Window 8 Media Bar drivers for R4

Anyone know what drivers I need to install to get my media bar to work.....FN keys are fine...just the media bar is not working.

 

do you have the OSD driver installed? If not that is the driver you need.

 

Yes, I installed the following from the web site:
Title: Application: Alienware OSD Application Application
Version: A00-00 718598
OEM Name:
OEM Version: 0.32.0.6
Computers: Alienware Notebook: M17xR4, M18xR2
OS: Windows 8 64-bit - H, Windows 8 64-bit - Pro, Windows 8 64-bit - EM
Languages: English
Created: 10/26/2012

 

Try to completely remove the Command Center and the OSD. Then turn off the computer, remove the battery and AC adapter, press and hold the power button for 30-45 seconds, then plug everything back in and turn on.

Reinstall the OSD first then the Command Center.

Follow these steps to completely remove the Command Center.

 

Thanks,
I will try this. Oddly the media bar buttons work after I install command center. Until I reboot. Then functionality is gone again. I will try your process and see what happens

Seems to have done the trick, thanks

Scratch that....its not working again????? WTH......Anyone else having this issue with Windows 8?

 

Any Windows Updates installing when you restart?

 

Nope...but I think I see what is happening......Since this is an upgrade, I have been re-downloading all of my Steam games.... The media bar works...Until I start steam....then its dead...even if I quit steam it stays dead..... any ideas???

Update: its not just steam.....after a reboot the media bar works and then just stops until the next reboot. Any ideas would be great

 

Steve.

Wish I could help you but I wanted to chime in here. I have been running Win8 on my R4 for a few months now with no problems. Did you do a clean install or upgrade??




Posted via Win8 tablet.

 

upgrade...I bought the 40 dollar online deal of windows 8 pro...you cant do a clean install with that one

Update.....its not all of the media bar buttons....just the volume up/down and mute. they work at first, then stop after about 10 seconds, almost like some other service or app is killing it.....event viewer shows nothing...all services that should be started seem to be started..... I reinstalled the creative driver/app with no change. Sound still works, and I can lower/raise volume using the task try icon just fine. it just seems to effect the media bar controls...................
Anyone have ideas?

Anyone have any ideas? Like I said, as soon as I boot volume controls work for like 10 seconds, then stop and don't come back until a reboot. Any ideas about what is conflicting with it, cuz that is my current guess as to what is happening

 

I have exactly the same problem here! have you finally managed to find a solution ???

 

You can, I bought the online upgrade as well, after the upgrade assistant download the required files it asked you to either install or burn it to a DVD right ? If you saved the ISO then you can boot off it and do a clean install.

 

Ok so, I've installed the OSD without a problem in an M17x r3 with Win8. I did notice one thing, I had to enable Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 manually as the OSD needs both 3.5 and 4.0 active to properly work.

Open programs and features, click the link in the left pane to "Turn Windows features on or off". Make sure both 3.5 and 4 are checked and restart your computer.

hope it works

 

I have both 3.5 and 4 .NET checked, although the two sub-items for 3.5 are not checked. Still not having luck with the OSD or some of the media buttons like eject.

 

In another thread regarding this problem a user stated that the R3's OSD driver would work flawlessly.. Might be worth checking it out

 

Not sure if it will work properly on the r4 though. Definitely worth a shot though.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S2 running Resurrection Remix

 

I tried to follow bigtonyman's advise with R3 OSD drivers. They do not work unfortunately in Windows 8 Pro fresh install. We will be awaiting for new R4 Windows 8 compatible drivers release.

 

Hmm mine works under clean install under windows 8. I did use the latest driver for the r4 frmo dell drivers website that is compatible with windows 8, I had to enable net framework 3.5 before I installed it though.

 

Are you on R4 or R3 machine though? Your sig suggests R4 is on it's way...

 

Sorry need to update that, its on a r4. Volume keys, wireless (flight mode) and etc work fine. OSD is the basic windows 8, but I don't mind that.

 

I am still experiencing problems with the media buttons. While on bios A04 on my m17xr4, i could only get the win 8 osd animations when using the new driver. However some of the buttons didnt work. When i rolled back to the win7 driver, i got all the old alienware animations back + the win 8 animations simultaneously. All buttons worked, but the alienware brightness animation did not go up or down to show what level of brightness the computer was on.

So i upgraded to the latest bios. I lost the win 7 alienware OSD animations and i lost the use of the eject button. Tried the new win 8 OSD driver - same problem.

I did a clean install on win 8. Same problems.

reinstalled win 7 to see if the bios was messing up my computer and all the OSD animations were fine.

Re-upgraded to win 8 hoping the settings would carry over. I lost all alienware OSD animations and the eject button again.

My conclusion is the old and new osd drivers dont work well with windows 8 and there is something fishy with bios A09 as well. I have kind of given up now as i spent aaaaaaaall day reinstalling and uninstalling stuff.
Most annoying is my eject button. i'm kicking myself for upgrading the bios.

 

Same problem here, no more blue animation popping up like in the good ol' windows 7.
After clean installing Windows 8, the eject button does not work, but everything else on the media bar appears to work.
3.5 .netframework is enabled, don't see a 4.0 version (see 4.5 instead so I assume that's what everyone is talking about unless you guys are manually installing version 4.0 )

 

I also got this problem on my m17xr4, enabling framework 3.5 didnt help. kinda annoying.

 

So, I have made a little progress....I uninstalled the OSD and Command Center and only installed the Command center. All of the buttons function, but have the windows 8 generic graphic (which I could care less about). I don't seem to be losing any functionality with out OSD and my Device manager is clean.
hope this helps somebody out there.

 

Tried steve1ddd method above. It seems the OSD and Command Center isn't even needed to get the function key or media bar to work.
Installing either of the above produces the same result for me.
Which leads me to believe that this is a built in feature of windows 8 as the keys still work after uninstalling and restarting.
However the eject on the media bar is still the only thing that doesn't work
For the moment I'm just right-clicking the drive on "My Computer" and just pressing eject - bit of an inconvenience at the moment, but I guess I can live with it.

 

Hey Hellsfire, exactly the same for me. I can't get any joy with the eject button and im currently using the right click and eject cd on the my computer screen too. Still i hope that Dell will release a driver update soon as this doesnt seem to be an isolated case.

 

hmmmm, my eject button is working using this method. Upgraded windows 8 if that matters.

 

@steve1ddd
Which version of Command Center are you using if I might ask ?

 

newest available off of web site

 

I'm getting the same issue. Just to make sure I didn't somehow break something I went back and did a clean install on a different drive. At no point did the eject button decide to start working inside of Windows. All other buttons work fine.

 

I traded the use of my eject button for Windows 8 built in OSD. I prefer it. Everything else works fine. It also doesn't minimize my games -_-.

 

Huh, weird my OSD doesnt work but they are installed, but all the media bar buttons work, including eject.

 

LoL, to this date I still have the same problem. I have cleaned installed, wiped drivers, reinstall in different orders, updated bios, and nothing works.
I've given up on it awhile ago...
Funny it worked fine on windows 7 though hmm...

 

Try this and see how it does...

 

Unfortunately that doesn't resolve it for me unless I need to install it in compatibility mode or something.

 

Does it install or does it just refuse to?

 

It installs and "works" (Fn+F8 check) but it doesn't resolve the Eject button issue. The main thing I find is that uninstalling the OSD software doesn't remove the Compal Embedded System Control driver (it's installed during the OSD installation) and I have no idea if that makes a difference or not.

For anyone that is working please list the following:
Version of the OSD and Alienware Control Center software as listed in Add/Remove Programs.
Version of the Compal Embedded System Control driver as listed in Device Manager.

For me...
ACC: 2.8.10.0
OSD: 0.32.0.6C
Compal Embedded System Control driver: 1.0.0.3

 

Exact same for me, and it works. Although an observation I had, I disabled Alienware OSD and 'RequiredApplicationsLauncher' (which is alienware CC etc. ) and it still works without it, my FN+F8 doesn't show the message though. I think its a lower level issue maybe?

 

So the Compal Embedded System Control driver was 1.0.0.3 in device manager? Hmm....

This wouldn't be the first low level item needing updating. The vBIOS would be the first one there.

(vBIOS needs updated to allow the legacy boot option to be disabled when Enduro is inactive or on discrete only configurations)

 

Yep 1.0.0.3 in my device manager as well. They actually did update the vBIOS but havent released them to everyone, there is a thread on techinferno for the gtx 680m not sure about the hd 7970, but I can't see why not.

 

Yea. I got the updated vBIOS from techinferno for my HD 7970m. They got all expect 675m last I checked. Anyways I dug deeper. The Alienware OSD application is definitely needed for it to work at all. On Windows 7 the button stopped working when the application was killed and started working again when restored. I went back and did a capture using Process Monitor and got a bunch of activity from the process when eject was hit. Nothing stuck out. However on Windows 8 I get nada from the process when eject is hit which means something else may be missing. One bit to note is that iaStorF.sys is not attached to the dvd drive as a driver even though it is on Windows 7. This is something I may want to check out because one of the things that the application goes through it seems is the filter drivers. I'll try getting an updated Intel driver because the Windows Update version is currently newer than the Dell provided and doesn't include this file it seems (it is missing from the drivers folder).

Update: Checked the INI file. On Windows 8 it does NOT install the filter driver where on Windows 7 it does. iaStorF.sys is the Filter driver. I'm installing the Intel drivers in Windows 7 compat mode to see if it makes a difference. Will update when I know more.

 

I disabled OSD from starting up and i can't see any OSD process running in background, definitely not running when I hit eject, disc still ejects though, might actually not be to do with OSD service? I can manually start the process but it doesn't make any difference since I killed the process and it doesn't make any difference. I currently have no processes starting up, not even alien command centre. It boots as a clean install of windows 8 basically.

Do you use secure/fast boot or uefi? Did you end up having a try with a new installation on your spare HDD?

 

Have secure/fast boot enabled. Even with them off it makes no difference. I'm kinda hitting road blocks. I do notice that the filter driver doesn't get installed in Windows 8.

Yes I did install Windows 8 on a spare drive. Even on that drive it was the same. Clean install and eject doesn't work. Restore my Windows 7 install (onto another spare external) and eject works fine there.

 

Just a hunch, but could you install with your HDD mode change from RAID to AHCI see if that might work?

Shouldn't destroy your current setupid, just remember to set it back to RAID when you put your original HDD/SSd back in I guess.

 

Yea... I'll give it a try in a sec.

Update: Made no difference. Installing in AHCI mode and the button still does not do anything for me in Windows 8. I know we are missing a puzzle piece somewhere but I'm at a loss where.

Update: I gave up yesterday and opted to remove the dvd drive and replace it with my other 750GB. Now I don't need to worry about it anymore.

 

hi guys, i'm not sure if it has already been mentioned but there are a bunch of new software updates on the dell support website posted up a few days ago including a new OSD driver version X02. I tried it out, i don't get the fancy alienware OSD graphics like on windows 7, just the on board windows 8 OSD, but however my eject button works again! Hallelujah! No OSD graphic for disc eject though, but i'll take it!

 

Can anyone else confirm?

Sent from my SGH-I777 using Tapatalk 2

 

I replaced my DVD-RW drive with Blu Ray drive and without changing anything with the drivers eject button start working. I did not even had OSD installed since after trying so many times with no luck I finally gave up. Windows 8 still showed own animations and everything else worked except DVD eject. New hardware fixed the problem with no change in software what so ever.