m17x - 3 driver issues on windows 7... is it just me?

I have had my m17x for almost a year now and just last week I decided to upgrade from vista to windows 7.

Everything seems to be working just fine except for 3 things...

1. For some reason every time i restart my WLAN drivers seem to be damaged because i dont have access to wireless networks it just says there are no wireless networks. The fix so far has been to go to the device manager and manually uninstall all network devices, then reboot and let windows discover and install them, once i restart it happens all over again.

2. When trying to use the 2 headphone jacks simultaneously, i.e. 2 headphones, only one of them work at a time. I use this a lot and i never had that problem in vista.

3. I have the dual GTX 260m video card setup. I notice that during Modern Warfare only one of the video cards is doing all of the work because of the temperature. My current video driver is 186.82 is this a driver related thing? I went to laptopvideo2go.com wanting to download a newer version of the video driver but it is overwhelming how many there are! How do i even begin to choose?

All my drivers were downloaded from Laptops, Desktop Computers, Monitors, Printers & PC Accessories | Dell so i know i have the latest drivers (except video).

Thanks

Alex

 

Alex it sounds as though you may have some hardware issues going on. My M17x originally had vista on it as well and when I upgraded to Win7 all I had to do was install the correct drivers(from Dell's website) and everything worked fine until my system hardware started to fail. I can't say for sure or even guess on the video card part as I only had a single 260, but the others sound like there is a major clash. I don't know if the install order may be an issue but there is a specific order that they have to be installed in or you may have problems I'll give you a link, note that it says vista but applies to win7 too: Alienware : The Best Custom Built Gaming PC for the Ultimate PC Gamer!
If that doesn't solve the issues I'd call up tech support.

 

Thanks for the link but i honestly dont think there is a problem with the hardware itself since it was working just fine beofre moving to windows 7 :S

Ill check it out just in case

Alex

 

For the network problem go back to device manager } network adapters and right click on the ethernet adapter } properties } advanced and disable device sleep on disconnect.
For some reason when the Ethernet adapter goes to sleep it stop the wireless working properly too.

For the Nvidia drivers try downloading the DELL BETA p05:

Drivers and Downloads

This driver will also get rid of the DPC latency stuttering problem

 

Ive had the same issues with the WLAN driver. Removing all of the broadcom software and letting windows use the default driver solved my problem.

 

I disabled "device sleep on disconnect", restarted and now my internet is working fine!! Thanks for that!!

That's 1 issue down, 2 to go!

Im downloading the video drivers you linked to, one question though.. How come these are beta drivers? Any other stable releases with great performance you know about?

Thanks again!

Alex

 

Im using 197.16 direct from Nvidia's site at the moment and these are stable but have the dreaded DPC problem.

You could try 257.21, I have tried these without issue but a lot of users are reporting good performance but occasional lockups, and random black screens, No harm in trying them though.

NVIDIA DRIVERS 257.21 WHQL

 

Nope. Only beta drivers for R1 customers. We were told a few months ago that the new official versions would include the fix but we hasn't seen it materialize. It seems like Dell thinks beta drivers are enough for R1 owners...

Now we are old customers, they have our money and they don't give a crap.

 

Got the drivers and managed to get the SLI working for MW2!

I followed the instructions in these two threads:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/448418-sli-not-functioning-some-games.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...your-game-what-do-if-its-not.html#post5498779

That makes it 2 down and 1 to go!!

The only thing left for me to fix is the fact that I cant use both headphone jacks simultaneously even though i have the audio drivers from dell's website. Any ideas what i can try next?

Thanks!!

That's too bad! This is not right, considering the price of the system and considering when it was released.. Its all about the money i guess... :S

Alex