*OFFICIAL* "All Powerful" M17xR2 Edition Owner's Lounge - Part 3

Ahh........... that doesn't sound too good.
I just wanted to double check that you had the 5870 GPUs running on the latest vBios correct? You most likely are already but I thought that I would just ask in case.

Hopefully you can load up into windows long enough before it crashes again to install a dell driver or something so that you can test out the 11.6.

I might also suggest trying a power drain and reseating the RAM. Every little bit counts and it will be good just to rule it out.

Does the blue screen show a message or say who or what is causing it?
Or does it just restart instantly? Or freeze.

Cheers.

 

This is like a bad dream.

My R2 is totally dead. It goes to the Windows load screen, to the checking disk screen where it says you can cancel by pressing any key (which doesn't work), then freezes at that screen indefinitely.

I have no idea what to do. Does this mean my SSD corrupted?

All of this because I wanted to increase performance in the Witcher. :cry:

 

I had a similar issue when I had a SSD RAID setup. Sounds like a bad SSD. To make sure, I would get a spare 2.5 hard drive and reinstall windows. To see if you can boot up and install drivers (to make certain that it's not other hardware like the GPUs or RAM causing the problem).

 

Try putting in the windows 7 DVD and run a repair or do a system restore or Chkdsk Checkdisk.
You may have a bad SSD or need to reinstall windows.

Cheers.

 

Yeah, I'm going to try the win7 disk tomorrow.

My SSD was running perfectly up until this whole driver nightmare. Do you really think it would have just corrupted out of nowhere?

 

Crashing heaps is not too good for windows 7 and any other OS really. File corruption can occur and sometimes the only real way to fix it is to reinstall the OS.
So hopefully in your case it is most likely just a corrupt windows 7 coupled with GPU drivers.
So hopefully a full reformat and windows 7 reinstall will set you right.

Good Luck Buddy and hang in there.
I really should do a fresh OS install myself however am just way too lazy.

Cheers.

 

Hey !

I see you have 2 different SSDs in your rig: Intel and Vertex...

Are they RAIDed ?

Because this could explain that...

Nevertheless, I would get rid of the vertex, and your problem would most likely be gone that way...

Else, I hope you have you data backed up because it looks you have to reinstall windows...

 

Nope, I don't Raid them for (lawl) stability.

I use one for the OS and one for games. 120GB isn't a lot, but it's enough to store the few current games I want to play. When I'm finished I uninstall and get the next!

So I was able to eventually get into windows, I driver sweep'd the 11.6 drivers that were crashing the hell out of my PC, reinstalled 11.5 with cap5 and all seems to be well for now.

I CCleaner registry fixed a bunch of errors, and made sure my system was stable and it appears to be. Anything else I should do/check after recovering from my R2 having a case of BSOD diarrhea?

Also, is there any discernible reason my R2 would freak out like that trying newer drivers? It happened with 11.5a and b as well as 11.6.

 

In 14 years of PC ownership, I've never seen a PC go AWOL like that from trying a new driver.

I've had crashes during games, random freezing, etc, but never each and every time Windows starts, 2 mins go by --> BSOD.

 

The only time I have ever seen that type of behavior from my R2 is when resuming from S3 using the test BIOS that DELLChrisM provided to us. It was a driver problem, but I don't remember what driver it turned out to be. (It was not my display drivers.) It seems like it was either my Intel wifi adapter or one of the drivers install by VirtualBox. Updating to newer drivers than what Dell Support provides and uninstalling VirtualBox fixed that for me. I wish I could remember specifically what device driver was causing it.

You might look on this thread to see if the behavior is similar.

 

Well I solved it by just doing a clean install. It sucks because clean installs on my gaming machine are a pain in the butt (having to redownload everything and reconfigure drivers and settings and whatnot), but my R2 is running much better.

SSD is fine too. I think somehow me switching the drivers around corrupted my Windows install.

Oh well, at least it's working properly right now.

 

Sounds like what I did to my M17x R1 with my 4870s last summer, ended up saying f it and reformatting. Sometimes drivers just mess stuff up

 

I'm glad to hear buddy,

Good thing it wasn't a hardware issues.
Now go enjoy some gaming goodness.

Cheers.

 

I recommend cloning your harddisk once you have everything situated so that you have an image you can restore to quickly in case this happens again. That is what I do periodically now

 

Great idea and advice scook9,

I used to do that but got lazy. What software do you currently use to perform your cloning?

Cheers.

 

The Wither II is still totally unplayable for me. Medium settings barely produces playable framerates.

This is on 11.6 and Cap1.

Unbelievably frustrating.

 

I haven't tried this game yet, but did you try running it with the crossfire disabled?

 

+1
I create backup images constantly. I have images of all my setups. I have a drive with images of my benching ssd, raid 0 setup, non raid setup, and my 1tb storage drive. I try to create an image every few weeks and always create an image before big updates like gpu drivers or sp1. I just need to create an image of my image drive now

 

Just takes so long to take images....I nandroid my phone regularly but that is a little simpler haha

 

I need to do that with my phone. Never actually gave it much thought till now. Imaging is really the only reason i invested in a usb 3.0 card and enclosure. I started a backup the other day on usb 2.0 and the given timeframe was a lot longer then 3.0 so it confirmed for me that the imaging was done at 3.0 speeds. Took maybe 30-40 min to image my raid 0 setup which was just over half full.

I have since done a new install so one os drive and one game drive. The os drive will also have a linux mint partition. Just to learn and mess with. One everything is installed ill create images of both drives.

 

I just use esata....lol no bottlenecks

 

Are you guys using 11.6 "Mobility Drivers?" Or the modded desktop drivers? Trying to decide which to D/L from the AMD site.

 

Yes I did, performance was even worse.

 

Hello guys, i wanted to ask you 1 question if you have some time for me

I currently have an M1730 with following specs:
X7900 @ 2.8, 9800M GTX SLI, 4gb ram @667 mhz, 2 * 200 RAID 0, 1200P screen + BD-RE

I wanted to upgrade to a 2nd hand M17X-R2 with these specs:
Intel Core i7-840QM
8GB (8192MB) DDR3 1333MHz
2 * 500GB Serial (SATA) 7200 RPM
17.0" 1920x1200 (WUXGA) RGB LED
Blu-Ray Combo
2 x 1024MB ATI Radeon HD 5870

I can get this sytem for about 1500 euro's ( I'm thinking of putting 1 crucial C300 64gb ssd disk in it)

I wanted to ask your opinions or advise if i should buy this laptop knowing that i already have a pretty good m1730 that runs most things on high/very high. How big of an upgrade would the m17x r2 with those specs be compared to mine? Would you buy it ?
Any advise or tips are welcome!

Thx for your time and effort
EDIT: I forgot to say that I really like the looks of the m17x r2, it looks so fancy and alienoid ! and i really like alienz

 

DR650SE - I am using the 11.6 Mobility drivers at the moment.

 

Me too, I'm running on 11.6 Mobility drivers atm.
So far so good. Rock solid.

Haven't had a chance to do any benches though.
I really need to beat 20k in 3d mark 06 and start doing some 3d mark 11 benches. It used to crash all the time when I 3d mark 11 1st came out so I've never bothered since then.

Cheers.

 

Thanks. Was thinking of updating my gaming OS from stock Dell drivers. Just been holding off since i don't care to deal with issues and don't have much time to game lately. Now they have early 11.7 drivers so not really sure what I want to do.

Other than that i just created a 25gb partition and installed Linux Mint. Figured id play with that. Figured id take my hand at getting to know a bit about Linux and see what the big deal is. Plus in Linux i can access my 1tb drive and just use that as a swap partition.

 

I can happily say I'm one of the guinea pigs putting 6970's in their R2!

Can't wait. My Witcher II performance made me crave this upgrade.

 

NICE! I'm looking forward to hearing and seeing all about it as you go. It would be cool to see another pictorial if you feel like taking pics.

 

So I saw DR650SE's signature with the "6970XF inbound" and I thought holy crap that is ing awesome. I found a guide to install them and was wondering does anybody have them yet? What are the temps like? Where did you find the cards (besides mxm-upgrade.com, and dell)? I found a tutorial and is this the one you used or is there another? Thanks in advance.
Tutorial:
Adding AMD Radeon 6970M to Alienware M17x-R2 | Tech|Inferno

 

Hey buddy! Yes, ichime is our champion for this mod. Check out his thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...6970m-your-m17x-r2-single-gpu-crossfirex.html

 

Thanks Mr. Fox, for the link from NBR, it even had places to buy the cards where the other did not. No I play the waiting game to raise the funds to bank roll this operation.

While on this topic has there been any progress in the 330watt PSU from the M18x to be compatible with the R2?

 

I don't recall seeing any success on that, but I don't think there have been any significant issues with the 240W AC adapter thus far. Although, the 330W would definitely be ideal especially if you plan to do any OC'ing.

 

I'll have my 6970's installed by the end of next week. I have a very special friend helping me out on this.

I'll report back once they're in and provide benchmarks, temps, game performance, and my overall impression.

I'm QUITE excited.

 

Yea buddy...What could get better than 6970XF, RGB, 16:10, and Throttlestop?? Not a whole lot. My goal is to build the R2 as it should have been, make it the ultimate notebook. Still trying to think of other things Never satisfied

Same here, and hopefully, I'll find some time to bench a little. Got my wedding and I'm moving in the next few weeks so as it stands there isn't much time But It will happen and I'll definitely abuse those cards

 

Congratulations!

I just got engaged this March.

 

Contracts to you too! we've been engaged since sept 11th 2009. Getting married the 16th of this month so were excited. But it definitely consumes a lot of time

 

Yep. We live together in an apartment while we prepare our wedding and look at houses. I'm not the first to have said this, but like others here my fiance thinks I love my machines more than her.

 

Congrats to both of you guys. My wife and I celebrate our 25th anniversary later this year. I wish you both a lifetime of excellent companionship.

I'll be looking for the benchmarks from both of you soon. Saosin may have time to work on this sooner than you, DR, but you'll at least have a target to beat.

BTW - like the new avatar of the bike. Nice! Makes me want one again. (Would love to have an R1 or a Hyabusa.)

I was planning to move up to a 920XM CPU for my R2 and was thinking of snagging the one debaucher has for sale on the forum. But, I've got an M18x coming instead. Still waiting on a ship date from AW.

Have a happy Independence Day, DR. (I'd wish you one also Soasin, but if memory serves me correctly, you're in the UK. Correct?)

 

Thanks for your kind words.

Nope, I'm from New Jersey.

Born and raised at the Jersey shore.

(No, I'm nothing like the idiots on that damn show that ruined the rep of the Jersey shore!)

 

Well, in that case, Happy July 4th to you also. I haven't seen that show, but it sounds like I haven't missed anything. I hardly ever watch TV and when I do I am always amazed that there's nothing worth watching.

 

Ha ha, my wife watches that show, it drives me mad. Well look on the bright side Jersey has nowhere to go but up from that.

BTW, congrats on all who are going to get married. I've been hitched for 5 years and loving it. (Just make sure they are cool with new computer purchases!!! Gotta protect the true love.)

 

6970m's should be up and running relatively soon. Can't wait to report back with the results.

So what do I have now, an m17.5x?

 

Excited for you! Eager to see your posts.

I'd call it an M17x R4. With 6970 CFX, it will be worthy of a ranking number higher than the R3.

 

Awesome, looking forward to your results as well. I've got mine on order, but no eta yet.

 

Now all that's left is to do for the R2 is to test some nVidia cards (hopefully 500M series cards) and to get a Sandy Bridge CPU to work in a PM55 chipset...

 

Sandy Bridge in PM55 wont be happening.....the nvidia cards maybe though

 

Guys..im newbie here..i really" need help with my R2..i dunno what to do anymore.. ..i post a new thread in this forum..this is the link..

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...y-problems-after-do-recovery-resource-cd.html

thank you so much for the help guys..

 

Quick question peeps, I'm using Power DVD from the Resource disk. Question is, where do I find the registration key? I guess I've never really looked

EDIT: Wait, does Power DVD8 even play Blu-rays? I know I had blu-ray playing software around here somewhere Trying to play Avatar, to see how it looks on the system, I'm getting ready to burn a copy and wanted to verify that my software worked. I downloaded 1Click Blu-Ray Copy, since I really liked 1Click DVD Copy (worked well for me) and 1Click Blu-Ray Copy is free right now since it's still in testing.

I also am able to pick up a 10pk of blu-ray blanks at $16 per 10 pack since I work at Best Buy. Also can purchase a 10pk of Blu-Ray Jewel cases at Best Buy for $1.89 with the employee discount. So I bought 30 blanks and 30 cases. Think I might be going back for more since I'm quiting Best Buy soon. May try and find one where I move, but I pretty much keep the job strickly for the discount. Doesn't pay much and I'm moving for a new job. Anyhow I'm ranting since I had a few brewskies.

 

From what I recall, didnt have a product reg. number either....also, wasnt there a mjaor issue with avatar blu ray discs "not working".....I seem to recall that when the film was released...lots of unhappy buyers 'cos the discs wouldnt work right....