R1 battery life check please.....

I'm a new owner to an R1 and i took the advice of many who had success with a clean install, so I did a clean install to windows 7 ultimate and for some reason, the battery life is complete crap now.

I don't know why i did the clean install because after the optimization thread and using Alienrespawn to get it to factory settings, there were no problems with performance or endurance. BatteryBar showed full lifetime at 7:35 with powersaver on, GFX off, alienFX off, low brightness, etc. I just thought that a clean install would be equal or better than before. I was wrong.

My battery full lifetime is showing 4 hours!! The discharge rate went from 7500 idle to around 10000 mW idle. Is there something about windows 7 ultimate that makes it drain battery life faster than the Home Premium?



What is everyone's max capacity on the R1 battery? I'm showing 65,220 mWh and I feel that's pretty low. I've read some people having at least 70,000.



Also, since i'm new to the m11x, is the alienhead power button LED supposed to change colors? I thought it should be because you can go into AlienFX and select it to change the color but mine does not. It is a weird greenish yellow and always has been and not changeable.. is that normal? It's still under warranty so I may just send it back if its not.

 

jkust sounds like you may need to install some of the software/drivers. there are on Dells site.

about the battery life. sound like you in the dedicated Gfx and thats why its so much lower.

 

I just realized I installed NVIDIA's driver directly from their website. It's version 260.99

Is that what is draining my battery life? Do I HAVE to use the one from dell in order to get the hybrid graphics working?

 

r1 doesn't have auto gpu/intel switching optimus so you cannot use the latest drivers from nvidia, you need to download the gpu alienware/dell is providing so you can manually switch intel to dedicated

 

I just removed NVIDIA's newest driver and reinstalled Dell's and now, there's no icon in the taskbar about switching the graphics. The hybrid graphics icon that used to be there is no longer there. AND, the battery life has not changed. .

 

have you tried switching it with the keys FN + F6?

 

yep nothing. battery life has remained unchanged at full battery lifetime of 3:54.

 

does that mean you are switching to the integrated GPU or you just pressed the button and nothing happened.

 

did you check in BIOS if you set your graphic mode to "switchable"?

 

Basically, I went back and reinstalled the Dell's version of the NVIDIA driver. and i am able to switch to the other graphics card. It shows the screen blinking, etc. However, I noticed that regardless of whether or not I'm switching from performance to powersaving (or vice versa) the battery life remains the same at around 3 hours something. Meaning it is either STUCK on using NVIDIA or something else isnt right. And the discharge rate is extremely high for being idle.


I did check in BIOS and it is on "switchable". The only other thing i can think of is to somehow get a different driver for the Intel Graphics card but I cant find any and it is fully up to date. There is no real software that dell puts up for controlling the 2 either...


im downloading their "option" beta driver but im not sure if that is worse or better. I have no clue..

 

This is freakin turning into a nightmare.
I did a clean install and now I tried Alien Respawn to go back to factory settings and it won't work. It won't load up the hidden backup/recovery partition (which I didnt touch) because I think the clean install rewrote the MBR or whatever.


Any ideas on how to get the alienrespawn to recognize the hidden partition? That, or going back to factory settings?

Cant fix this battery business so its the only option.

 

kettle,

I have the same problem on 2 new m11xs, made a thread about it here http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m11x/549725-r1-switching-discrete-off-does-not-turn-off-discrete.html

Basically if you revert back to intel just put your computer in sleep, wake it up, and it will have the advertised battery life.

 

dude ill definitely check this out. but i did a second clean install and made sure to reinstall just ONE driver from dells website and was able to get about 5 hours or so of battery on "Intel". Seeing as how i went from 8hours 30 min to 5 ill give this a shot.