M17 General Information Thread

BIOS VERSION: 011.020.000.006.031674
when I click the green arrow save it it says "BIOS reading not supported on this device"

Btw, the only way I can get GPU-Z to detect my cards is to install drivers without rebooting, and then open GPU-Z. After I reboot I suspect I will get blank screen again though!

Is there a reason why one of my cards has 0 Shaders? Is one card bad? Or is this because of drivers?

 

Not sure why that doesn't work, would you mind trying to aquire the vbios using RBE vbios editor?

I think that is because of the drivers.

Have you tried a wdm microsoft driver (if using win vista/7/8)?

 

Argh, I just booted windows from my other hard drive with its own windows OS and had the same driver problem AFTER detecting new hardware, install drivers, and rebooting. Wouldn't that mean AFTER a reformat with a fresh install of windows, the problem would still be there?

I'll get the RBE vbios editor now

EDIT:

No luck. One problem after another.

But its consistent.

When I update drivers for both cards, I will get blank screen after reboot.
I can run ONE card on its own with updated drivers. Once I try TWO cards, it will go blank.

Something is wrong with Crossfire or something won't allow me to get Crossfire working properly.

Also, once I update both drivers on TWO cards, my screen will slow down. And of course it will go blank if I reboot.

Under Device Manager --> Display Adaptors-->
Should it show 4870x2? or just 4870?
For my 3870 cards it will show 3870x2 on both adaptors as opposed to separate 3870 and 3870

 

What is shows in device manager is not relevant. Technically it should show 2 4870s but you can name it to say whatever you want, is just an INI edit

Have you made sure you are not shorting the cards out by touching anything else in the laptop? Is you CF cable in good condition and attached well?

 

Everything is attached correctly. I did everything extremely carefully. Otherwise they wouldn't be detected in windows and drivers wouldn't be installed for them, right? I just can't get them to run drivers properly.

 

Have you tried the stock alienware drivers (they will be an OLD version but is a good starting point)

With my 4870s in my M17x R1, I had to load dell drivers initially to get crossfire then had to install new ones over that. Was only way I could get CF working with newer drivers. No clue why but that is what worked for me

 

Anyone get the most recent (12.3 or 12.4) ATI catalyst drivers working? Each time I install the 12.4 drivers (after removing drivers, clean sweeping under safe boot, deleting directories and reboots), I get an error for the drivers (the sound and app dev kit install fine, but the drivers never do).

I think I've had the same problem with 12.3, but am going to try again in the next 15 minutes.

EDIT: near same install message each time (12.3 or 12.4)

Catalyst™ Install Manager
Installation Report
05/11/12 22:17:43

Hardware information
Name AMD Radeon Graphics Processor
Manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Device ID 0x9509
Vendor ID 0x1002
Class Code 0x030000
Revision ID 0x00
Subsystem ID 0x207a
Subsystem vendor ID 0x161f
Other hardware

Existing packages
AMD APP SDK Runtime
HDMI/DP Audio Driver
Packages for install
AMD Catalyst Install Manager
Final Status: Success
Version of Item: 3.0.868.0
Size: 20 Mbytes

Other detected devices
AMD Radeon Graphics Processor
Manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Device ID 0x9509
Vendor ID 0x1002
Class Code 0x030000
Revision ID 0x00
Subsystem ID 0x207a
Subsystem vendor ID 0x161f
Manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Device ID 0xaa18
Vendor ID 0x1002
Class Code 0x040300
Revision ID 0x00
Subsystem ID 0xaa18
Subsystem vendor ID 0x161f

Error messages:
(nothing shown here, oddly enough, though the main error is just above this)

EDIT #2: I can install 12.1 fine... just not 12.3 or 12.4

 

I dont' know why, the latest driver 12.4 seems to gives me problems too. I tried a clean install but it shows that i'm still using the old 11.x version and ask me to update the driver when I click check for updates. I've tried uninstall it, restart my PC and install the latest driver but still the same thing. Maybe ATI drivers seem to give problems.

 

i'm running 1.2 no issue at all on my side.

Also any one tryed running an m17 with more then 8 GB of ram? the 16 GB kits are becoming afordable

 

Wouldn't be much of a point unless your doing VM and video editing.

My brother M17 absolutely hates any driver I try to throw in it. I will get around to fixing it one day. I haven't done much reading but what is the best driver y'all seem to have?

 

I honestly don't know until yesterday 12.4 seemed fine but i started having randoom artifact when programing. But now they apear even on the desktop ethier i screwed my driver or one of my card is dieing.....

 

I believe the 8GB limit is a platform limitation. Not much to be done to overcome that as far as I know. One of the pains of having an older device (although I still loved mine!)

 

I'm not sure there is a limitation no one even tryed it yet.

How ever anyone tryed swaping the master and slave vbios?
I think my master card is dieing cause i get artifats ad bsod every time i run a 3d software.

 

i just swaped them artifacts stoped

on a side note when cross flashing you need to swap the cards slots or they won't work at all

 

@granyte, is there any chance you could upload your slave and master vbios files for me?

I've got a 4870m slave card on the way hopefully, but it apparently needs the vbios flashed before it will work.

 

I when i get back home

my master died so i'm running on a slave flashed to master and i don't know if any of the vbios got corrupted with the amount of issue i had in the last 2 days so ill upload my backup i have at home

PS: any one tryed reflowing a 4850 befor?
Also where did you get you 4870 cause i'm gonna need replacement if i can't bake my 4850 back to life

 

My first 4870 came from niffcreature for around $150 + postage (can't really remember now) It was one from the asus W90, it works well except it's only 512mb. My second card is coming from ebay, it was sold for around $50 because it supposedly has been the victim of a bad bios flash. I'm hoping to fix it. It's a nice alienware slave card.

I don't know if the 512MB and 1GB will work in xfire, will be interesting to see.

I have seen some 4870m cards go on ebay for $100, and a forum member (table21) was selling them around that price point as well. But I think both of those sources have dried up.

There is one on ebay right now, I was bidding on it but I don't want to continue because someone else seems to really want it and I dont have any reason to pay over $100:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/290732747754?ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1426.l2649

 

Hello I am new to the forums but I was wondering if anyone knew where I could find a copy of the service manual for the m17. My optical drive stopped reading discs a while ago so I replaced it only for it to continue to not read discs.

Thanks in advance

edit: I did try the link that was posted on the first page but it does not work anymore.

 

aren't the w90 card reversed or something?

alright if i can't backe my master back to life ill go hunting for one

posting my bios as soon as i find my backup

 

The w90 card is standard, everything except the crossfire connector.

My alienware 4870m just came in today, it works but it does have a stange vbios.

And because the crossfire connectors are different I can't get that to work.

 

Moral, can you take some photos? Maybe we can come up with a solution

 

Ok will upload pics in a few mins.

I'll just mention I've tried several driver version, I even flashed the cards to the same clocks and voltage.

Is there a registry hack to enable crossfire?

Because I know the connector is only for more bandwidth and some desktop cards (low end) dont need it to work.

Sorry to double post, but here are the photos:
asus vs alienware 4870m pictures by moral_HaZaRd - Photobucket

The crossfire connectors are on opposite sides of the cards. Also it looks like the ASUS card has 2 crossfire connectors? Very strange...

Spoiler

 

Ah, got it, the second one is ASUS. They use a different bridge


Unfortunately, i can't think of any way to physically link them but you can try to hack the registry to force CF:

Change the value for every instance of EnableCrossFireAutoLink to 1 (if 0). You'll find those registry keys right above every instance of EnableUlps, so you can verify the change of all those keys with a DWORD of 1 to a zero at the same time.
Open regedit and search for EnableUlps (F3 until the last one).

So EnableUlps value should be 0 (zero) and EnableCrossFireAutoLink 1 (one).

let us know of course

 

That was a good idea, but it didnt work in this case for some reason.

I even tried installing a driver for an ati 4670 (because those cards don't need the interconnect), but that didn't help either.

 

@granyte, I'm having trouble flashing my Alienware slave card to work as a master. Do you mind telling me detailed steps on how you did it? And if it's not too much trouble could you please give me the vbios you're using?

I have no idea why mine won't work as a master.

 

Yes i will but i need to use mybackup because i don't have my hardware needed to flash and download them.

Well the main issue i faced when flashing was that the master card won't draw anything to the screen if it's not in the master slot. Other then that everythign worked fine

if one could find the pin mapping on each type of card we could attempt to desing a custom bridge.

 

I ended up selling my asus card.

So now I either need to make my slave work as a master or just buy a new master (Alienware) and the xfire cable (found one on eBay).

I might actually get a master 3870 card and use my slave 4850, bad idea?

 

they wont work in cfx because they are not fromt he same generation

 

Hmm I should have expected that.

Well then it looks like I'll have to look for another solution.

Don't want to get rid of this notebook but the 7970m is looking tempting (might spend part of my tax return on a new rig).

 

Ill give you the bios soon.

Have you blind flashed befor?

 

Yep, I've been trying that for the last couple of days, I tried a couple of different vbios files I found online, but nothing worked. I did confirm that they were being flashed because after I flashed them, I used the -s flag to dump the bios and then I checked my USB drive and found the dump was there.

Tried both master and slave 4850m vbios files, but no results. I don't know if your bios would help or not, I'm starting to think it's not the vbios causing my problem.

I know the card can't be dead because when I still had my asus card I was able to run bitcoin mining software on both GPUs and I was getting 100% usage shown in GPUz, also had the temps shown and the hash rate was double that it was with just my signle asus card.

 

in wich slot are you putting you card?

in mine i had to swap my flashed card around because it would not work in the slave slot

 

When I took out my asus card I put the alienware slave card into the master slot (the slot that is longer because it has the space for the HE tab).

I also tried blind flashing my system bios back to a standard non-modded version, I can't tell if that actually flashed or not because I can't see anything on the screen.

 

Great i have a dead pcie port it was the one holding my wireless card luckily there is a second one in the m17

 

sorry moral i cannot upload my backup because my backup drive is aparently dead

 

That's ok, thanks anyway.

I don't think it would have helped in my case, seems like there is some kind of problem with my slave card.

But now I have another system on the way

 

I have the M17-R1 OCZ.
I have downloaded and ran the three bios updates
M17 BIOS B10
M17 BIOS B13
M17 BIOS B14
All of these give me a BSOD as soon as the starting windows spash screen appears. Does anyone have a link to the original BIOS so I can roll it back?

Thank you
Christopher Nugent

 

When you flashed the bios, the setting probably got reset.

So you should be able to fix the BSOD by changing the bios settings.

Try changing the sata to compatible mode.

What code do you get from the BSOD?

 

I've tried 3 different kits so far on an m17 with the B14 bios.
Komputerbay - 8Gb/16Gb DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz CL 10 - FAILED
Unbranded - 8GB/16GB DDR3 PC3-8500 1066MHz - FAILED
Corsair Vengeance - 1x 8Gb CMSX8GX3M1A1600C10 - FAILED

I don't think it's going to happen without Bios work.

 

Thanks for the information but there is a moded bios floatign around z29 but i'm unsuse if it would work ethier

 

i just changed my case and now my power strip is not working anymore i don't get why

edit after furter research i found out that i damaged the ribon card between the media/power button and the motherboard now i need to replace both of them

PS: having to pull your csmos batterie t force the laptop to boot is very annoying

 

Hey guys, I think my power adapter is going to broke.... it produce noise when I move my mouse or watch video or do stuffs like that.... Is it ok to used the new M17x laptop power adapter? Really need help. Thanks

 

as long as it output the same voltage and amp you should eb fine i'm using a dell adapter because they are smaller and lighter

 

There are a few M17 adapters on eBay you could buy. The lowest I think was 45 dollars.

I had this problem last year but it was because I dropped it. My professor opened it and resoldered a loose transistor (or some copper coil, can't remember exactly what it was).

 

Thanks for the info guys... guess I'll just buy a dell adapter with same voltage...

 

Hi guys, long time no see

I am really happy to see this thread has grown to 100 pages wow, never expected that^^

I am not sure, but I will give it a try and ask this question here, hope you can help me!

It's about time to say goodbye to my Alien and is there a better place than here? So my question is what can I get for such an old but still nice piece of equipment?

Alienware m17 (late 2008) 3DMark06 12.538 (1280x720) & 12.188 (1280x1024)
3870 CrossFireX | T9400 2,53 GHz | 4GB DDR3 1067MHz | 2x160GB Raid0 | Windows 8 RC 64bit


Thanks in advance!

 

I don't suppose anyone has tried adding USB 3.0 ports to the M17 via the expresscard slot? I've been trying most the day using a startech expresscard 2xusb3.0 but with no luck. I get a code 10 device won't start error in device manager when loading the drivers.

Assuming the replacement expresscard doesn't work either, could it be anything to do with the bios (I think I used .29) or the intel chipset driver? I used the last Intel Chipset Driver posted in the Windows 7 drivers thread for the M17. Also tried the newer chipset driver recommended by Intel. Not sure what else to try. Is there a special expresscard driver aside from the manufacturer's one for my USB 3.0 expresscard? Or is it part of the chipset driver?

The plan was to setup a backup for my 3 internal drives to a raid 1 array. 1.5tb backup over usb 2.0 will take AGES! At the moment I've been backing up with lots of random small HDDs, USB sticks etc. Now I want to get a bit organised.

Edit, for some reason, uninstalling the expresscard driver makes windows reinstall the IR receiver device in the M17... I was thinking of trying out the expresscard either in linux or a clean WIndows7 install to check it's not a registry etc issue. If anyone has any other advice, ideas etc, please let me know. I had hoped to get at least another year out of my M17 and this USB 3.0 hub would have helped that along.

 

wow i just found out a broken keyboard can prevent this lappy from booting .....and can eve fake a dead gpu ...

 

Never mind the gpu is dead my second 4850 just died.

So anyone remember the link to that usefull reflow guide?
also isn't the lead vapor toxic so you have to use an oven you wanna throw?
Is the heatgun methode as good as the oven one?
any one tried reflowing an ati card?

 

Sorry to hear about that. I believe this is the thread that you were thinking of:

HOW TO: repair your dead graphics card in your alienware!

I don't know how much lead vapor if any would be given off at those temperatures, nor how much would be present in the first place.