*OFFICIAL* Alienware M17x R1/R2 Owner's Lounge Thread - Part 1

Okay guys,

I just tried the 16gb DDR3 1333mhz RAM in the R1 however it won't boot. It just keeps crashing every time it hits the bit where the windows logo should start illuminating. Worth a shot anyway.

Cheers.

 

How much do you see in BIOS?

 

That is a good question Katalin_2003,

It actually shows 16gb in the R1s system bios. However it can't seem to boot in. I remember having the same issue with an older model M15x Alien. Before Dell bought Alienware.
8gbs would not boot into windows for that particular model.

In the R2 bios it shows 0mb lol.

Cheers.

 

Ah man thats great with the 16GB working. I wonder why dell didn't try and make that a selling point. Anyway, thanks for the idea Dr650se and thanks for testing reborn. Good news everyone, I'm off to Newegg!

 

Because there weren't any 8Gb sticks when they were selling the M17x R2

 

Just posting to say that I love my R2 more and more with each passing day. R2 4 Life! I wouldn't even trade it for a decked out 18x. Well, maybe, but I'd have to see it in front of me to compare screens I'm too in love with my system.

 

I dub thee king of M17X-R2. Kidding. However, in all honestly, you've been at the forefront of tweaking this system and pushing it past OEM boundaries, even when others moved on to newer hardware. Hell, the OEM boundary is like a distant continent in comparison to what you've done with your machine. It's always a great feat to fully master the objective potential of any system -- we got some guys doing the same with their old XPS M1730s. So in spirit, and on these forums, you have championed the R2's potential.

I've learnt much about this machine from your exploits and those of others such as Reborn2003 and Katalin. Here's to hoping that I can tweak my system further someday.

 

Thanks, yea the 1730 would have been a fun system. I have a buddy that has one. Maybe at somepoint I can convince him to sell it to me when he finally kills the system

 

Can I stick one of those newer Wifi cards into my laptop? Mine seems to be spotty nowadays, even on an N network. I want to stick like a bigfoot killer card in there, will that fit?

 

I got a Killer 1103

Also, just replaced my heatsink. My system is running better than ever. No more overheating, and I ran wPrime 1024 at 100W TDP and it maxed out at 92° C. Time to get some folding done! I'm happy as a pig in right now. Especially given how frustrated I was over my heat issues. Not to mention my temps are lower now than they were before the heat issues. Good to know the rounded off edges of my 940XM don't have anything to do with it and my CPU is strong as ever.

Also got my 16GB RAM in

 

I forgot to mention, I have an R1.

How's the wifi card? Good signal quality? Any difference in that regard?

 

Great signal, but thats all really I can say. 95% of the time I'm using an ethernet cord. Just faster that way and my system sits on my desk 99% of the time unless I'm traveling.

 

hankaaron57 I used to have a Intel 6300 in my M17x and worked perfectly, i don't see a reason why a Killer wouldn't work

At first i used the bluetooth antenna as a third for the card until i got a RGB LED panel that has four of them.
I don't think we have a white/black list for wifi cards in BIOS like other brands so you can pretty much fit whatever.

 

Glad to hear it was a HS issue man.

Cheers.

 

Sorry for the late response, but I was on winter vacation for a week.

Anyways, I followed all of you instructions, and have had the drivers installed, but nothing and I mean NOTHING seems to work. At all.

Alright, so a few weeks ago Katalin was trying to help me fix my M17xR1. The problem is as follows:

The 260m in the laptop seems to NOT work. I followed Katalin's instructions step by step (I assume I did) and nothing seemed to work. So I'm asking for a step-by-step guide on how I can go about fixing this. I have the following the disks and am willing to completely wipe the machine and do a clean install:

Alienware Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64 Bit
Alienware M17x Resource DVD
Alienware Alienrespawn v2.0

Whenever I enable hybrid graphics in the Bios the screen STAYS at black. I was told this is good, this means you only need to install the drivers. But, this is happening AFTER I installed the drivers I was told to. So, can someone tell me what is up or help me fix this problem?

EDIT: After running the respawn on it, everything seemed fine but it booted up with the 9400m active. So I restarted and enabled hbrid graphics. I got as far as a black screen with the windows login sound playing, then I got a blue screen. It said something along the lines of "an irrepairable/ irrecoverable hardware error has occured."
Does this mean my 260m is just trashed?

 

It stay black from boot? or it shows the boot sequence and it black out upon loading windows?

 

It goes through the loading sequence, the windows leading screen, and then the windows icon, then just goes black.

 

Hello, Aiboh, finally ready to try a fresh install?
Here read the OP of this thread for the drivers install order:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...er-install-order-guide-alienware-systems.html

You can skip the free fall sensor driver (causes more problems than it fixes)

And when it's time to install the video drivers, follow the steps i provided in this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...nvidia-beta-drivers-290-53-a.html#post8192962

Make sure to skip the Ethernet drivers also when you'll have to install the chipset drivers.

Good luck

 

I'm clean installing Windows Vista. Can I still follow the same driver order?

 

Yes, same order:

1. Chipset Driver
2. Alienware On-Screen Display Driver
3. Display Driver
4. LAN Driver
5. Wireless Network Driver
6. Audio Driver
7. Bluetooth Driver
8. Touchpad Driver
9. Media Card Reader Driver
10. Remote Control/Infrared Driver
11. Alienware Command Center

Download all drivers (except display driverm for this see my post above) from Dell's site, especially Command Center - DO NOT INSTALL FROM THE DVD THAT CAME WITH YOUR LAPTOP!!

After all this, continue reading the OP of that thread for more info and AW goodies.
Let us kow how it goes.

 

Roger that. Will either be trying tomorrow or this upcoming weekend. So get ALL drivers from Dell's site (except the nVidia driver that you have posted), then install in that order, THEN update windows?

 

Yes but disable automatic driver Installation in windows, just in case.
Good luck.

 

I have a M17X R2 with a pair of 4870s. I was wondering which Nvidia cards I can upgrade to?

 

285m tops. I think a single 580m May work but no one is really running one. And you will have fan issues with it.

 

One last thing for clarity, can I put these on a flash drive and just install them from there? It would save me a LOT of headache. This is of course after freshly installing windows vista.

 

Why not just go with 5870 CF? There are no issues with it at all and it's got enough power to run most of the games out today on high settings. By the time 5870 CF doesn't have enough horsepower to game well, you'll probably want a new system anyway. The 6970/6990 CF mod also seems to be working well. As DR650SE pointed out, the powerful and desirable NVIDIA GTX 580M card does not work in SLI on the R2 (at least not yet). So, for now your best bet is 5870 or 6900 series for an upgrade. Not sure what the going rate is for used 5870 cards, but I would not be surprised if more than one R2 owner with a fully functioning 6970/6990 CF upgrade would be willing to sell you a 5870 CF setup for a reasonable price.

Google search our marketplace forum using site:http://forum.notebookreview.com/computer-components/ 5870 if that interests you at all.

Drivers? Sure, you can put them on a flash drive and install them from there. Not a problem. Why are you installing Vista instead of Windows 7? Did the Vista you are installing come preinstalled from Alienware? Just curious. I don't think I have ever seen anyone downgrade to Vista from Windows 7 on purpose.

 

To Mr. Fox: Long story short I don't have access to windows 7 ATM.

And to Katalin: I have everything installed except for the command center ATM. However, it seems my 260m is still not working correctly. This time when I enabled Hybrid Graphics under the options, it went through the entire boot process and got to the windows vista icon. At this point though, the icon looked like standard VGA (implying the 260m drivers are not installed???) and then I got to a black screen with a cursor. I could still feel out windows though, ie, I could resize the "Welcome to Windows" screen and close out of it if I found the edges. So... whats up with this?

 

I actually recommend keeping a copy of the drivers on a USB stick, Dell's site can sometimes be down in a moment like this, happened to me lol.

I guess you were an earlier adopter even than me since MS started giving free upgrades to Windows 7 not long after the release of the M17x.

Now for your issues, let's take it slowly:
Did you turn off the automatic driver Installation in windows?
Assuming you didn't install any video drivers, answer this first.

Turn on your system and repeatedly press F2 in order to enter BIOS menu.
There, go to Advanced and down to Graphic Settings (Enter). Set everything to Disabled (for now at least).
Save and exit.
Let the system boot to windows and follow the steps at post #32, i listed in the drivers thread (download the drivers from nvidia etc..).


As for Command Center, please download it from Dell >> HERE<<, put it with the rest of your drivers on the USB stick and NEVER EVER (that means even if the Internet will stop working ) install any other version, all right?
Reboot after the install!

 

I can't seem to turn off automatic driver installation. Searching gpedit.msc is not working.

 

Go to your Windows folder (by default C:\Windows), press the F3 key and type gpedit.msc.
When found, right click, run as Administrator and follow the rest of the steps from here.

 

Searching now... Results: No Items Match Your Search

 

Then i believe you have the Home Premium version
Never mind then, just change your Windows updates to Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them and be careful not to install drivers from there.

Continue answering the other questions.

 

Ok... Well, where do I go from here? I tried restarting, going into BIOS, disabling everything under Graphic Options (a bunch of S looking character appear while I load into windows). I then tried to reinstall the nVidia drivers but the clean installation failed. Upon reenabling integrated graphics just to be able to see things, windows told me an unauthorized changed occured and the whole thing bricked. Once I restarted though it seems to be working fine. Still no 260m though.

 

oh, that's not a good sign.
If you see artifacts then it's a sign of your cards are about to fail.
Is the card at stock clocks?

 

You guys should use Team Viewer. Then Katalin can remote in and help out. I remote in to my computers from my Droid all the time helps with F@h to be able to monitor, even when I'm several states away

 

We just did, yahoo messenger though, i can't use Team Viewer where i am at the moment.
Anyway it's his 260M failing

He will try one more thing and come back with the results.

 

Ahh. that sucks.

 

Hey Doc thanks for mentioning Team Viewer. I was using PhoneMyPC with the Android but Team Viewer is a heck of a lot faster. Just for giggles I'm gonna try and play a game and see what happens, you know like Onlive.

 

Lol, yea I have my M17x R2, M11x, and Inspiron 1720 all running team viewer and so I can monitor F@h while i'm out of town by remoting in to the three systems from my phone. Also if you havn't created an account, you should. then you can access your computers from the team viewer website by logging in. It's a pretty damn handy program.

 

So who would be up for 580M if the current mod is sucessful? Software tricking of the system to me just seems sketchy and leaves a lot of room for error and issues. Hopefully it works, I may still remain skeptical though. We shall see.

 

I think I'm done with GPU upgrades for the time being. Maybe if the 7000 series turns out to be a viable option I'd consider it. But for now I think I'll pass on the 580's.

Although I know a lot of folks are probably super excited for it to work.

 

I'd jump on the 580m's if I could get them for the price I could sell my 6990 and 6970 for - otherwise I'm not spending $1400 on graphics cards.

If someone wants to trade me for GTX 580m's I'd be up for that too lol.

I think the software mod - if successful should be near foolproof. I like the way they went about it and it seems like it will be compatible with future drivers. The only thing I want to see if a performance comparison between SLI GTX 580m's in an R2 and SLI GTX 580m's in a M18x.

My only concern is that there might be a performance drop as a result of the mod.

EDIT:

I'm not sure if I'd be up for a 7000m upgrade. Depends how good they are - and depends what kind of games are released. If the 7990m is a desktop 6970 or better, then I might consider it. If not, I'll prob wait for the 8000 series assuming they'd be compatible - might need a new laptop by then though lol

 

I would

I really cant get enough of my R2 atm. The 16GB ram upgrade solved my only issue with the machine.

P.

 

Paul, did you notice an improvement in performance with this upgrade?

I am reluctant to do it as I never hit my 8GB max, so I see the upgrade as a little pointless for me

 

Hi Douse

I use the 16GB for virtual machines. (VMware workstation 8 ) It has greatly increased the capability of the machine for this.

Performance, as in faster, no. If there's a difference, I haven't noticed it. I'd say if you're not using all the 8GB then there's going to be little/no benefit in upgrading yet.

P.

 

Ahh ok, that makes sense.

I didn't think there would be a performance benefit unless for some reason the stock Dell ram was crap or something..

Cheers

 

@DR650SE:
The 580m mod would be great, when I was originally looking to buy a R2 and was but a mouse click away from the 285m's. I just want to see what the temps and power consumption looks like. I was in the market for the 6990's but if this goes well then there should hopefully be promising for the 7990m when ever they dropped

 

Hey people! Just throwing out some recruitment attemps Join the NBR Folding@home team and put those idle systems to use! We've managed to crack the top 1300 teams, Now were shooting to get in the top 1000. Put those idle systems to use! Team link and discription is in my sig. We could definately use all the help we can get!

 

Hi guys, not really sure where to ask this but I figured this would be the best place. Anyways, I have a M17x-R2 in my sig everything works fine except for one little problem.

Whenever my computer goes to sleep or shutdown the screen brightness never seems to go back to right setting and is really dim when waking it up/turning it on. The only way I can get it back to the correct screen brightness is to try and install a program, wait for the little pop up from Windows asking if I want to install this program and then cancelling the install. This has been the only way I can get the screen back up to the correct brightness level.

I've been doing this for a while now but it's getting to the point where I'm getting annoyed by it and would like an actual fix/solution to the problem. Especially since I have another laptop now to use for work/school I figure it would be a good time to finally get this issue resolved and worked on. I do have the 3 year advanced warranty with accidental damage and next business day repair if that helps.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I figured it be best to ask here first to see if other owners have run into this problem before contacting DELL. Thanks!

 

Try and turn off the notifications for admin messages. You can do this under action center, that worked for me.