m18x and windows aero

I've seen that 3 times on our 6970M CF system! I can get rid of it by running a game or restarting. Those artifacts are in the exact same position that I've seen. It's some type of temporary glitch. That pic doesn't do it justice. In real life when I've seen it, it looks like screen damage. It's that bad. I noticed it happening as soon as I went from original Dell driver to AMD driver. I didn't know refresh gets rid of it.

 

Come to think of it, I remember exactly the same kind of markings when I had my R2 with 5870's.....I just thought that it was some kind of "glitch" as it wasnt there ALL the time, just after, say, running a bench or something....

 

I have never seen that before.

Fresh install and no Aero issues yet. Though I haven't really tried anything. Ran 3D11 and it crashes about 30 seconds in. Hmmmmmmmmmmm!?

 

Thanks for letting me know... Steviejones and Skygunner also, thanks. I've never seen that before either. I first noticed it about 10 days ago, but it may have been happening all along. (I am only a month +4 days into ownership.) It is odd that it comes and goes randomly, and as I mentioned, never in the same spot twice. It's sometimes hard to notice because it can be hiding around the edge of an icon or gadget where it's not as obvious as when it is out in the wide open spaces of the display area. (Moving the icon or gadget better exposes it in those cases, but the artifact does not move with those objects.)

Also, FYI to everyone... I received an email update from our friend, Chris Mixon. They have confirmed the Aero bug is present on all GPUs (Intel, AMD and NVIDIA) in their labs and support calls. At this point they are engaging the OS team for assistance as well, so we could see some of the collaboration with Microsoft (and maybe even Intel) such as we are hoping for.

 

I dont really know how to take this comment. Its certainly NOT a dig at you Mr Fox BUT it is beyond me why Dell or ChrisM cannot come onto THIS thread or the DELL THREAD and update US ALL and not just individuals. It actually makes me feel very undervalued as a customer, the fact that they cant be bothered to let us all know how things are going and whats happening.....we are ALL experiencing these issues at the end of the day. As it stands right now, I have the same issues, same system, have offered my system in surrender for testing yet I am not given the common courtesy, from Dell, of an update.......not good enough.

Why do I have to hear this update (and no offense Mr Fox) from a third party individual as opposed to from the horses mouth??? - wouldnt have take but a minute for Chris to have addressed the WHOLE THREAD......you arent the only one with problems at the end of the day and Dell should respect there are others involved too.....(I know its not your fault Mr Fox but I am getting extremely pissed with Dell)

 

stiveijones133, all,

My apologies. I have many other fires I am trying to control and I just forgot to post out here.

 

Chris, nice to see you. No need to apologise as your prescence is much appreciated. Sometimes, your abscence is not

I appreciate that this issue is not your sole purpose in life, just nice to know that we have not been forgotten, I guess.

Thanks for the post. Much aprreciated. +repped.

Care to elaborate on the situation for us all???? - do Dell have a fix in the pipeline???

 

Ouch man! He may have more than just this thread to keep up with. I mean, he's obviously one of the 'higher ups' on the tech side of things and the fact that he is posting at all in the thread is pretty comforting. How many other OEMs have techs posting in their threads? I mean I don't know, maybe they are?!

 

I get odd pixelation issues with my mouse cursor on occassion to include random AERO crashes. Interesting that Chris is working on it. When I called tech support and talked to some random guy in India I was told that it was not a hardware issue and since it is software I would have to pay a fee to have someone help me with it.

Nice to know tech support went down the crapper with Dell taking over.

 

I have to disable Aero in order to run 3dmark vantage and run some high quality games like BFBC2, NTW, Metro2033 and etc.

 

You can expect incompetence from almost any call center in India for almost anything you're calling about. Did you call Alienware Support or Dell Support? There is a big difference between the two. As an Alienware owner, I have never spoken to a person from India in Tech Support. Maybe that is because I live in the US. Where are you calling from?

Did you hang up and call back to get help from someone else? I'm sure you could call the company I work for and get a moron on a bad day. Every huge corporation has some of those worthless types lurking on their payroll. It's not necessarily an accurate reflection of the company as a whole, but still potentially creates a very bad impression with the customer.

3DMark Vantage and many other benchmark tools and games automatically disable Aero when they launch. That typically happens without user intervention and it is normal behavior... not an issue. However, the fact that Aero refuses to restart whenever those applications close is an issue. If you are having to manually disable Aero it sounds like you are experiencing a totally different problem than the Aero bug. There could be a different problem going on with your system.

Have you called 1800-ALIENWARE for assistance with your M18x? If not, please do. We need more customers that have the problem to call Tech Support so they can understand how widespread the problem is. The danger of us tech-savvy people being self-sufficient on technical issues is creating an impression that the problem is limited to a few isolated instances, so it does not get escalated to engineering as a known issue. I think we got a slow start on getting help from Alienware on this because not everyone jumped on the phone to complain about it immediately after unboxing their M18x. I'm guilty of only calling for help when I cannot fix it myself. I need to change my approach going forward so my pre-diagnostic phone calls can ultimately be of benefit to everyone.

 

Hahaha....this is sooo not funny.

Basically, I reckon that they are ALL told to say its a software issue and not hardware as that way, they can try and milk some cash outta you for using their fee based "Solution Station"......

Talk about extracting the urine.....that really does take the P*$$

 

But surely you only pay if they fix the problem...which I'm sure they can't....

 

Wrong! You pay for the ability to speak to the them about software problems. Nothing more.

I have spoken to a level 3 twice( which is VERY hard to do). I have been told twice by each tech that it is a problem with the hardware configuration. The level 1 techs that followed up my case from the level 3, have told me that it is up to AMD/Nvidia to provide a tweaked driver to rectify this problem.

Why is this so hard to believe? I am on the same team as everyone else.
The R2's unresolved problems(plugged in not charging/code 43 & sleep/resume brightness problem) that Chris tried to help us with in the past to this day remains unresolved, are all hardware problems. Whatever happend with that?

Has anyone told Chris that our I/O boards audio jacks are defective and cause the onboard speakers to malfunction?
Surely he needs to know that!! Why not kill 2 birds with 1 stone?

 

any news? is there an official fix for this crapware from dell?

 

Any one did try the new released 11.8?
Some are reporting that "brightness controls now work and i havent had any aero bugs yet either so far so good!" (Thasee @ATI 11.8 driver released!!! in http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/604472-ati-11-8-driver-released.html#post7826732)

 

I dont know of any fix at all. Dell released new 6970 drivers but they do NOTHING to cure the issue. As far as I know, there is no other planned or intended fix for the issue that seems to plague AMD configurations.

I cant do any more to help out with a fix for this....I have wiped my entire system to do a clean install, I have used only Dell drivers, I have latest bios installed etc etc and STILL the problem persists.

With that in mind, I have resorted to mailing "Michael" again......

I dont want to sound like "whinging minnie" but I had 9 months of R2 issue followed by THIS lot of Dell crap.....makes you wonder why on earth do we pay thousands for these systems when they cant even get the basics right?

You cant turn around and say "thats the price for the cutting edge" because windows is an OS, its not a hard thing to integrate without issue yet Dell seem to think they can roll out any old crap, toss a huge price tag on it, call it Alienware and then say "Its the worlds best machine"

I beg to differ Dell, I have net books than can manage simple tasks like this with ease and your elite systems struggle with it....

 

Mi dear chap, I totally agree with you... I only can quote the illustrative words of the brightest:

To be, or not to be ( a Dellienware consumer) , that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?

 

Ha ha, Shakespeare had it about right. Lets just see if Dell read Shakespeare....

 

This is EXACTLY what I am also trying to say. I have 2 netbooks in my home and a Brand new top off the line Toshiba Qosmio X775-3DV78 that has zero problems doing day to day tasks. After the R2 fiasco that most of us went through, I hardly think the cutting edge excuse holds any merit. Today I decided to visit the Sager/Clevo threads. I can not find anyone with a "Cutting Edge Technology" configuration to be sitting here forced to endure Aero "flake outs".

Chris, would it be possible to have regular(every other day) updates posted HERE, on the status of an official fix?
I really don't mean to sound rude. I'm just sick of this.
At this point I really think it is the least Dell/AW could do.

 

I have been checking every other day for 11.8. Thank you for the link. I will try it to see if the final version is better than the preview. The 11.8 preview was no bueno.

 

Perfect post. +rep. Dell need to get their act together and pretty much sharpish....

 

A Chinese teacher, one of my students, a little joking and a little seriously, said that it would not be surprising that it is possible that in China are trying "by order" to circumvent the QC of Dell products to avoid making the Lenovo products and others alike looking so bad...

Well, every one with she's/he's theories...

 

+1 rep back for hanging in here with the rest of US from 01/11(M17x R2) to current(M18x R1) through a plethora of unresolved problems. My hat is off to you.

 

Been seeing the Aero bug a lot more since I updated to 280.26. Happens a lot when I have Adobe Presenter up on full screen. We need a fix!!

 

So, are you going to roll back to the previous NVIDIA driver?

I just did a clean install of the final release of Catalyst 11.8 and it's a way better experience than 11.8 Preview. So far, so good. Aero is behaving and I have brightness control again. I did not have to reinstall OSD for brightness controls to work.

I ran WEI twice, 3DMark11 and Vantage and Aero restarted properly after each benchmark. So, if it lasts things are looking a little rosier.

My L2 rep is still waiting to hear from L3 or an engineer on my failing 6970 CFX.

Question: has anyone noticed whether after clean installing AMD drivers if Aero behaves properly until after the first time of using the IGP? I need to test this theory, but I am wondering if you never switch over to IGP after installing the AMD drivers whether Aero works just dandy until the day you do. After doing new driver installs or a clean OS install, I've always been hyper-focused on discreet graphics experience.

As I am sitting here processing things in my head, this thought occurs to me. I was not even interesting in trying to run the IGP until about day 2 of ownership and I never experienced the Aero bug until that point in time. I am going to purposefully NOT use the IGP for several days and see if Aero continues behaving and then switch to IGP to see if things go south at that point, if not before then.

 

Probably not. I may just wait it out till the next update and see if that's any better.

 

So, this "final release of Catalyst 11.8" is helping a bit... If the issue appear again because of the IGP... then maybe (just maybe) the blame is on Intel and its disconnection with the GPU engineers / makers...

My colleagues and I can continue the wait... We have enough computers and laptops "to play" with them... In the meantime, after the first dissapointing experiences, we have decided to continue the wait on the fence, seating on our wallets, until that Alien works as it's suppossed to... No rush from our side... You guys are our heroes...

 

Just curious: Has anyone tried going into Control Panel > System and Security > Administrative Tools > Services, and right-clicking on "Desktop Window Manager Session Manager", selecting Properties and then on the Recovery tab setting "Susequent failures" to "Restart the Service"? Maybe worth a try?

I rolled back my drivers from 280.26 almost as soon as I installed them, as they broke aero. Seems stable on 280.19 again, hoping it continues as I haven't been playing very demanding games (just Witcher 1).

 

SOS - it has been my hypothesis all along that Sandy Bridge and Intel HD graphics on a switchable platform is the root of this Aero bug. My first clue is the fact that this problem did not even exist before multi-GPU systems (laptops of various brands and desktop PCs) on Sandy Bridge with switchable graphics came into existence. I think that most single-GPU systems with switchable graphics don't have this issue. I'm not seeing much information to suggest that they are.

It may turn out that I am totally fully of baloney, but the fact that installing an updated version of the Intel chipset/IGP drivers significantly reduced the problem was the second clue. I think the Aero crash is being caused either by conflicting instructions in the Windows registry and/or malfunction on the PCI bus enumerator. I am going to date myself, but I remember the days of IRQ conflicts and problems with IRQ sharing. I am thinking this issue has some similarities. (I'm so glad those days are over.)

I suppose that only time will tell if I am OD'd on baloney, but I anticipate that the evolution of Intel/NVIDIA/AMD drivers will cause this irritating issue to fade into the past at some point.

 

Yes, I tried that a long time ago and it does not help. I have all three options set to restart the service. All that does is add extra error log entries to Windows Event Viewer because instead of giving up after the second try, Windows keeps on trying to restart the service.

However, this was a great idea and your suggestion shows how computer smart you are. For that, I gave you a +1 rep! You deserve it... keep the ideas coming... anything is worth trying.

 

Sell 'em! And the try to play Crysis or The Witcher on the netbooks.

 

Let's hope... and see
As I say berfore: I'm learning so much from just reading the post here... Wish I had more time to surf even more into the deep waters of this forum.

 

Aww, shucks, just trying to help.

 

lol, hilarious. oddly enough I'm still running stock drivers on my 580's and I have not seen the aero bug for over a week? Running lots of games and stuff last two days too.

 

In my home we have 2 M18x's, 1 Qosmio, 2 netbooks, an iPad and a iPad2(recently aquired). Those 2 netbooks aren't mine. But both of them run windows 7 better than your M18x lol

 

Would you sell a brand new car because it had a faulty radiator? - YOU may wish to do so and YOU can then also take a HUGE hit in the pocket as you wouldnt get back what you paid for it from the dealership on a private sale.

I prefer the approach of getting the manufacturer to address the issue........thats where the SMART money is at....

 

Also, as 11.8 WHQL are out it seems quite apt to point out that they also do nothing to cure Aero. I havent tried them yet but AirJordan on this thread clearly has experienced "Aero Dropout" already.....

 

Just ran WEI for the 4th time since yesterday on 11.8 WHQL and when WEI completed Aero restarted without a hitch. Also have had no BSOD since installing 11.8 WHQL. Not ready to declare victory yet, but definitely seems we're making progress. Improvement is a good thing.

 

Just give it time.
So far I've seen 2 Aero Flake Outs on 11.8, both from a cold boot. This problem needs to be addressed by Dell. What works in one standard AMD driver release, may not work in the next.

PowerDVD 11 still causes random Aero Flake outs.

 

For some reason the Aero flaking has intensified for me on the 11.8 driver. I usually put my M18x into sleep when not in use and so far both times that I have woken it up, windows reverted to basic. Before updating, I only experienced Aero's disappearance after a reboot on a rare occasion. A bit annoying if you ask me, it only requires a quick log off-on, but still a hassle.

 

I keep saying this and its not just because I like repeating myself BUT.....

IT SHOULDNT FLAKE OUT AT ALL!!!

Asus owners and Clevo / Sager owners do NOT have this problem with their systems with AMD or Nvidia cards so why is it that Dell have problems getting the basics right? - It cant be OS related because if it were, it would be prevalent across ALL manufacturers and not just DELL.

My contact with tech support already has them trying to tell me it could be a Windows OEM problem and thereby, passing the buck.

I could maybe agree with that if Dell could show me another system with the same cards that is having the same problem and that is made by another manufacturer. I would then buy it that it may be OS related.

Until that point, from my point of view....this problem is Dell related somehow. I dont know exactly how but its a combination of Dell hardware and Dell software....nothing else.

The other thing that seems very weird is that Dell only wanted to capture ONE system (not one with each gpu manufacturer).....they got one with AMD cards - in my opinion, the culprit here is AMD hardware and Dell software. What about testing for this issue with Nvidia systems........hmmmmm

 

Interesting that waking from sleep is when you are seeing this. It may be an indication of a power issue or some of the hardware drivers not properly reviving. I have always found waking computers from a sleep state results in a bug of one sort or another. Maybe it's just bad luck, but every system I have personally owned and every one I have used that belonged to an employer for the past 25 years has had varying degrees of problem waking from a sleep state. Some systems had mild issues, some would always throw a BSOD. The two most common issues waking from sleep have always been a black screen and complete loss of networking communications that require reboot. For that reason, I have always disabled the ability to enter a sleep state on all computers I own or use. The exception was my R2, as I was attempting to help troubleshoot the issues it had waking from sleep, but ended up disabling sleep on the R2 as well. I disabled sleep functions on the M18x as part of my routine system setup on first boot. I am so conditioned to shutting down a system when it is not in use that I really don't care about being able to use sleep features.

If you actually shut down Windows when your computer is not in use, it would be interesting to see if you do not experience the Aero bug nearly as much, or not at all.

I'm not sure about this... I can definitely see the point that is being made, but I'm not sure were are comparing apples to apples, or apples or oranges. Are the Clevo and Sager owners that have not mentioned an Aero bug running Sandy Bridge/HD 3000 IGP and dual GPU systems with switchable graphics? We cannot accurately use the terminology "all" unless we mean that is in reference to "all system with identical hardware components." I wish that the first generation of Intel i7 processors were compatible with Sandy Bridge. It would be very enlightening to see if this problem vanished using a first generation i7 CPU. We did not have this problem with the R2, but the reference hardware foundation is much different than the M18x.

 

Some of the earlier Clevo Sandybridge models were customizable with 485M/6970M SLI/AMD & Sandy Bridge processors. Those owners never had aero problems. Today most Clevo rebuilders only offer desktop class cpu's for some reason.

 

Only speculation on my part, but perhaps they found some emerging issues like the Aero bug and decided to wait this one out. Would be interesting to know for sure. I love the 4-5 hour battery life, but I must admit that I was skeptical and apprehensive about switchable graphics on a SLi/CFX platform from the first day I had heard such a thing existed. For those of us that still remember, SLi and CFX did not work correctly on a consistent basis for the first couple of years following its introduction. It took a while for the hardware manufacturers to figure out what worked well and what caused problems.

 

It probably was because the tech just wasn't right. It makes no sense to me why someone would want a 990X desktop cpu in a laptop. There's probably only enough battery power to move the Clevo from the living room to the bedroom.

 

Yeah, that's just cuckoo.

LOL... what on earth is your new avatar, buddy? I don't recognize the cartoon character. What is the thing he is holding under his bottom?

Spoke to my L2 rep again tonight and they are sending new cards and CFX cable to the hotel I am staying at on Monday. Once installed, he and L3 or an engineer want to remote connect to confirm whether or not the problem is cured. As it stands right now, I am basically running on one 6970 card that will not run at full clocks. The secondary GPU stays at 100/150/0.9V under full load even though GPU-Z shows both cards are enabled.

I am still having zero issues with Aero on 11.8 WHQL. It will be interesting if the Aero bug comes back in full force with properly functioning GPUs.

 

ya, lol, skygunner, love the av.

 

Hopefully they recognize all your hard work and are sending you 6990M's. To bad remote assistance disables aero.


My avatar is a picture of Vector from Dispicable Me wipeing his bottom with his media center keyboard in an atempt to kill the main character(Guru) from entering his lair, by hitting every key possible. Vector stole a shrink away from Guru while Guru was stealing it in the first place. Despicable Me is one of my family's favorite 3D Blu-ray movies.

Thank you Me 2.

 

My wife took the grandkids to see Dispicable Me at the $1 matinee the other day and raved about it. Will have to grab it on BD and watch it myself.

Unfortunately, no on the 6990's but they are not trying to fix the Aero bug on my system right now so it will not matter that Aero does not work with a remote connection. The Aero bug is a small issue compared to what is happening on my system. I actually asked about 6990's this evening and the reason I was turned down was because they need to determine if the problem is a latent defect specific to the 6970's or just defective cards in my system. Obviously, if the new cards behave exactly the same way, they'll need to send me something else to fix the problem and replacement with 6990 CFX or 580M SLi would be necessary.

I sort of stumbled on the discovery about what is happening and never would have found it unless I had done a lot of testing with various scenarios trying to fix the Aero bug.

I was browsing AMD forums earlier this evening and I was flabbergasted at the number of issues with AMD mobililty and desktop video cards crashing Aero on Windows 7. There are quite a few threads where AMD customers have been having issues with Aero for a while now. Apparently it was a very severe issue on earlier drivers and keeps rearing its head... check it out.

Here's one of the latest... AMD Game Forums - 6950 11.7 No Aero

Here are a few more...

AMD Game Forums - Windows 7 64 Bit Aero Problems with Catalyst >9.2

AMD Game Forums - Aero disabled with Catalyst 10.9 and 10.8

AMD Game Forums - CrossFireX crashes Desktop Windows Manager

This one has some details relating to the BSOD issues I and a few others have been experiencing with AMD drivers. It's an old thread, but has a lot of information.

http://forums.amd.com/game/messagev...04677&highlight_key=y&keyword1=Aero crossfire