m18x and windows aero

This problem is on Dell. Not AMD/Nvidia.
Most of the software problems on the M17x R1/R2/R3/M18x are caused by Alienware OSD. Before we had concrete evidence I pointed this out weeks ago here in this thread.

What Dell needs to do is look at exactly what OSD does to Windows and reverse engineer OSD. I guess they need Microsoft's help. Hopefully they will fix this problem and stop OSD from causing long shutdowns....and maybe they will go back and fix AW OSD on the lagacy systems.....maybe. Chris appears to be genuinely trying to help us with this. Maybe he can give us a status update on Monday or Tuesday..

 

Thanks works awesome +rep

 

The OSD disable works great as Fox stated. And 3RVX works great for volume and hardware connects/disconnects. And this brightness gadget is neat too(not made by me)

 

This is all well and good BUT......and you all know whats coming.....we shouldnt have to disable system software and use third party apps to resolve this problem. Yes, its ok in the short term but its NOT how it should be.

For me, the fact that disabling OSD stops Aero bug is nothing to get excited about and shout "wooohooooo" for.....

 

I totally agree with this statement.

I posted a long time ago that I uninstalled OSD on our 2 M18x's and recently aquired R2 and my system's were perfect except for lost functionality.

AW OSD is important, and needs to be fixed for all legacy, current & future Alienware models. This problem is sooo much larger than just the M18x. But because we started this.....a new AW OSD needs to start with the M18x>R3>R2 and so on....

In the event that Dell/Alienware doesn't fix the OSD's slow system shutdown issue, what can we do to speed it up?

 

Dell would probably tell those who havent got one to go out and buy a SSD to sort this problem

 

That would be lame..I think that OSD probably adds 3 to 4 seconds to my shutdown. With OSD uninstalled, my M18x's shutdown instantly.

 

At this point, I wouldnt be suprised at anything Dell say or do....

 

I agree that disabling OSD is not a real fix. It is merely a good workaround. I definitely want and absolutely expect them to release a new version that works properly. That being said, I really like how much better my M18x functions with it disabled. If/when they do fix it, I may still run with it not starting with Windows and only using it on demand simply because I don't use most of its features most of the time, and there is no reason for it to be running if I am not using it.

You can try changing the “WaitToKillServiceTimeout” registry key value from the default 20000 (20 seconds) to a lower value such as 3000 (3 seconds) or 5000 (5 seconds). If it is a program hanging at shutdown, this will not work. I find that Trixx causes it also. I only run Trixx on demand, so that's not an issue.

 

thanks for the info.

 

Agree! Agree! Agree! To all the above. We've had differences, but these statements are true.

It does run better without it. But I'd still like it to be right. I use the CC when watching movies and such to turn the lights off. It would just be good to have it ALL working correctly.

 

well said.

 

It sounds like we're all in total agreement. I love it when that happens.

I haven't been able to connect with my AW L3 rep because of my crazy work schedule. He's been trying to get in touch with me, but I have not been available. I am still having fairly significant issues with my replacement 6970 cards. I cannot play Crysis, Left4Dead 2, or Modern Warfare most of the time due to freezing, black screen and intermittent drops in frame rates. Crysis often will not even launch now, and when it does I end up getting an error message. Under heavy load, I get the pop-up error "Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered" after a few minutes of gameplay with all 3 of these games. I have not tried any others. (I have 37 instances of this problem since 08/25/2011.) My benchmark scores are about 15% lower on Vantage and 23% lower on 3DMark11. I'm pretty sure these are defective.

 

^^^Hmmmm! My display driver has been flaking out too. And come to think of it-it may be since I disabled OSD and CC??? Related???

It happened during Plants vs. Zombies and has happened during movies (WMP) a few times. And I have gotten 2 BSOD's also. Both related to ATI.

 

Are you running Dell video drivers, Catalyst 11.7 or 11.8? Dell drivers and Catalyst 11.6 have no issues with that behavior on my system and I know that OSD (or the absence of OSD) is not causing it. All of my current issues started with replacement video cards. The BSOD thing is just crappy AMD drivers. I had that issue with the old video cards and the new, with OSD installed and without. The cards that came out of my system worked remarkably better than the replacements. I did not capture any supporting data, but I think removing OSD actually helped a tiny bit. I know for a fact it is not worse without OSD.

With OSD available on demand, but not running in the background, I have not found any way to cause Aero to crash. It is absolutely amazing how stable Aero is now. WEI, 3DMark11, Vantage, 3DMark06... nothing I have tried makes Aero misbehave until the point in time that I manually load OSD into memory.

 

I also got that error when I uninstalled OSD here & there.

Yup! You need OSD.

 

My hypothesis is that having OSD running in the background grossly exacerbates any kind of AMD driver glitch or mini-crash that occurs. This may explain why Aero behaves flawlessly (for me) when OSD is not resident in memory. I was still getting this error message constantly and multiple daily BSOD when OSD was starting with Windows. However, I am no longer encountering a frequent BSOD with OSD startup disabled. It may only be a coincidence that the BSOD is less frequent, but it's a dramatic enough reduction in BSOD frequency that I feel fairly confident that OSD not loading with Windows during startup is not contributing to a BSOD.

If fact, if I start OSD first and then run Crysis, L4D2 or MW2 I will almost always experience a BSOD within about 3 minutes of gameplay and the BSOD is always preceded by the "Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered" error a few second prior to the BSOD. If I don't have OSD running, I get no BSOD in most cases, but the game still crashes to a black screen and I get the "Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered" error message in Event Viewer. Sometime the black screen will go away and the system tray has a pop-up with the "Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered" error message.

If I don't restart Windows at that point to reload the display drivers I will often get a BSOD if I attempt to load another game. In cases where I don't get a BSOD and don't restart Windows, any game I run gets like 15 FPS and it so choppy it is unplayable. When that happens, the screen redraws slowly and simply moving an open window or browser creates a temporary trail from point A to point B.

I think most of these problems on my system are because the replacement video cards are more defective than the cards they replaced. At any rate, until I can find time to hook up with my L3 rep to let him check things out and send me new video cards, we cannot realistically compare what I am experiencing to what anyone else is experiencing with their system. The Aero bug is a trivial issue compared to what I am experiencing with poor performance on this current set of video cards.

 

Did you see this?
Guide: How to fix error ati display driver has stopped responding - Overclockers Forums
You must have faulty cards or a bad motherboard & I/O board.

 

Running 11.6 from Dell/AW. Gonna uninstall. Sweep and re-install. Just had another BSOD while watching a movie and burning a DVD. Killing me. Bout to give AW a call.

EDIT: I think I may have found my problem. I had 6970's before and just used those drivers from Dell/AW. Just looked on my ST page and the 6990 have different Dell/AW drivers so maybe that is my problem.

 

I just finished my weekly call to Dell about my esalated case regaring the Aero Bug....they still have nothing to report on a fix. They asked me to call back in a week......

Does anyone else have anything to report on the progress of a fix?
I had aero flake out while I was playing Gatling Gears Online Co-op....Very annoying.

 

I also spoke with Dell Corporate office yesterday about the issue. The are playing silent at this time which only means we will not see a fix anytime soon.

 

Only thing to report here is that I too had another "flake-out" following another cold boot this morning when I booted up after shutting down normally the previous evening.

Annoying as hell when you sit down, hit the button to boot and then you are instantly greeted with a windows BASIC theme for absoultely no reason whatsoever.

Dell need to get this sorted and FAST...like YESTERDAY....

 

lame......................but thanks for the update.

What's really annoying is when you play games at full screen and Aero Flakes out to the desktop, have graphics artifacts or BSOD while in-game. I've started to disable OSD while I'm in-game for a trouble free session.
Somebody better fix this before the M18x-R2 is released


Other than Aero Trouble my M18x is performing Fantastically. As long as I don't think about the I/O problem we M18x owners ALL have.

 

Another week goes by and no fix from Dell....This really should not be that hard to resolve given we know its a conflict with OSD application and Dell indicated they have been able to reproduce it. Maybe the issue is OSD app was outsourced?

 

............

 

I keep having a problem with the desktop colors fading/washing out. I have to reinstall the ATI driver almost once a day. Does it out of sleep for some reason. Not sure if there is some link.

Just did a fresh install and gonna see if that helps any. Keep up with how long Aero lasts too.........

 

I've also noticed that after resuming from sleep sometimes the colours & brightness are NOT as vibrant/bright as they were before going into sleep. You can usually press FN + F5 and then FN + F4 to adjust the brightness back to high but it does not always go as high as before sleep.

I've mentioned this in this thread before but no one cared.

I just received another replacement out of the blue for my Fiance's M18x. It does the same thing. I'm going to swap palm rests and send the replacement back. I love new palm rests/tp

 

I don't recall that. But....I will try the Fn-F4/F5 thing. The colors though just seem faded or like saturation is low with gamma high and nothing but CCC adjustments fixes it.

What is different about the TP?

 

Sorry I haven't been participating in the forum as much lately. Things are just insanely busy at work right now and I haven't have much time for anything other than work... running 14-16 hour days right now.

I received a call from my Level 3 rep this evening and they are sending replacement video cards to correct the issues with the last pair they sent to me. During our conversation, it was mentioned that they are working on an updated version of OSD through the third-party vendor that provided it. (I assume that Compal is the ODM, as right-clicking the OSD executable file and selecting properties shows the digital signature belongs to Compal Electronics.) He also mentioned that they are giving this a very high priority and putting a great deal of emphasis on the importance of fixing it. He expressed appreciation for the feedback we have provided on this and the Dell Community Forum.

skygunner - I did not remember that either, but it's possible I just accidentally missed that observation you posted. I suppose that I have not discovered this issue simply because I never use sleep functionality. What you describe sounds similar to what I have always experienced on this and any other computer with an AMD GPU after running Crysis. Sort of a pale haze until I restart Windows. (I've never seen it on my systems that have an NVIDIA GPU after running Crysis.)

 

nothing, I just like a new/fresh tp/palm rest

here we go....maybe this will refresh you guys memory.

Thanks for the info Mr. Fox. It was an interesting read. +rep!

 

OK, I do remember reading all of those posts. I thought you meant that you had posted about...

...and that's the only part I did not remember reading before and have not experienced on my M18x.

 

The sleep/resume brightness problem that plagues the R1/R2/R3/M18x is caused by OSD. It does cause the screen to have a high amount of gamma and the brightness to lower to a strange type of very light blueish hue effect making the colours appear washed out.

Usually FN + F5 then FN + F4 fixes it. Sometimes it only fixes the brightness and the colours remain washed out. If you use sleep alot, you'll notice it. Only a restart can fix it, if the FN + F5 then FN + F4 method doesn't work. I believe Steviejones133 was the first to report this.

 

Well, maybe whatever is causing this is also the same thing causing the Aero bug. Perhaps the updated OSD will fix both things in the process. Here's hoping so.

pmassey - are you experiencing this with OSD running in the background or with OSD auto-start disabled? If you still have OSD running in the background, does the problem with washed out colors and gamma go away when you do not load OSD with Windows?

 

I doubt they'll fix it. No one besides stevie and I have really said anything about it. So they probably don't know to address it.

 

Thank you for calling Alienwhere support, My name is Peggy.... how can I help you!

 

OSD autostart was disabled. And it was nit running at the time.

@sky-I remember you talking about the brightness issue. Just didn't remember the gamma part. But what you said a few posts ago is exactly what is happening. Colors washed out and wierd gamma/brightness. A restart does nothing. iGPU/dGPU switch does nothing. It has happened 4 or 5 times and I just end up reinstalling the drivers.

 

I was able to reproduce this w/o OSD but it takes quite a few sleeps to replicate. A restart fixes it for me and 90% of the time I can press FN + F5 then FN + F4 to get it back to normal. If you want to start a thread on this at the Alienware club you know you can count on me to back you up. I'm all about results.
I've seen this problem in 6 out of 6 M18x's. It is related to the sleep/resume brightness problem on the M18x. The way I can tell this problem has occured is when I go to google.com. Instead of the page being white it has a blueish(high gamma) tint......very odd....also my desktop icons seem bland in colour.

 

^^^I just started noticing it. Gonna see how this fresh install goes before starting a thread. Might have munked something up with the drivers somewhere. Looking good so far.....*fingers crossed*

 

Let me know how it goes. Last night I did a fresh install.

 

It seems like AMD drivers are just getting worse about being a pain to remove and install without running into glitches. Instead of pushing on releasing new crappy drivers once a month, I wish they would focus on releasing really good quality driver updates quarterly, along with an installation manager that works properly and does a thorough job all of the time.

 

Seconded on that one... I can think of quite a few times my drivers have gotten into a place where I have an older control panel paired with the newer drivers or something equally stuffed up, that isn't fixed with a normal uninstall/reinstall process, only by uninstall -> safe mode -> driver sweeper -> normal mode -> install.

It can't be so rare a problem for multiple programs like driver sweeper to exist.. Although i'm not so sure it's tied to the Aero bug directly. I wonder if it would be worth it to reverse-engineer Alienware OSD and provide similar functionality in a "minimalist" package to eliminate problems like that.

 

I see the issues with OSD and poorly written AMD drivers as being completely unrelated, but the same root cause being lack of quality control and carelessness. Before ATI was bought out by AMD I used almost exclusively ATI graphics products and they always worked well. ATI had a singular focus on producing great computer graphics hardware. They were not always the fastest video cards, but you could always count on them being solid performers and stable. NVIDIA has had more than its fair share of quality control issues as well. The cliche "they just don't build things like they used to" applies to lots of stuff. The drive for doing more with less just doesn't cut it in any business, but that seems to be the corporate mantra everywhere. What that often works out looking like is "charging more for less" in the end. Compal or whatever company it was that developed OSD sold Dell/Alienware a defective product. That's not any different in concept than what NVIDIA did a few years ago, selling all the ODMs defective graphics products, and continuing to do so after the defects began to surface. Starting with a stable reference design and then tweaking things to create proprietary features that add "value" (special features) is not a good business model for computer technology.

 

The companies are too big now, they no longer cares about their customers as individuals, but takes care of Statistics based on the mass.

Obviously the pressure of international trade that companies taken to the fight are forced out products that have not properly passed the test benches

A vicious circle that pulls everyone toward mediocrity

 

Well, had Aero flake out on me after playing Tiger Woods 08 (last one made for PC) and then I restarted. Switched to iGPU and colors are washed. So, I went in and made my own colors and it looks great.....for now. So this problem exists for me on the iGPU and the dGPUs. All this about 10-12 hours after a fresh install.............Hmmmmmmm!? Getting ridiculous!

 

I remember reading on one of the threads a few months ago that many users that were complaining about display quality found that some displays need calibration on the R3 and M18x. If your settings produce a nice display and they stick, it should not be an issue.

 

Interestingly my AlienwareAreoFix utility couldn't reset the aero flake out this morning whilst I had Mozilla Thunderbird running; after I closed Thunderbird AlienwareAeroFix worked. I am uncertain as to whether this is good or bad news as it could mean that this is a more fundamental (i.e. Microsoft) problem rather than a Dell/Alienware problem with the OSD application.

/Leigh

 

I wouldn't know....I'm colour blind

 

It's definitely a AW OSD problem. If you uninstall AW OSD you remove the chance of an Aero Flake Out.

 

The fact that AlienwareAeroFix couldn't restart Aero whilst Thunderbird was running suggests that the problem could (not must) be elsewhere in the system as it is unlikely that both Alienware OSD and Thunderbird have the same bug.

/Leigh

 

AW OSD causes problems with csrss.exe. That process controls most aspects of Windows 7 including Firefox. The Aerofix is not a "Certified" fix.