*OFFICIAL* M11xR1 Owners Lounge - Part 4

Received my M11x today (only ordered it on the 2nd) and just wanted to pop in and say hi. Wish I had the time and stamina to go through all the enormous owner's threads, but will make do with keeping up with this one.

Thought I'd give the CPU overclock a try, but looks like I'm one of those suffering the BSOD problem. Otherwise I'm chuffed to bits with it so far and have spent the last few hours checking out the optimisation thread and tweaking.

To those who ordered after me and are (im)patiently waiting, I think Dell are shifting them pretty quickly now they've been on the market for a good couple of months. My original delivery date was 20th May so I was very pleasantly surprised to see it brought forward by over a week.

 

Bexx - go ahead and place a calld to dell for Motherboard replacement. Dont wait for a bios update. Demand it or tell them you will return it.

Best Wishes,

StevenX

 

Thanks Steven, I'm really in mixed minds as to what to do because I'm so happy with it in every other respect. And to be honest, I doubt I'm going to be using it for anything that would need the extra oomph from overclocking.

That said, I do feel a bit miffed because it should OC without any issues. I think I'll give it a few days and have another try......

 

well, i agree with stevenxowens792, from point of view if i payed money for something, it should work 100%, even if i won't use some of is features.

 

Maybe I've missed it -but it seems to me that *all* of the reported BSOD issues are outside of the US (i.e. UK, etc.)?

Has anyone in the US had a BSOD issue with the M11x? I'm beginning to wonder maybe has to do with a specific region - or perhaps a power converter issue (forgive my ignorance - but UK does use different plugs/voltages - correct)?

 

JSGIV - a while back I asked the same question. Some folks inside the US also have the bsod issues.

I did encounter a weird issue today. I powered on and the system says it doesnt detect a compatible battery and wants to run a sysdiag. I powered it off and back on and it did it again. I went ahead and booted into the Os and it worked fine. Showed power plugged in and the battery shows fine as well. Shut it down after a bit, then powered it back up. No error... weird.. Later, StevenX

 

Bexx - You dont have to return it. Ask for them to send out a tech with new system board and processor. You still get to continue to utilize the laptop and when it gets replaced it will be faster as well... Please trust me. This is something you want to get sorted. Dont wait for a bios upgrade. It may never come and when it does may still not be 100 percent.

Again - Bexx, I wouldn't suggest you be rude, but be assertive that you want a tech with parts and replacement or it gets sent back. Bottom line. Trust me, they want our business...

Best Wishes,

StevenX

 

Ask for a advance replacement you lose nothing by doing this. You did'nt short on the money that you paid, don't let them short you on Quality.

 

I totally agree with this, you need to call Dell and see if they can ship you a system in advance. You spent a lot of money and the ability to overclock is a feature that you paid for. Take the time and do that you won't regret it.

 

Thanks for the advice guys. I'm still nervous at the thought of replacing anything as I've read about other problems people are having and I can easily live with the OC issue if that's the only one. That said, I'm going to give Dell a call today and test the waters. Is Dell tech support better than their regular customer service line?

Also, I only took the regular warranty, does this mean they will still ship out a replacement or send a tech without me having to give up the current machine?

Sorry for the noobish questions, I'm a long-time computer geek but have never dealt with Dell before.

 

Bexx - Dell/Alienware support can smell fear in the water like sharks. Be polite, be confident, be assertive. Again either request replacement or repair. My suggestion is repair if everything else works fine. Motherboard and processor shouldn't be too hard to replace.

Best Wishes,

StevenX

 

Great News!!! My M11x finally shipped today and will be here tomorrow! I can't believe I will finally be able to get my machine. Feels like I have been waiting for an eternity. I hope mine won't be one of the ones that suffer from the BSODs from the overclocking.

 

Dell replaced mine, and while I waited for the replacement I used the one with the screen gap and keyboard that was not installed correctly. After you get the replacement you have 10 days to send back the defective one or they will charge your credit card. They will give you a shipping lable for the return.

 

Well guy's, I guess i get to eat crow. Dell sent my replacement yesterday and it seems perfect no dead pixels. (knock on wood). My hat's off to them because after a month of my replacement being canceled i gave up. Then boom it shows up. No e-mail or anything. Glad someone was home. So i gotta give dell credit for doing what they said they would. Keep it up dell.

 

A little test with Octane Render (GPU based, un-biased render)


YouTube - Alienware m11x GT 335M Octane Render

 

Welcome Alberto!

Nice, this is something new - and some people have been asking how it does rendering. +1

 

So, I checked the fedex tracking number and since it said it was supposed to be delivered today, but because of my luck it won't be delivered until tomorrow. Whats even more saddening is the fact that the package is in my home town Fedex depot. Its so close.

 

Hi guys, quick update on my situation regarding the BSOD on OC. My other half rang Dell and the chap on the phone initially stated quite bluntly that Dell doesn't support OC on the M11x and that there isn't even an option to do so in the BIOS! After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, he eventually checked with a colleague and admitted he was wrong about the OC ability and that Dell are currently working on a BIOS revision which will address the BSOD issue amongst other things. (They're also doing a BIOS revision for the M15x apparently.)

He made no offer of replacement parts, but to be honest I'm happy as long as there's an eventual fix. I do wish my other half had asked what the other fixes in the BIOS revision will be, but I didn't know what was said until he was off the phone.

So, guess we'll see if Dell come up with something. Might nag them weekly about it.

 

Hi Bexx (and everyone else!)

Hope nobody minds, but for Bexx's benefit (and my own) I am going to copy my posts from the troubleshooting thread to here. I am going through a very similar experience so would like to keep in touch with like minded individuals in the same boat....

The next two posts were copied from the Troubleshooting thread (the first from yesterday, the second from today).

 

Just had a long chat with the AW tech support guy (Rado was his name).

Told him about the BSOD as soon as the OC is enabled. He put me on hold for about 10 minutes and then came back and said that the OC is not supported.

I told him that I disagree and that the feature is mentioned in the product documentation and that I want the machine repaired.

After some umming and ahhing he told me that before they send out an engineer, that he would like to see the minidump files from the BSODs. I emailed these to him. He has now promised to call tomorrow at the latest to let me know what they are doing.

He briefly mentioned a BIOS update and that they are 'working on a fix' blah blah, but didn't know when this will be appearing.

I will give him till Friday.... after that I need to start asserting my authority. It sounds like they are told to say 'this feature is not supported'. Apart from the fact that it is mentioned in the manual, what else can I counter this with? Anyway rant over. Love the machine, but I bought the machine on it OC'ed perfomance results. I will keep this thread informed....

 

Update on my BSOD problem. Spoke to the same guy again (Rado).

He gave me the same spiel about Alienware not supporting the OC option, and I said the same as yesterday. IT SAYS YOU CAN DO IT IN THE MANUAL. He said that the manual also says 'Do not mess with the BIOS unless you are an expert'!!! /o\

I then pushed for a replacement or repair, at which point he mentioned that he could not authorize it (no managers in the centre) and that they probably wouldn't agree to it anyway. I asked why not... he said that it is not their policy to replace or repair for this specific problem in the Uk...

He then told me that someone would call me tomorrow afternoon (a manager?) who will let me know what they are to do. We'll see....

I'm torn because apart from the BSOD on the OC the machine is perfect. I love it, but also feel a little short changed when I read about the performance at the higher clock speed.

Has anyone else from the UK been through this process? Am I being unreasonable? Can anyone here offer their advice?

Cheers.

/Edit: BTW has anyone experienced the occasional 'pop' or 'crackle' when using headphones (even whilst browsing). It's not all the time (a couple of times a minute perhaps) but it is noticable and slightly annoying. I reinstalled the realtek drivers but that made no difference. 2 of my games also crackle a lot (Crysis and Batman) especially when a lot is going on and the framerate dips.

 

Hi swedelong, thanks for sharing your experience with the OC issue. It does seem that those of us in the UK are not getting the same level of support on this matter as those elsewhere. I think it may be because when choosing the CPU in some other countries it was mentioned it would OC to 1.73 whereas this was never stated on the UK configuration page. Still, why bother putting an OC enable option in the BIOS if we're not allowed to use it?

It's definitely unfair that we can't have a replacement when those in other countries can - quite a double-standard on Dell's part. I guess they may be worried about users taking legal action in those countries where the OC ability was mentioned.

I remain hopeful that they will issue a fix in the form of a BIOS update. Goodness knows why it's taking so long to emerge though as I understand they've been promising it since at least the beginning of April and the chap my other half spoke to said it would likely still be a few weeks yet.

It would give a great deal of assurance to owners if they just made an official announcement stating it was in the pipeline. They'd get a lot less returns/replacements and I'm sure people will be happy to wait as long as they are certain it's coming.

 

I got mine a few hours ago!! Beautiful! No BSOD or anything. I've just updated the graphics driver to the beta NVidia ones from Dell's site, let Windows update do it's thing, and installed Portal & Half Life Source for starters. Tried overclocking the CPU with no worries. Now all I have to do is start gaming, er uhh...I mean paying my bills on it (including my Dell account) and work, of course, responsible work, blah blah yadda yadda

 

ebondefender, I'm very pleased to hear you're able to OC successfully.

I've disabled some things in the BIOS this evening and re-enabled the OC and *fingers crossed* have not had a BSOD yet. I've detailed my experience in the troubleshooting thread, here's the direct link to my post:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...1x-troubleshooting-thread-79.html#post6247382

I am tentatively hopeful I've discovered a workaround.....

 

@ Bexx: yeah, I've been playing Portal for an hour now, OC'ed with NVidia graphics activated. Not that Portal needs overclocking! But I wanted to give her an "easy" run, break it in, see how well it performed. The only USB devices I've tried so far are my trackball and Targus external DVD drive. I'll post any tech problems or info I can find in the troubleshooting thread if I can help.

But yeah I love this thing. I think I might try that Star Trek Online demo next. Then fall asleep on my glowy keyboard.

 

I have had a breakthrough on the popping and crackling when browsing and gaming. Sorry if this has been mentioned elsewhere....

The problem was within the Realtek HD manager. There is a little button in the Audio manager in the bottom right called 'Power options'. Mine was set to 'sleep after 3 seconds' ALWAYS.

This means that everytime the audio was not in use for 3 seconds or more, the sound card would disable itself with an annoying 'pop'. And then would wake itself up on the next sound event with a similar noise. I just switched the feature off by clicking the checkbox at the top of the power settings page.

It solved my Batman framerate, slowdown and sound stuttering problems! \o/

 

Portal does indeed look the bees knees on the M11x, it's the first thing I tried and I was most impressed. Haven't tried HL2 or any of it's EPs yet, but am itching for Black Mesa to finally come out, would love to play it on this.

Also tried Sims 3 last night. Played surprisingly well at reasonable settings both with OC on and off.

Will perhaps give some more Steam games a try later, Serious Sam HD is always good for some brainless fun.

Oh, I love the glowy keyboard too. Thought it might turn out to be a bit of a gimmick, but was such a blessing sitting in bed last night with all the lights off and being able to see what I was typing!

swedelong, well done on sorting out the audio issue, I'll check to ensure that power setting is disabled on mine.

 

Thanks Bexx, I tried your tips on getting the OC working. Didn't work for me unfortunately. Mine BSOD whilst the Windows 7 logo is swirling about (3 or 4 seconds after booting) so I didn't hold out much hope.

Hoping to get the call today from AW (I do hope they won't let me down).

Glad you got the OC working BTW...

 

Oh no, that's such a shame. I really hoped I was onto something. Sounds like your CPU is considerably less tolerant than mine to start with, I do hope you have better luck with AW today. Please let us know how you get on.

Incidentally, I did have another BSOD about 15 mins after booting this morning, but it was a "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA" error and hasn't happened since. I was on battery power when it happened, but have switched to mains now, I'll see if it does it again when I next switch back.

 

Mine BSODs too. Really hoping for the BIOS update so I can squeeze a little more performance out of it.

Most stuff runs nicely anyway though, especially now I've modified the power settings to give 100% to the processor.

 

Just got my call from AW (Rado again)

Their response in a nutshell....

BSOD Users in the UK.... OC is not supported on your machine. You will not get a replacement. You will not get a repair. End of.

Me: But it is a documented feature in your manual.
AW: But the manual also says don't mess with the BIOS unless you know what you are doing...
Me: I do know what I'm doing. It's not as if it's the most feature packed BIOS ever... it's one single option to switch OC on or OFF. You are not setting a multiplier or clock rate or voltage....Anyway.... why put it there if it's not supported?
AW: .... it's not supported. There is nothing I can do. I will email you an email address you can use to take the matter further.... The (mythical?) BIOS update is being worked on and may or may not fix the problem. If you still have a problem after, maybe we can do something.
Me: I will use the email address you send. Thankyou and goodbye.

Has anyone in the UK been successful on this issue? Please post if you have.... and how...

 

swedelong

Well, OC is a slippery topic for them. You can wait for a while, and then call again with a new story, that you have some lines, from time to time. But its not every time. So you won't be able to shot it to technician. You can use mine pictures:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/478164-alienware-m11x-weird-graphics-problem.html

They will see it as motherboard problem, and will replace it.

 

That reminds me of the bios 'fix' Acer announced a while back for my aspire one, where the screen would flicker on low brightness.. They just disabled the lower settings. Lets hope Alienware doesn't pull a stunt like that.

 

swedelong, so sorry you've had no success with AW. I don't know how much further you wish to take it, but perhaps an email to someone high up in Dell might be worthwhile. I've often found that bypassing the frontline staff in event of a dispute and going straight to the top yields positive results. If you ever need to gather support from other UK users to back you up, feel free to count on me. Despite the fact that I probably won't use the OC ability, it really irks me that they are being such sticks in the mud about it and that they are treating the problem differently depending what country the user is in.

COpyCatz, sadly the cynic in me can't help but think you may be right and they'll just take the OC function away full-stop.

 

So I opened my M11x up the other day and the lid cover basically popped off and there was tons of dust inside the screen. The technician thought that the heat melted the glue holding the LCD to the lid and that is why it happened. I'm not sure if that is the case but the new LCD/lid they gave me seems better put together than the old one.

 

A lot of dust inside the screen?

 

Hello ppl , this is my 1st post, and i know there are several post out there about M11X refresh, but i already order the M11X here in Brazil ... With C2D,4GB,500(7200) and cost me about $2055 yeah you read correct ... this is an imported even here for Dell Brazil ... so i need to pay the tax to come to Brazil. the laptop still under production and will arrive here about 10 jun ...
My question is ... still got time to cancel it and wait for the refresh, i saw in a post that it will happen mid jun, so i will be soooo mad if my M11X still flying to here and , Dell start seeling with i5 or i7. i want to hear what you guys think about... cuz here in Brazil is nothing but speculations about the refresh!

thanx

PS: the AlienGUIse Theme Manager with Breed Theme is installed by default? cause here in Brazil i could not configure with that!

 

Yeah. When the lid cover popped off I popped it back on and there was dust everywhere under the LCD.

 

Alright, this is not a reply. Sorry, I'm just making a post- new to the forum, not sure how to just make an arbitrary post. Anyways, I noticed a lot of people wanted to disable charging to maximize the effective life of the battery which can be done in the bios. After restarting, however, the settings revert back to charging. Maybe someone fixed this? I don't know. Anyways, I got a lot of really usefull stuff for my m11x off this forum and I'd like to say to all the people who figured out all the different things, it was a great help. Thanks for being so open with all the info. Anyway, I found that by selecting save changes then selecting save and exit in the bios, charging doesn't seem to re-inable after resart. Sorry about the long winded message. Thanks a lot guys. All of the best with your m11x optimization endevours, I am very happy with mine! Cheers. God bless.
Tyler

 

I believe your bios will keep the charging disabled until the power brick is disconnected then reconnected. At least that is what I've determined during my first 24 hour experience.

 

Hello everyone. Great forum here, I was an avid readed of the m1730 forum and recongnize some users that used to post there.

I just received my M11x yesterday and the first thing i noticed is that the keyboard has a bump in it around the j,i,k,l,m keys. This really bugs me and i wanted to get some advice as to if I should contact dell to get it fixed or if you guys think I should just take the unit apart and try to reset the keyboard.

Did any of you post a youtube video on dismantling the m11x or know of a guide online?

Thanks,
I'm really liking this little beast.

 

This question might have been answered already but will there be any processor upgrades for the M11x anytime in the near future? (Like 1 month)

Thanks.

 

You can download the M11x service manual from either Dell or Alienware.

It has step by step instructions for dismantling the laptop to get to specific parts and with photos too.

Taking out the keyboard is pretty easy actually.

 

No.

Maybe in the next 3-4 months, Intel announced new Ultra Low Voltage CPU's, they will be released in June.

The new i3 is just too slow to compete with an SU4100 or SU7300 on stock clocks. The new i5 is ment to be the new SU7300, but the SU7300 (OC'd) is a little bit faster than the new i5, and I guess it will cost about $150 more in an m11x config.


The only real interesting new processors are the i7's but they will be even more expensive(about 300 dollars), but also quite fast, 1,36Ghz Quad Core.

I'm sure Dell will eventually put these processors in the m11x, if I were you I'd wait for the new i7's, they are twice as fast as the current processors.

 

i think you are right, number wise. 73>41>15>13.

 

Thanks for your reply.

I followed the service guide and was able to take the keyboard off. The process was super easy compared to my AcerOne. What I found when I lifted the keyboard was that there is a wire that runs down the i,k,m keys that normally sits in a grove that had came out. I set the wire back in the groove and stuck a small piece of tape over it to hold it in place. Put everything back together and now it's perfect.

Thanks

 

hey guys! how do you turn on the battery meter underneath the m11x? i reformatted and i didn't notice it actually if it was ever turned on before i did.

 

You just hit the little battery icon. It turns on for a few seconds to show you what your battery charge is out. It works regardless of what OS you have installed and requires no drivers. Hence why it works even when your laptop is off.

 

The slowest i5 ULV will be slower than an OC'd SU7300.

 

Any one else a little dissapointed in the memory card slot? The card sticks out and really cannot be left in the machine for fear of breaking something when transporting it.

My old m9700 it slid all the way in, what was Dell/AW thinking?