*OFFICIAL* Alienware M17x R3/R4 Owner's Lounge Thread

gotcha

Now you tell me, I hate win 8, I know that, as a computer technician however, that I should start looking into it more and playing with it....

It is a shame! That woulda been awesome to have a blue alien head. lol

You are on a very adamant quest to find out aren't u? LOL

 

Ah so upset with myself anybody remember how my M17x got the blue flickering squares which eventually got worse and now it wouldn't even boot. Well that was like a month ago, and I've been soo busy barely any time to game so I procrastinated doing all the DHL paper work and shipping it back to US.

Well... the DHL stuff was over and done with in a day -.- and its getting shipped to states today, why didnt I just do it before.... oh well 1 and a half weeks and it should be back

 

Happy New Year fellow notebookreview members and Alienware junkies

 

And to you dude! Good luck w the repair, it's been a long haul

 

hi guys, i recently bought m17x r4 which i moved from 14x. Im a little annoyed with the wireless button behavior which switches on/off both WiFi and Bluetooth upon the button press simultaneously. Is there any way to get an option like in 14x where you get the tick boxes to choose whether to activate wifi or bluetooth individually ? and one more thing the osd is of windows 8. any chance to get the original dell osd? thank you in advance

 

Hey mate you can set that through bios by hitting f2 at startup I'm not in front of .my laptop atm but I think it's in the 2nd tab. You cam select to have the Bluetooth always on or wifi always on when you press the wireless button

Let me know how you go

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Of course I am. I think it's down right pointless to have an LED PCB board and not have it function independently from the screen. Otherwise the screen backlight is more than sufficient. Also, I want to know when my laptop is on/sleeping when my screen is closed. I think that is convenient to say the least.

 

thank you mate Yeah i looked up in bios before posting here the problem. i think there is an option to choose like u mentioned bt i want something like in m14x that i can select them individually. Any solution for that? or any driver from the previous release of 17x perhaps, u suggest me to try?

 

Nothing that I have seen previously however I've only had my m17x for about a month sorry if I cat help.

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Happy new years Hope the new year brings good luck this time around heh.... I know I've run into quite a few troubles, financially.On Christmas day alone, i tripped on a rolling chair mat and ripped my big toenail halfway off, for about 3-4 hours (since I am a chicken when it comes to anything to do with nails) I didn't push the nail back down with the fear of pain. And my lord did it hurt for a good week or two! (however long it's been since Xmas). I am NOW just started to get over SOMEWHAT of the pain.

lol, that's what you have your speaker LEDs for! In all seriousness though, Have you considered measure voltage, and finding a way to draw power from another spot that still has voltage and soldering the thing there? Make sure to measure voltage draw from the end of the board and not the LED, as that board is probably a control of some sort for the system. You might also lose functionality if there IS any for that alienhead.

I dont believe so, but that is exactly what you're looking for..... It lets you select individually which one stays enabled when u hit the enable/disable radio. Like say you want Wifi to stay on when u hit the Wifi button, but want to disable bluetooth, you would leave teh wifi option on and disable teh bluetooth. Albeit though, this would be an inconvenience

 

thank you guys..i think i will have to live with it..its realy annoying to disable it thru bios everytime

 

Yeah, you win some you lose some..... Enjoy the system otherwise, I know I do

 

I finally got to spend some real time with my new M17xR4 and could not help notice that the speaker volume is really low compared to my older laptops. Am I missing something here? I have the levels set to 100% in the windows sound control panel and installed the latest drivers. I did not upgrade my sound card if that affects your answer in anyway.

 

Have you got the sound blaster control panel? Should be able to up the volume, I like personally putting all the effects to the maximum and to have the smart volume at 100% as well.

 

I have the latest creative labs driver, but I do not see the sound blaster panel on my laptop or in the alienware device support page for my laptop. Where do I get it? It could well explain what is going on.

 

This volume question reminded me of an issue I have with my volume when I plug in speakers or headphones...

The volume and everything is fine just coming out the laptop, but if I plug speakers in... even the lowest the volume can go on the laptop, it's really loud. If I turned the volume up all the way I would probably go deaf and break my speakers.

Anything I could do about this? I wanna be able to use headphones, and manage the volume buttons on the keyboard, instead of having to go in the game settings and setting volume to like 5% so I don't die. And then having to set it back when I'm not using headphones -.-

 

Hi guys. Happy new year to all.

I'm loving my R4 but I've had what could be a BIG problem arise. I was using the laptop the other night and then all of a sudden the laptop Blue screened. It rebooted on it's own into recovery mode, attempted to fix whatever occurred, which failed, then shut itself down. I consequently went into the BIOS and it claims that the Samsung 256gb ssd i installed in there a couple months ago is still there, but says '0 bytes'. I have reinstalled the OS on the HDD the laptop came with (a 500gb 7200RPM HDD) and the laptop is running fine, albeit very slowly compared with the performance gain using the SSD. So do you think I have a defunct SSD or is there a more serious underlying problem with the laptop? Thanks for any help on this issue.

 

Shapala why don't you just retry installing Windows on your SSD?

SSD's are pretty stable and if it's compatible with the laptop I don't see how it should be a problem. Maybe a wipe and clean windows install would clear it right up? But I'm no expert

You probably don't have a serious underlying problem if everything was working fine before. If problems keep coming back then you have a reason to investigate further.

 

To answer your question above, you need to go into sound blaster Recon3di or whatever that is called. Go into Equalizer, then on the section "Level" push it all the way to +12dB. I will post a picture below:



To answe your second question:

Driver Details | Dell United States

that is the download link to the driver. Pretty straightfoward, install and run

hit mute, install headphones, unmute. same thing when disconnecting headphones. Albeit, I dont have the same problems you have, but then again i'm using those beats wireless headphones instead of wired headphones.

It SOUNDS like your Samsung SSD drive has failed. Might just be a freak accident and you've said a couple months, you're well within warranty range so contact Samsung for an exchange/repair.

As I am not there to test it, I could always be wrong. So if you want to (you dont have to), install it back in, and see if it recognizes a size in the Bios again. If it doesn't, call samsung, get replacement, and enjoy

 

Sounds like its failed. I would take it out and put it in another machine to see if it sees it. Also try using the Samsung Software to check it for errors.

There has been a recent new firmware released for the 840's not sure what yours is.

 

Replied to the wrong post bro

 

That's it? Seriously?

Oh well kinda makes sense, when my M17x gets back I'll be sure to do that thanks

 

Doh, Fixed.

 

too much new years beer hahahaha

 

How much can I overclock without any voltage or bios changes?

 

Hey guys but of an update with the black screen issue I have on m17x r4.

After speaking to dell they sent out a tech to replace what they thought was a problem with the motherboard and graphics card. Replaced both everything was working fine, or so I thought!

Not even two hours later I close the lid and come back and I've black screened again!

I was hoping I didn't have to do a fresh install but I think that's the next option.

What do you guys think do I call dell and ask for a complete replacement m17x seeing as this is the 3rd problem in a month?

Thanks for reading sorry for the long post

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Maybe driver issue? Does the screen light up at all? what are your specs? Does the computer respond to input aka can you login etc?

 

Hi, can you remind me what is now happening. Is it going to sleep and not waking? I had a quick look back a few pages but didn't see it.

A fresh install fixed my R3 but maybe not the same issue??

 

It does sort of light up like you know when you open the lid and It wants to turn on you sort of get a dim light and the it goes to the desktop. Well I get the dim light and nothing..

So main problem is when I come back to the laptop after closing the lid I go to open the lid and nothing just a black screen. I can't do anything, trying to turn of alienfx, alt ctrl del does nothing I have to force restart which is probably doing more damage itself.

I've scoured the web looking for thebsame problems and all I could come up with was it could be graphics drivers or directx or possibly other drivers. So now I'm in the process of uninstalling the drivers and installing the updated ones.

Just a thought if any of you guys have the gtx675m what version driver are you running??

Thanks for reading again hopefully I can fix this issue without formatting

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Mine would do nothing and a hard reset was the only way to get it back. This one instantly shows the desktop when I open the screen, no dim light but I turn off all power saving features and 'do nothing' for the lid. This fixed my R3 (kinda since I could not use sleep) but a few weeks later I had a HD failure and had to re-install. I thought I'd check out sleep and it worked perfectly - go figure

I'm using the latest WHQL driver 310.70

 

Hmm yeah sounds exactly like what I'm going through when you had this problem fidelity you have the whql 310.70 drivers installed just thinking the new update could be buggy and I can't find the old one to rollback on.

For me anyway it seems if I set the laptop to sleep when I close the lid I don't get the black screen problem which is ok had I not spent so much money ($3000) on this laptop.

Anyhoo I'm sure I should be able to get this sorted seems dell/alienware are on the ball. I also emailed a couple of the reps with the situation so hopefully yheu can help.

Thanks again for the reply I should of made a separate thread for this. My bad

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Weird! Good luck with dell but they are probably going to ask you 'factory default' it so that painful 'reinstall all my stuff' is probably on the cards

You can get the dell approved revisions here: Driver Details | Dell United Kingdom Title is 660m but all the 6xx cards are listed...

 

I honestly think this is a software related issue. Try a reinstall and hit me up if anything?

Very much agreed, you won't know if it's hardware related until you can prove software-wise the problem is not there =)

 

Hey guys update on the issue again it looks like I've narrowed it down to the graphics driver.

It seems that my card doesn't like the newest update 310.70 so I managed to find the previous one to that and so far so good i haven't black screened all day

Also I enabled hibernation again don't think that has anything to do with it but that seems to be the only other thing I have disabled.

Hope it stays this way I'll be psyched if it's fixed

Thanks again guys for all your input.

Maybe if someone else gets this problem they'll find this thread haha

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Most definitely. Aren't you using a Nvidia-GPU? Because I am and I dont have the problem, this is with the latest BETA drivers.

 

Not sure if you have tried them, but since your using a nvidia card are you checking the intel HD 4000 drivers? The latest intel ones are version (9.17.10.2875) best to get them direct from intel website. Might be those having the issues, or causing the issue with the nvidia driver.

 

Should have my M17x back in a few days it's getting repaired as we speak

 

I have a strange problem... USB 3.0 external harddrives seem to have problems when I use them with my R4 such as turning on and off like the harddrive disconnects and reconnects all the time, and some just don't work at all... any 1 noticed a problem like this?

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I've seen a few of threads on this. Some people have no problem but others are unable to get their external sata 3 drives to stay connected. Looked like it was a problem with specific makes

 

Wow that's a bit annoying :/
Do you think it's a power issue?

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Yeah it is annoying ay seeing as these machines are supposed to be top of the range.

Any way heres the link

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=675401

I've had a read through and it looks like any of the buffalo portable hard drives work.

Or you can get an powered usb 3.0 hub and that should stop it from disconnecting.
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Don't think so, the makes that did not work were consistent (failures) and the last I saw they were trying to track down a firmware update for the drive. Sorry I can't find it right now but if I do I'll update.
Edit: found by previous poster!

 

I am using the nvidia gpu but I had the whql drivers installed which seemed like it didn't like my system.

Well so far so good been 2 days since I've black screened



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I've had a similar problem with my M17x and my work laptop, an Inspiron... where the hard drive generally works a lot better on USB 2.0 than 3.0
Sometimes I have to unplug it and plug it back in maaany times for it to work.. /: oh well it's not a big deal for me, how much does anybody even use external HDDs

 

I found a fix, it appears to be drivers I will try it and let every one know.

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How did u go with the drivers?

From reading the thread that I linked to it seems that the wd usb controller is not compatible with our systems.

I've held off buying a wd portable for this reason. Hopefully you've found something

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I got my bros transcend to work but my WD still doesn't work it's new so I'll go swap it soon at the store with the equivalent transcend Hdd cz I know it works

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It's not really a controller fault, the culprit with our L702x's (and i had mine's freshly built at the time) is the fact that the USB 3.0 daughterboard is either faulty or the drivers are off. But now with newer driver releases (outside of Dell) they work pretty darn well .

 

Where do I find these drivers?

 

I'm just out, when I'm home with my PC I'll link the page to you

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