M11xR1 Troubleshooting Thread

did they use something like this?
http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-UNLOCKED-HP...emQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item2a051b72e4

 

It was JUST an antenna, though I assume you would ALSO need something like that.

 

Same here- warm, not hot.

 

so it looks like they replaced my motherboard and all is well. but looks like they forgot to take off the bluetooth off of teh old motherboard and reinstall it back on the new mobo. =( this is becoming a pain....

 

so if I can't get HDMI out to get a picture/sound on the HDTV is this a driver issue? TV says no signal.

 

You using the Intel IGP? The Intel IGP does not work with the HDMI, only the Nvidia 335M works.

 

nope, definitely in 335m. I first was using DOX drivers and then rolled back to try to see if that was the issue. No go.

 

Ya, if your default drivers are installed right, it should be working.

This is assuming you went through the Nvidia software to look for the tv/secondary monitor and found nothing. If you did, then you should call Dell up.

 

ooh I just went into windows setting and just looked for external projector in which nothing was found.. shoulda gone through nvidia software, will try that. The Fn+F1 did nothing for me btw, is it supposed to switch between screens if my HDMI output was working?

 

First go through the Nvidia software and manually search for a TV/secondary monitor. If your computer has no secondary monitor setup properly, it won't switch between screens obviously.

I haven't hooked up my M11x to my TV yet. I'll be sure to do it when I get home tonight from work.

 

hey guys congrats 2 all who are now m11x owners i was wondering im getting mine 2moro what should i install as far as updates drivers bios etc ive been reading posts seems 2 be a lil prob with non dell nvidia drivers any help appreciated thanks guys

 

dont mean to ask simple question on this thread just hoping i dont have any undo problems by downloading any wasteful stuff thanks again

 

It seems like my serial # and express code or whatever have already wiped off on the bottom before I could write them down. Who can I call / email with my order # for them to send me those #'s?

 

If you still have the box that it came in then the Service Tag number is on the box label.

 

Or you can look in BIOS for one or the other forget which. Also if you use your computer to get onto Dell's site and install their service tag lookup via IE browser it'll pull your info from the computer as well. Then save it and email it to yourself.

 

yeah, I asked them about this tag/sticker wearing off in a week problem... apparently they had a bad print cartridge that printed a run of bad labels that will wear off.

Same info is still availabe in BIOS, so no worries.

 

Hey everyone.

I have been following the M11x threads for awhile and have just ran into an issue with my mine that I can't seem to resolve.

I got my M11x a couple of days ago and it has been great... no build quality issues to speak of but I am having difficulties with my Gobi WWAN card.

When I insert a SIM card and run the diagnostic utility, everything checks out, but then a window pops up that is titled "Unlock WWAN Card" and it asks me for a code.

Also, if I take a card out and put a new one in, the program states that there is no SIM detected or that it is inserted wrong... funny thing is, there is only one way to insert the SIM into the reader...

I have tried to use my iPhone SIM (I know... it won't work) a friends Blackberry SIM (which he tethers), and my girlfriend's SIM from and LG phone on AT&T that she has.

Dell/Alienware customer service has been horrible the two times I have called them and the last time I called, I basically spent 30 mins waiting for a rep, then about an hour on the phone while she tried to look up the problem/remote access the M11X... it was obvious she had no idea what she was doing, and to top it off, she hung up on me as soon as 6PM EST came up (when they close)...

I took the whole laptop to AT&T and they looked at it but were unable to help me... please tell me there is something I can do (I have looked all over the place to find info/troubleshooting stuff on the gobi to no real avail), and if not, tell me the damn Gobi is broken so I can call Dell and get some resolution out of this tomorrow... ugh ;p

 

Just have them come and get it workin. It won't cost you a dime.

 

After literally 6 and a half hours on the phone with Alienware tech support to cover my 3 issues ( dim left light, and cpu OC crashing), they are going to send me a new mobo and keyboard and send a tech to install it.

 

I've posted multiple warnings for discussions relating to 'jailbreaking' in the M11x Owners Lounge. I am adding a warning and ask that anyone unfamilar with NBR's forum rules take a moment to review them. Specifically,

'Jailbreaking' an iPhone violates Apple's EULA. Any discussion on subjects which violate a product's EULA will be removed and infractions will be issued.

If repeated violations are made, this will result in a ban.

Please do not discuss this here. Thanks.

 

Our resident alien, erawneila, is looking into this problem.

For now, if you need to contact support you can visit the following page to obtain your Service Tag and your Express Service Code (you'll need your Express Service Code for faster routing when calling into Support):

http://support.dell.com/support/top...info/en/FindTagSysProfLicense?c=us&l=en&s=gen

 

Hi , ive got a core 2 duo, 500 gb, 4gb ram alienware m11x. I got it last week, and have noticed that starting yesterday, my gaming performance while on battery life has dropped severly overclocked and not overclocked, and also in general while overclocked performance is dropped in general, pcmark06 scores at 1024x768 are at around 3400. What could be the problem?

 

Its in the lounge part 3 thread for the wwan antenna but search ebay for wwan antenna and you'll find what I ordered

 

I got my machine - its freaking awesome!

The gap to me looks like its designed that way as its symetrical and is aligned with how the back clamps onto the LCD, It doesn't bother me and I doubt it will be fixed!

One issue I am having is with the inbuilt Bluetooth. After using it for a while it will simply stop working and my bluetooth headset will beep to say its been disconnected. The bluetooth icon will disappear. After a reboot, a device is in the device manager "Unknown Device". Tried installed drivers nothing works. In the windows console there are a couple or errors relating to shutting down the BT device but they don't seem to be aligned timestamp wise. The only way to recover, is to power down the machine and boot back up - the bluetooth icon comes back. But it doesn't last for long. have tried all power modes and no difference.

On the other hand. I've been running on OC since I got the machine. No crashes, no reboots, just smooth game playing.

This machine is one of the best laptops I've bought, build quality is fantastic.

Hoping that the BT is a duff module that I can swap out on my own. I used the Kensington airline power on the plane and it worked superb.

Cheers,
Neil.

 

I searched the owners part 3 and did not find the answer to my question. could you just tell me what the problem is?

 

Look through alienware fusion and make sure the GPU is not set to balanced in the battery mode. Note this is different (more detailed) than the windows powerprofiles.

 

go to advanced settings in power either in windows or through alienFX for your power settings. make sure under battery power for whichever settings you're using (balanced/power savings/high perf) the GPU is set to maximum performance, otherwise it will downclock. It's been discussed here in thread and I tested it on battery power and yielded same results as on battery ~6300+ on 3dmark06. Just customize your battery settings under graphics.

 

In the alienfx everything on the power setting is set to max, including the gpu and i am still getting scores of around 3500 while overclocked.

 

I just got mine yesterday, and like it very much, but I have one issue (which someone will probably explain is my fault, and I admit that possibility!)

I got Steam squared away and briefly tried Half Life 2 and then Portal - just with the keyboard and touchpad (not seriously to game, just to test) and using the touchpad worked fine, and then it wouldn't be responsive for a bit, and then it would seem like it would jump and catch up to my last input and work okay for a short time and then it would not be responsive.

Even when I tried to make an effort to apply good pressure (thinking that maybe I was too light) or turning up the mouse sensitivity, that didn't make the issue go away.

Am I missing something??

(posted here in a more appropriate thread(

 

Anyone else actually get the WWAN option with AT&T and get it working?

The WWAN card is detected and is functioning, but the SIM slot doesn't seem to be operational. Tried 3 different SIM cards, and none of them are detected. Keeps giving me a SIM card not Found error in the Dell Mobile Broadband Utility screen.

Alienware tech support is utterly useless. They keep asking me to check the wireless network settings. Good lord.

I'm tempted to open this thing up and take a look to see if they forgot to connect the GOBI card to the SIM card reader or something equally inane.

 

hearbreak, the touchpad should be very reponsive. My guess is the palm check. it's very small so my palm constantly hits the pad. turn palm check under mouse settings to maximum. I'm using newer multitouch drivers so not sure if palmcheck is in there but look for it. My palm makes the mouse jump around a lot.

 

I'll give that a look. I figured I need to dive into options and settings to doublecheck what I might be overlooking, and I'm also interested in multitouch, so I'll throw this into the mix.

Thanks!

 

Is there a wiki or something with all the current issues?

I just got mine and noticed some issues
- Switching from IGP to GPU and back to IGP doesn't turn off the GPU. Kills the battery as if GPU was enabled.
- Fn-Volume + and - doesn't work for me. Does nothing when I press them.
- Fn-Battery doesn't disable charging. Indicator goes up but charging is still there.
- Glare is pretty strong. I use the screen to check on my hair before I go out.
- Can't really get the as advertised CUDA working. I tested some 1080p MKVs with Media Player Classic X64 Edition. Best I could do was 30% CPU. Nothing like the sub 20% CPU as advertised.
- Keyboard is too small for me. I guess this is expected with the "netbook" size.

Config:
* Windows version: Win 7 64
* Processor: SU7300
* Amount of memory: 2GB
* HDD: 120GB 5400
* What power state (saver, balanced, or performance)?: Saver

 

About the battery fn+f2 check out this thread and comment:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=465054

 

-switching the igp to gpu, it asks you to close programs, i did this and went to gpu. switching from gpu to igp definitely turns off the gpu for me, you must have a bad unit or you havent killed all gfx programs, that seems to be the doofy way intel+nvidia integrate. Like I had to kill something called toaster which seemed to be dell's backup program

-fn volume +/- DOES work, maybe you are expecting a visual response? if you notice the volume icon in the bottom right of the taskbar, it grows or shrinks based on which you are pressing.

-dunno what the deal is with battery charging, maybe right now all it does is turn off battery usage when at 100% which would be what i'd prefer anyway. Most laptops continue to use the battery to run the laptop even at 100%, maybe the m11x runs straight off AC at that point, I'd like that.

-glare is terrible. If it was a matte screen this laptop would be the perfect laptop for me.

- I heard coreavc is good for lightening video playback loads. I'm not entirely sure if the thing you refer to as CUDA is for video playback, there's something separate for video playback involving gpu acceleration, cuda is a special way to run code, so it helps with media encoding and such. Try out mediacoder and encode some files using the x264 encoder then try the cuda encoder and notice the performance difference especially with an m11x as it has a much more powerful gpu than cpu.

- im getting used to the keyboard but my only problem is the keys seem to be rather close to one another.

 

i should mention i now understand that the gpu problem is that it still drains battery. weird problem!

 

I did... was a pain... but a friend and I managed to get it to connect eventually... I had the same problem you did...

Also... sorry about my previous post about illicit activity...

 

Switching from GPU to IGP doesn't switch off the GPU, so it still drains battery?

How the hell did they miss that? How the hell did all the reviewers miss it?

What's the effect i has on the battery life?

 

Well I think only a few people have that problem. I can switch between IGP and GPU back and forth without problems. I confirm it with my temperatures as IGP usually gives me a 5-7C lower temperature at idle.

 

Check out my post in the optimization thread. long story short, I had to re-download and install both the App and the driver. I did them in that order too.. A little bass ackward but it worked for me. The Gobi is a bit buggy me thinks...

 

Does the dw1520 connect at Wireless N speeds? I can only connect at 54....whereas all my other computers with wireless N on my router connect at 135-150 minimum?....Is there some software setting I must change? Its name is a wireless N half card...but am not getting wireless N performance.

 

i should mention it seemed like my igp/gpu switch wasnt working at first, and maybe it still isn't but i'll add this anecdote for people to try:

i have the power schemes set to always turn off discrete after 2min on battery but dont know if that matters, anyways I booted it up on discrete gpu and battery, played around for a bit, put it in standby, opened it and logged in again, played with alienfx, shut down alienfx, noticed the power drain wasnt very high something like 16w-17w, decided to switch to igp, went down to about 10w. with that power drain the discrete gpu is certainly off.

some sort of archaic combination of certain parts of what i described may be the key to getting discrete to turn off without having to reboot. maybe as simple as standby and re-logon.

 

Ok found my answer....with the 1520.....wireless N does not work with the old security settings on my router....switched to the new and bammo it works....here is the link in case someone else encounters this problem.
http://en.community.dell.com/forums/p/19312385/19647830.aspx

 

ive got a dead pixel right in the middle of the screen any help?

 

Has anyone manged to get the cpu to offload to the gpu to play 1080p films etc? and does anyone elses power pack get rediculously hot when charging the laptop. i think i could cook an egg on mine after 10mins of charging!!

 

Just have a quick query -

Does anyone know how to access the factory restore function on boot? Tried tapping F8 as stated in the manual but doesn't seem to work, just loads normally into Windows..? Wonder if that 'F8' direction is different internationally to US models as I'm here in Australia.

Cheers

 

Use Media Player Classic Home Cinema edition x64, with the 335M enabled. I've been playing ripped Bluray mkv's with it, and it reduces the cpu usage from 90% to about 10-20%. It also allows for cubic resizing, so video looks really nice when downscaled

And yeah, the charger does get really, really hot.

 

If your pixel is a solid green, red, or blue, try displaying solid red, green, and blue on the screen, a few seconds at a time, for a whole day. A good way of doing this is to make a powerpoint presentation, with red, green, and blue slides, and loop it over night.

If that doesn't fix the pixel, ring dell. They may replace the screen.

 

hey thanks downloading now. I assume everything is all packaged as in GPU support and codec support? downloading the file it's only like 3.x MB

 

As another poster said, if it's "stuck" in a certain color (if it's NOT black), use this. If it's black, call Dell. I believe their policy is one in the middle or two on the edges and they'll replace.

Erm, I've had mine plugged in all night and all yesterday and the power pack is barely warm. Any cooler and I would be worried it's not working. You should call Dell and get them to send you a replacement, I don't think it should be heating up like that.