switchable graphics may be causing hard hangs during boot cycle.

an annoyingly number of times i experienced a hard hang during windows loading screen. at first i thought it was bad hard drives in my raid 1 array so i switched to 4 different sets of hard drives to rule that out as all 4 sets experienced these hangs. i also had dell replace the entire laptop since i cannot stand instability and worried the original m18x had a bad motherboard or something. i ran one pass of memtest86 and it passed as well.

i just now switched from integrated gpu to the discrete 6990m xfire and it hung on windows boot. during the day i dont game so no point wasting another 20-30 watts having the system idle so i switch into intel's graphics.

after 4 sets of hard drives and a whole new system i am comming to the conclusion that the switchable graphics is causing instability during the switch cycle.

 

Hmm. I switch all the time and have never had a problem. I don't run raid though.

 

Which point does it hang? You turned on boot log on msconfig.

I had boot problems due to osd... 2/5 times it would hang on boot. Fresh os install problems gone away.

Ive had 1 hang on boot since, and the Macro keys turned off. I think osd is crapware.

 

most hangs happen during the black screen where it has windows logo forming. it is a hard hang meaning that even even pressing caps lock would would not register. it requires pressing and holding down the power button.

i have also had 2 hangs during the middle of windows session. one where the darn raid array was error checking itself and one i think system was mostly idle.

i have had one hang during windows blue screen boot, the one immedately after the black logo screen.

i am not sure if OSD is causing this. i would love that to the case because that would be easy to switch it off.

i have not touched msconfig. i checked even viewer but can't really make anything out of that.

after the crash i reported today i did like 10 reboots in a row and no crashes so it does drive me insane. raid 1 array hates instability and will cause it to error-check itself for like 3-4 hours after the event.

 

well if the OSD on screen display is causing this that would actually suck because you need that for the media buttons to work, i think. eject button, volume, all those buttons on top.

 

OSD is the cause of most of the problems on the R1/R2/R3/M18x.
We are asking Dell/AW to rebuild AW OSD from the ground up. Apparently the program was designed by Compal so I guess it's Compal who will be handling this.
Can you please voice your complaints M18x Aero issues - Alienware Forum - Alienware Club - Dell Community & http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/588142-m18x-windows-aero.html . They might as well address your problems too.

 

Sounds very similar mate.

The boot log may give u more info. I did have hard lockups after logging in too. But always within a minute or two.

Mine started when i disabled osd in the services. I had to reinstall!

Seriously, do a clean install... Perhaps with out raid too... See how it works for a week..then if ok enable raid and reinstall again... Take it from there.

 

Missed this. Nope. Just for the eject button. Which u can do right click eject in explorer.