m18x and windows aero

the problem exists because of a Windows driver + Intel iGPU + other GPU combination. I called just now and I'm running temporary fix. It's not really AMD/NVidia's fault. I blame intel/alienware on this one.

 

Are you running the temporary fix I have suggested, or did Alienware provide something else for you to try when you called them?

 

Alienware's fix. I have CCC installed.

 

Please elaborate for us. What is Alienware's fix?

It could be something I shared with their L2/L3 Tech Support already, or maybe something new and unique that we would all like to test. I'm anxious to hear what they're doing for us.

 

They're waiting on NVIDIA/ATI drivers to fix it so far. Their fix is disabling WinSAT @ startup.

 

OK, that's a good start. I shared that with them a little more than a week ago. It's not a fix, but it helps quite a bit because it stops one of the common triggers for an Aero crash. Thanks!

Honestly, I think the answer is a combined effort of Intel/NVIDIA/AMD and Microsoft coming together on this one. I think Intel is the primary one holding the keys to the fix. If AMD and NVIDIA have to figure out a proprietary solution on their own it's going to take longer.

 

Here is the fix that they provided to me, that does not work. There is no info at all on an ETA for a real solution.

Alienware : The Best Custom Built Gaming PC for the Ultimate PC Gamer!

 

M18x.R1 A02 BIOS file is now posted on support.dell.com - just posted today... download quick in case they decide to take it down again.

 

So an AW tech just called me out of the blue to confirm my shipping info for a system replacement. Had no idea. Don't have any info on specs, but I will update when possible.

 

That happend to me once. You'll most likely have 6990's!!

 

Not if what Chris told me has any word of truth....like for like refurb were his words to me about PC capture.....

 

Mine has worked fine since the day I finished installing SP1 and AMD's drivers 11.7+. The original dell install Aero was borked but that didn't bother me. The only time Aero glitches (is when my scan util turns it off when launching games) and when I'm swapping drivers which is normal.

I'm on a fresh install of my Win 7 Ultra from my desktop that I've been using for years, not sure if it's something on the Win7 install Dell ships or the SP1 disc that was included.

 

Ohhh........I see. I assumed it was non-aero bug related. If it is then who knows.............
from his post it seems as though he might get a new build.

 

Well I guess if its not part of Chris' "masterplan" of pc capture, its possible....I just thought that it was related to that particular request to exchange systems to test Aero Issues.

My bad if the exchange is not related to that at all.....

 

Well, we'll see in a few days. Even if, I get to inspect it and see if I like it. If I don't-back it goes.

 

True. So you are the official NBR "guinea pig" for Chris' capture and exchange scenario, right? - hope you get a good system for your troubles and +rep for having the guts to go through with it....

 

Maybe I'm just the first. Surely if there are several systems with the same issue (which there are), they would try to capture a few of them. Either way, maybe they can figure something out. Dell/AW has helped me and been very good to me for the past 2 years. I can consider this a little bit of return 'help' from my end to them. And all the members here also........

 

ChrisM has asked us all to test out AMD's latest driver offering over at the Dell Aero Thread.

Seems that Intel and AMD may have cooked something up.......

 

I got an email asking me to try it. I've been using 11.8 on my clean OS install since yesterday. Aero is behaving so far. No display brightness controls, but no aero bug. Need both to work AMD... please.

 

I've had my M18x dissmantled in anticipation of my 6990M's arrival today, so I've been using our other 6970M M18x with 11.8P driver. The 11.8 driver is very buggy, does not allow for the control of brightness and is not a simple install from AMD. Today I've seen 2 Aero flake outs on 11.8P. The first flake out was resolved by logging off & logging back on. The second flake out required a reboot.

 

How is 11.8 not a simple install for you? I clicked express install and everything worked fine from that point after the standard reboot.

 

Because you can't just go to the AMD site and click download and install. It gives the same error as 11.6/7. But if you get the link to the driver that someone else has already downloaded...there are no problems. Do you understand now?

 

One thing that would be nice is if the 14 people that voted and said they are not having issues would chime in and maybe tell us what they did or are/aren't doing. Haven't heard from any of them! Still seems as if 78% of owners have some kind of issue though.....

 

Most likely those people who voted no, eventially developed the bug and have no way of retracting their vote. It took my M18x 4 days to show the Aero Bug.

 

OK I got you, the only diff for the 11.8 Preview is it's a direct download.

 

Aero is behaving for me too so far. Like you, installed 11.8 Preview drivers yesterday (via Guru3d) so still early to tell. Also, the annoying thing is as one thing gets fixed, one thing that WAS working gets broken again. Surely to god its not too hard for AMD-Intel-Dell to get this correct and functioning properly....I mean we are talking of THREE multi-billion dollar organisations here....its not like we are asking them to cure world hunger or provide a cure for cancer.....a reference driver that works without knock on issues would be nice.

I will continue to test out the Aero but again, on a side note....brightness - just turned my system on and its now at FULL brightness and cant adjust it. I have a hunch that after a resume from S3, its a tad dimmer and STILL cant be adjusted.....maybe just my eyes....

 

So far, so good as far as Aero is concerned. But, I find that 11.8 is buggy as skygunner pointed out. Before my clean OS install about 48 hours ago, 11.8 was causing BSOD and black screens on a regular and frequent basis. At least Dell, 11.6 and 11.7 were very stable except for the Aero bug.

So, I don't find 11.8 to be stable, but it is doing a nice job of keeping Aero running. I am still getting an occasional pop-up error that the atikmpag.sys driver has stopped working due to an error and recovered. This has happened twice and if you don't restart a BSOD will follow shortly afterward. (Sounds like the R2 again, doesn't it.) I don't think the NVIDIA cards are giving as many fits as the AMD, but I don't really have any data to base that on. I'm just getting tired of issues with AMD drivers all the time. It seems like the last 5 years things have continued to get worse. It's even pathetic that you cannot use the AMD uninstall utility without having to run Driver Sweeper and CCleaner between installs. I'm starting to see more negative posts about non-Dell systems with similar issue, so this may be my last AMD powered system for a while. Although, were it not for NVIDIA's engineering crappiness I might still be using an XPS M1730. Thankfully, I'm not.

Spoiler

 

What's so retarded is that these systems were designed for us to only use the "Official Dell Driver". To install any driver besides 11.8P we have to jump through a bunch of hoops. With each AMD driver release, I feel like AMD is getting farther away from the original "Official Dell Driver" meant for our M18x systems. I say this because each driver release after 11.6 has so many incompatibilities. Does dell expect us to hang tight on their old release drivers? If so, this is my last AW laptop.

I can't count how many times AW/Dell tech support forced me back on old Dell release drivers that cause flickering in todays games and yesterdays patched games. Lame.

 

Aero bug came back. Turned on my M18x after dinner and was greeted by the ugly blue task bar upon log-in. Log-off/log-on stopped it, but what a pain in the bottom that is.

 

Yup! You're right about it being retarded. Unfortunately, ALL of the large laptop OEMs support only their "official" driver installations. They are not video card manufacturers and don't have the staffing necessary to release new "official" drivers at regular intervals, but in almost all cases the reference drivers work fine. What's extremely retarded is that they put a vBIOS in place with their name branded on it that makes it a pain in the a** for customers to fend for themselves. I say if you don't want to be on the hook and required to support driver updates, leave the @!*x/:?+**! hardware generic. AMD or NIVIDA drivers should instantly recognize their own hardware without having to mod, trick, sidestep or force anything, and they generally will whenever the OEMs don't mess with things.

Why would any company do this to someone as important as a customer? Proprietary SUCKS. We'd could all go buy Apple products if we were interested in that sort of idiotic garbage.

I'm wondering if there are vBIOS firmware out there we can flash our 6970 and 6990 and 580 video cards with so they become unbranded? If so, perhaps that will cure the Aero bug.

 

I have to agree & disagree with you on this one. Every Asus G-Series that I've owned(G51, G71 & G73) allowed the customer the choice to install AMD/Nvidia reference drivers straight from the website w/o bending over backwards. My new Qosmio X775-3DV78 3D(work pc with switchable igpu) Qosmio X775-3DV78 3D Laptop allows for the installation of Nvidia reference drivers straight from the website. My old Alienware M17x R2 allowed me to install from AMD.


If Dell is not going to keep up with current software then they should contact AMD/Nvidia to have our model removed from the blacklist.
Crysis 2 runs like hot garbage on the Dell drivers. But on 11.6 it runs like a dream.

 

I agree with alot of what's just been said above too regards to the proprietory nature of these cards. If Dell dont want to or cant keep up with the frequency of driver releases/developments, they should "hand the ball" over to the team that DOES. We should then have full product support for our gpu's.....after all, its a GAMING system....we need the latest drivers to keep our GAMING performance as good as it can be as and when new titles roll out etc etc.

Dell will NOT keep up releases of drivers as AMD or Nvidia do...I think there was 2 releases for my M17xR2 in the 9months or so I owned it....one of those was only down to the vBios release....

Oh, and my mini update: 11.8preview is yet to bug out on me at all - no bsod's, no Aero flake out...nothing.....(obvioulsy, now I have said that, it will bug out in the next few minutes no doubt lol)

 

11.8p has other problems besides not being able to control the brightness. Mr. Fox mentioned some of the problems. I won't go into too much detail because I don't want to jinx it for you. The perfect driver for the 6970M's is 11.6.
With the way things are going, 11.6 may be the last stable driver release compatible with the M18x. Since AMD has the M18x blacklisted at the request of Dell from future driver releases, it is NOT up to AMD to provide later driver releases compatible with the M18x.
11.7 & 11.8p work perfect on non-M18x systems. If anyone needs proof head over to the Asus gaming thread. Those other systems don't have a problem with having"No way to control the brightness"....ridiculous...


?What does it take to see that this thread needs to be sticky'ed?

 

skygunner - I agree that 11.6 is the most stable. It has been in all my testing and that's why I used it in my workaround "fix" posted a week or so ago. 11.8 is just pure garbage, at least on the Dell brand of the M18x 6900M series. Where did you get information that AMD has the M18x blacklisted at Dell's request?

I'm wondering if there is a vBIOS we can flash for the 6900M series that will make it impossible for the Catalyst package to identify our video cards as being the Dell flavor. Do you suppose the 6970 modules that R2 owners are installing in their systems (from Clevo) has a vBIOS we can use on these cards?

I am sending a PM to pkhetan to ask about this.

 

Id rather hear about these "other problems" - dont worry abount Jinxing things....if its gonna go belly up, it will.

Out of curiosity, where d'ya get the idea that AMD will "blacklist" M18x from future Catalyst releases on Dell's request from? - If there is any proof of that, it will surely mean ALOT of people NEVER buying Alienware again.....I dont think Dell are that stupid to do such a thing....

 

Side note about 11.8 preview:

Been testing on my system and I have done about a dozen restarts/boots and around two dozen 3dmark06 "start/closes" and Aero hasnt glitched once.....

Im just wondering if maybe you guys are implenting a part of "the recipe" that Im not and maybe thats why your not having the same reults as I am.....

 

Nope, I installed 11.8 on a fresh OS install, Steve. It was the first video driver with file to touch the hard drive. Give it time, it'll flake out on you. It took a couple of days for me and I was thinking the problem was fixed, then BAM, no Aero. It took me totally by surprise. Aero indeed crashes less on 11.8 than Dell, 11.6 or 11.7 does.

I'm actually more concerned about the BSOD issues with 11.8 than I am Aero, so I unloaded 11.8. I am hoping it's just the preview version that is the problem. I'd have to say it's the buggiest AMD Catalyst release I have ever used. I went back to my 11.6 minus CCC recipe and my system is rock solid again. CCC is just a piece of crap with these cards. I'm thinking CCC was probably to blame for the S3 resume problems on the R2 as well. I wish I would have thought to test a driver-only install on the R2.

 

I spoke with an AMD representative at 408-749-3060. I asked him why couldn't I install the AMD referrence driver directly from AMD's website. He then spoke with a level II who told him that maufacturers who request that their models use only the drivers provided by them go into a "blacklist" that prohibits the installation of the standard driver from AMD.

 

If that is true, it's absolutely horrible news. I hope what the AMD representative told you was misinformation. I cannot imagine that Dell would intentionally break their systems by doing something so foolish as this. It's also not consistent with DELLChrisM's message that their engineers wanting us to test the 11.8 drivers. I'm praying the guy that told you that is full of crap. Please post this on the Dell Community Forum and maybe a Dell representative will refute or affirm it for us.

And, I'm further hoping that what you are referring to is the download install manager rejecting our system and not the actual Catalyst package refusing to install. We can always get the drivers from another source like we are currently doing. Otherwise, we will end up having to manually install drivers or mod an INF file every time we need an update.

 

I am ONLY referring to the download install manager rejecting our system. Not the actual driver.

 

Well, that's actually very comforting, but it's still extremely retarded and I hope Dell would not do something like that. I sent an email to my Alienware Tech Support rep asking if he can confirm or refute what the AMD rep told you. But, from the behavior of the download install manager, it seems within the realm of possibilities.

 

Hi Mr. Fox,

I don't know so much about Alienware notebooks firmwares. In general, to have a communication between the motherboard and another part (video card for example), this need some definitions in both the motherboard and the card firmware. Because the Alienware M17x-R2 (and I think in your case also) was not prepared to accommodate a 6970M card, its motherboard firmware didn't have the enough informations and that led to some problems (fan control I think & others). In somewhat the Clevo vBIOS compensate what was missing. The only possibility to know if this will be the case in your system also, is to try it. But keep in mind that not all the video cards could accept another manufacturer vBIOS without causing a repairable/unrepairable damage to the card. You have to be sure that the card that you are using is flexible in that (for example the same card was tried by others and they didn't report a difficulty in flashing a specific vBIOS & reflashing to origin again)

 

pkhetan - thank you for the super quick response. That sounds a little too scary for me to risk without knowing lots of other people have already done it without any problems. I will not risk damaging my system or voiding the warranty with an unknown venture or experiment. Hopefully, Dell will give us a vBIOS update very soon for the 6970 and 6990 like they did for the 5870. That vBIOS update cured lots of issues on the R2 for Alienware owners. (Dell, I hope you are listening... please.)

 

I'm quoting from Ichime guide to show what will work and what will not work with the Clevo card with Clevo vBIOS

Some M17x-R2 owners are using the Clevo 6970 cards with the original Clevo vBIOS, & some with the modified-by-ichime vBIOS. The only difference is with the mod vBIOS you can increase overdrive limits and stop 2d clocks from going too high.

 

Can we please stay topic related. Now that we have Dell active in the thread, I would hate to drive them away with non-approved/money loosing mods.

Thanks you.

 

I am hoping that Dell continues their interest in helping us with a fix so that there is no reason whatsoever to look for alternatives. They came through for us with a vBIOS update for the R2 5870 CFX and I fully expect them to do the same for the 6970/6990 CFX. The fact that they have asked us to test the AMD 11.8 preview driver is very encouraging and appreciated. I just want the M18x to function correctly and I think we will need a vBIOS update in order to accomplish that using AMD reference drivers without having to implement workarounds to install them.

I am still trying different (but harmless) things on my own. It seems my M18x is buggier than some on 11.8 Catalyst, so I decided to try some things that would seem totally unrelated on the surface. I remembered having issues with Microsoft Security Essentials causing hard freezes on my old XPS M1730, so on a whim I uninstalled Norton Antivirus and reinstalled 11.8 Catalyst. My graphics system instantly seemed more stable and Aero did not fail at log-in as it usually did. I have switched from Norton Antivirus to a trial of Vipre to see if there was some sort of conflict between the AMD driver and Norton scan drivers. And, since doing that earlier today I have not experienced any more BSOD caused by the AMD atikmpag driver. This may only be a coincidence, so at the end of the 15 day trial period for Vipre if I've had no BSOD from 11.8 and it starts happening again when I reinstall Norton, that will be interesting.

 

What I can't understand is why you and Stevie also haven't been chosen for a system capture, considering how much you've both given to the community. By the grace of Castle Grayskull, I hope Dell provides some type of intervention, instead of the usual sitting on the side lines and hoping the problem goes away.

 

Thank you! It's nice to know we're both appreciated here.

 

Thanks, likewise for yourself and Mr Fox and all the others that have helped. The reason I was told that I could not participate in the "PC Capture Programme" was simply because I was not an American Resident. ChrisM only wanted Americans to participate - for some odd reason......as if its only US Citizens that have this problem!!

Anyway, update time from me. I had 11.8 working fine on my current install. It didnt flake Aero out once but I had been putting off my SSD Install and thought I would do it today as its Sunday (Nice day of rest ) - so....having clean installed onto my new SSD, I will now start to monitor again. I have opted for a 100% Dell Driver Install to start with, exception being AMD 11.8 Preview for the Video Drivers. Elected to use Dell's Intel HD3000 Driver too for the time being so that I can report back with a degree of accuracy as to how my system is behaving "as it would from Dell"

Havent noticed any glitches yet....

 

That makes absolutely no sense. Has anyone else started the exchange process for a system capture?
I hope they intend to capture more than one AMD system.