*OFFICIAL* M17xR3 Owner's Lounge Thread - Part 2

Yeah, i noticed this first thing when I unboxed mine. It's not bad, but it's there. Nothing i'm worried about though.

 

A question do you guys think or know if 1tb 2.5in drive which are only 12.5mm yet...will fit in the second hard drive space? Anyone tried it.


For some laptop it just about does with a little push but for some it does not.


I want to use it for pure storage and I wanted the biggest storage possbile for the laptop.

 

isn't it quite a bit more expensive to upgrade the warranty after the fact though?

i know my three year old inspiron 1545 is about to run outta warrant and they wanted like $300 to extend it another year. lol, this thing isn't even worth $300..

 

I'm pretty sure it will fit on port 1, but not port 0

 

You could also get an adapter and put it in the optical drive space - this is what DR650SE has done on his R2 - should work in the R3 as well

 

Nice. I would love 1tb.


Thanks.

Ah but rather keep my optic drive. I use it..sometimes.

 

Fair enough, I think he put his in an enclosure for when he uses it

 

Um, yes! My 1 year ext was $279 USD. A 3 year woulda been $580. Couldn't afford it so I am going year by year. I'll just do it when I get my taxes back.

 

I want to run these on my desktop to compare

Can you max out the settings for everything and run it again Speedy? Maybe send it to an external as well with 1920x1200? (or I can just run at 1080p)

 

2820qm might be worth it. I wasn't too sure myself. The 2920xm is 100mhz faster than the 2820qm. Both have 8mb of cache, and everything else is pretty much similar.

The 2920xm can probably be overclocked. Oh and the 2920xm has a tdp of 55 watts versus the 45 for the 2820qm.

If I were you, the 2720qm is a safe bet and saves you money.

 

my question was and sorry for not explaining correctly

if I select the 3 year warranty on new machine does that then = 4 years

the standard 1 year plus the 3 years you pay for extra on a new order

 

No, it's 3 years total

 

Yes, if it is a 3 year EXTENSION. Just make sure it is an extension, not a total of 3 years.

 

When you are buying a new laptop when you select 3 years warranty it means 3 years total, not 3 years + the standard one year warranty

 

right thanks for that, so you are actually buying 2 extra years, worth noting I think

 

Well I pulled the trigger and ordered a m17 and canceled the sager in my sig. Sad to be stepping down from the 485 but the I decided the nicer screen and keyboard were worth it.

 

I was considering Sager as well. But what pulled me here was 3d and more importantly Hdmi Input. Also visually it's way more appealing.

 

The 6970m and 485m perform pretty similar. You will gain a lot in the way of battery life and aesthetics though. Also the warranty is much more convenient

 

Don't worry man, the 6970 is MORE than fine in all games max.

 

Guys, any internal TV tuner option?





Yea the 3d has some bad points wish they gave us an option to upgrade the card while having 3d.

 

I think you are stuck using either the HDMI in or usb solutions as there is no expresscard slot either anymore

 

Thanks.


USB it is then for me.

 

Yes. I was just saying if you select the 4 year basic plan ( Here), you will get 4 years TOTAL.

 

Can someone please tell me the step by step process of switching over from HDD to SSD or point me to the place to find it?

So far, I've done the following:
Swapped HDD for SSD
Chagned Bios from RAID to AHCI
Started the OS install on the unallocated space
Installation completed
But upon restart, black screen says unable to start due to hardware or software change, registry is missing or corrupt.

Do I need to reset CMOS?
Is it a bad SDD?

Thank you Thank you!

 

If you have nothing to lose, try reinstalling again. Could be an incompatibility between the ssd and M17x R3 maybe

 

What SSD do you have?

 

I had this on my Inferno SSD which uses Sandforce SF-1200 and my solution was to keep the BIOS setting on RAID. But, don't install the RST driver. I'm pretty sure it works because Windows 7 still recognized it as a SSD (no defrag scheduled) and the speed reported in Windows Experience is a 7.5.

Please report back if this solves your problem because I'm still curious why AHCI didn't work for me. I wonder if I'm the only using RAID...

 

The SF-1200 has issues with the R3 or mainly the Sandy Bridge chipset in the R3. It's been known for a while and confirmed by Mandrake. You need to to have your drive updated before you can proceed to a new install.

If I remember correctly Mandrake had an OCZ drive and he had to update the SSD firmware.

Make sure to do the same with the latest firmware for your drive.

 

Question: Is this the cord from power supply of R3 to the outlet? Im only interested in the female since the male varies in countries

 

I am using AHCI with a patriot inferno 120gb and i don't have problems but before i try to install RST and it blue screens all the time that's why i uninstall and is been working fine since

 

BTW, if you use a SSD, don't forget to move the virtual memory disk usage to the secondary hard drive to save space... I also recommend disabling hibernation since your reboot time with an SSD is so short anyway.

1) Change virtual memory:

Right click on Computer and select properties. Then select Advanced System Settings. Click "Settings..." under Performance, click "Advanced", click "Change...".

Finally, select C: and change to "No paging file". Select D: and change to System managed size.

2) Turn off hibernation:

Open a command prompt with Administrative privileges. Then type:

powercfg.exe /hibernate off

 

I have been in several countries in my life so far, and well...er....females are females.........only interested in females here myself

Just sayin

 

hahahaha good one
+rep

 

I believe Dell screwed me. I am doing a clean install and the system does not find the Intel 6300 WIFI card but the 6250 card. I checked my invoice I paid for and ordered the 6300 WIFI card.

Could windows not recognize the card correctly? I tried installing the 6300 driver and it failed completely.

The 6250 works on the other hand.

 

under device manager it should show the wifi card as a 6300. i've seen it posted somewhere.

 

Under device manager it does show the card as 6300 but the driver of the 6250 only works. Is that ok?

 

ffs...
Nothing is working!
The install goes successfully, but as soon as it restarts, I get that same error message, as though, upon power off, the ssd becomes corrupt. Ideas anyone please?

 

yeah it should be ok:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/561772-help-intel-6300-r3-2.html

 

Ok, I was wrong the driver of the 6250 do not work either. I am not able to install any WIFI driver. This is pissing me off.

 

Maybe take off the keyboard and make sure they gave u the right wireless card? I cant tell if theres a 3rd antennae attached in ur video or not.

 

try the ones direct from intel:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=19856&ProdId=3200&lang=eng

 

Ok, I uninstalled everything and installed everything back. It works. This was un-needed stress...

 

Should I install Intel RST driver with my SSD or not? I remember it was not recommended by OCZ for my Vertex 2 but with an Intel SSD I imagine it's good.

 

Anyone here had trouble with their speakers not working? They were fine the day I got it, and then suddenly I could only get sound through headphones or hdmi. Did a full respawn, and even tore the laptop apart to check the wires, but still no go. and now I'm doing a clean install. Am I probably out of luck or what?

 

Yes! And the end you speak of can be male or female-depending on how you look at it. You know-transgender! BC it plugs into the brick but also recieves from the prongs. Hmmmm!?

 

hahaha very confusing indeed. That is the second joke today about those plugs. Who knew
Thanks for the answer anyway

 

I know before you did all that fun stuff you checked to make sure speakers were selected and checked in the sound devices right ?

 

Try changing the disk controller to IDE in BIOS and then boot. If this works, Windows has not enabled the AHCI driver as part of the install. Do a search for how to enable AHCI [it involveds a bit of regedit].

Ira

 

Haha, yes, I did check that. Tried selecting every available audio device there was, checked all the volumes, and nothing. Only with headphones or hdmi out. I also tried the new driver with no luck.

 

It's certainly not a bad idea to use rst 10.x with an intel SSD, though I have found the hm67 ahci driver works beautifully.

I had that issue.
Was on skype with Dell. They couldn't hear me and were forcing me to call back. For the 17th time in a row. Calling anyone else worked properly. This combined with Dell not helping me at all with the 3D package that I never got yet paid for made me really angry and I ripped the headphones out of notebook and threw them at a wall.

Had to plug them into all jacks except the red one a few times before speakers would work again.