of the box, so I kept using it, but I guess it's frustrating that there's a problem at all, so it just never occured to me that it could be Windows... If it's a Windows thing, I'm used to Windows having problems, but this seemed more like a hardware issue, maybe just because it's all new stuff to me (RAID, SSD, 3D, etc.). So I'll definitely try both things, updating the BIOS and if that doesn't help, I'll try using sleep or power down instead.

Again, thanks so much, you guys have been really great!

 

It's partially a Windows thing, and partially a hardware thing. There are a lot of devices and drivers that have to work perfectly together in order for hibernation to happen the way it is intended, and it's an easy thing to break with something as simple as a driver update. That, and I don't know how much attention is paid to hibernation these days by software coders, since S3 sleep seems to be the preferred method of overnight standby on most systems.

 

You can also try updating the video card drivers, they may be causing issues. As far as I know the screen needs to be manually set to 60htz before going to sleep or hibernation or itmay cause issues cuz the generic Windows refresh rate is that one (guess it does not like the 3D screen haha). so basically if you want to sleep or hibernate use the regular 60htz refresh rate and then when you plan to watch a 3D movie or app change it manually. . The BIOS is also an excellent recommendation. I hope that helps... Regarding the RAID issue it can be solved with the BIOS as well or maybe just loading the BIOS defaults with F9 on the BIOS screen. If the computer does not boot into windows after that make sure you put the SATA operation to RAID again.

I'll leave you this article about the sleep or hibernation issues on computers just as an FYI

 

i just tested putting my R4 to sleep and hibernation while running a 3D image and it resumed without issues. so there's no need to change your refresh settings. your issue should be BIOS related hopefully. i have my refresh rate set to 120Hz all the time.

 

lol in response to all of your suggestions (thanks again, by the way), my BIOS version is A05 so I guess I have the current version. I've checked several drivers and they're all current. I was crossing my fingers on the BIOS update, but my computer's SO NEW, I'd be surprised if anything was already out of date... My refresh rate was 60Hz this whole time (until last night, I read something...somewhere lol and changed it to 120Hz), so that's not affecting hibernation unless it's causing some mixup with the 3D...I've disabled hibernation in the power settings and changed everything to sleep, shut down, or do nothing.

So...between changing the refresh rate to 120Hz and opting for sleep or shut down instead of hibernation, maybe the problem will go away. I have The Witcher 2 (but I'm aweful at it) so I'll try a 3D movie and let you know how it goes. *fingers crossed*

 

I am with everyone else on this...if hibernation is the problem, eliminate it. I mean my rig takes less than 60 seconds to a usable desktop and I have standard HD.

 

Well, no luck... It seems to be directly related to the NVIDIA 3D Vision, I just don't know how lol. When I run a 3D video, it opens in CyberLink Power DVD 9.6. It automatically changes to full size, so the video plays, I can stop it and minimize the video window, but when I try to close it, then my whole screen goes black, like the program has changed back to full screen and then doesn't close, because like I mentioned originally, I can usually still Ctrl+Alt+Del to get to the Windows lock screen. I can't get into Task Manager, but I can restart from the lock screen. Sometimes I can't get the lock screen to come up, nothing I do helps except pressing the power button to restart, like maybe the whole computer's frozen at that point.

So I tried a 3D photo instead, which opens in the NVIDIA 3D Vision Photo Viewer. My settings have it running in window mode instead of full screen, but when I open a photo, the Photo Viewer changes to full screen, sometimes the photo flickers, but then it goes black again. And sometimes I can Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart from the lock screen, and sometimes I have to use the power button. But I basically have the same problem as with the 3D video.

So then like I mentioned, I have The Witcher 2. I don't know how the 3D runs on that, but it also causes my screen to turn black when I try to exit the game. I've never played it without the 3D (I don't play much 'cause I'm not very good at it) but I assume it works like normal, just like watching a non-3D movie works like normal. Oh and I've tried two different 3D movies, and it's the same with both, so I know it's still just the computer...

It just seems like when I use the 3D, it freezes whatever program's running it. And maybe it's just a coincidence, due to the force shut down, that the RAID is also having problems. Just an idea. Maybe the 3D is "breaking" whatever program's using it...?

 

I don't have any 3D movies to try and see what mine does.

I was able to use the 3d photo viewer no problem. I don't generally look at 3d pictures, so I have no clue how it is supposed to work. The image I downloaded and opened, just opened 2 images up side by side and didn't look 3D to me lol.

Mine also came with the 05 bios, and I use the driver from the Dell site for the GPU. I haven't had any 3D problems while gaming.

So I don't know, you could try and reinstall the Dell nvidia driver, and if it doesn't help, call Dell.

 

lol a 3D photo would just look blurry without glasses, just like a 3D video or game. Mine are in an MPO file format and were taken with my digital camera. I've been able to view them in 3D once before, but ONLY once before. It crashed after that one time and I haven't been able to successfully view one since without a problem. Video I can still watch in 3D for the most part, and it crashes after the fact, when I try to STOP watching the movie lol.

So if I uninstall the NVIDIA driver, is my whole display gonna crash on me...? I can obviously handle a crash, but I thought I'd ask before I do that lol :wink:

Another thing I noticed: I went through the NVIDIA "Test Sterioscopic 3D" > "Run Setup Wizard" and at the end there are 3D screenshots of games. I had no trouble viewing those and closing the program when I was done...maybe because they're running from the NVIDIA setup wizard though...

 

I'm having a hard time seeing how hibernation or drivers of any sort could break a hardware level RAID array. I think this is most certainly a hardware issue.

 

Okay, thanks for the input. That's definitely been something I've concidered, but still trying to eliminate software as the culprit first. Since I can't email or chat with Dell about this (unless there's an email address I haven't found...?), I'm trying to use that as a last resort b/c I'm just too busy during the day at work to deal with calling them from work...they're only available until 11pm CST so I'm usually just home from work around that time (9pm here).

Anyway, thanks. I'm definitely still hoping it's not a hardware issue...

 

I hope so too but it does sound like some HW related issue.

You could try to tweet @dellcares. I know it's frustrating trying to communicate clearly in a stupidly low character limit but they may be able to start a dialogue directly with an AW tech and open a call for you.

I did this once and the Dell reps here do reccomend it as a method of access.

Don't go into any deep details of the problem just that you have a new R4 with a problem and are unable to contact support via phone during the hours they are available. If it works they will 'follow' you and send you a private tweet asking for details of your system. Just make sure you are using a private message to reply with your details and you should then get an email for the full details.

Good luck.

 

Uninstall then reinstall the programs that give u problems, also try connecting to a 3d TV and see if the issue is still there.