AlienFX Lighting Software & Vista 64

Good afternoon.

I have a problem, and noone else seems to be able or wants to help, so I need the A-Team (cue gunfire and awesome theme song).

About a week ago I purchased a refurbished Area 51 7500 from Ebay. Now I know it's not a laptop but the level of experience shown in this thread is the best I have found on the net, anywhere.

Here is my machine. It turned out that it's pretty much brand new and was only 270 pounds.



The day it came I had a good look over it, and, performed some upgrades. The machine was not listed as having AlienFX and I had no idea what I was looking for. Here is an internal shot (it's had some uber cooling fitted now by me).



After doing some research on AlienFX and then seeing this -



And this -



I'm pretty sure that it is indeed in there. It has lots of lights all over the computer, too. Now as stock they light up in green and that's fine. However, I would like to try and get it running because I love red. Gives it that look of evil. I have downloaded the software posted in this thread (thanks, sorry for not sayin that earlier) and all of them (using XPSP3) come up with "no controller card can be found"

Is this a common issue?

Please help me. I've been to a supposed AW forum and I have been waiting three days. Ask them to sell you all their left over broken junk however and they'll reply in about ten seconds.

Thanks for having me, and sorry it's not a notebook issue but at least you guys seemed to know what the f*ck you're talking about LOL.

Kind regards

AlienAndy

 

Hey Andy... welcome to NBR!
Have you already tried installing Command Center for Desktop?

Download it here and give it a shot
http://rapidshare.com/files/180204453/CommandCenterForDesktop.EXE
You may have the AlienFX Chip but it might not be installed onto your system. Do you see any driver with exclamation mark under device manager?

 

welcome to the forums andy

 

Iv just upgraded to windoows 7 build 7000 x64 and its all just gone kaput =/
When i try and enable the AlienFX Controller it does nothing it just sits there,
I tried the BIOS update and it says no card detected,
I have also already tried the CommandCenterForDesktops to no avail,
The x64 for the M15x and M17x Gave me some response as it was native x64 but still no gravy =/
If i give you the specs can you guys help me?
Thanks in advance!

 

i'm in the same boat as Tom.
Have an Alienware ALX P2 chassis with full light kit.
Just to be sure i've everything plugged in right
USB In coming from mainboard
USB Out going to front USB ports
4 Pin molex power plugged in.
That all sound rigt?
At the moment all lights are on and blue
but alienfx software isn't talking to the lights.
CC won't install even after using reg file
tester also isn't talking to it
all worked fine under Vista 32Bit

 

Ok guys heres one for you i have the same thing as andy in the sense that i actually have a AW computer bought as a gift from my folks as a Bday present. It has the same controls as in the picture i downloaded the CC and it installed perfect but once inside the program and i apply the colors it does not do anything it will not change the colors it will not even give me an Error which leads me to bealive that my computer is reading the driver ok but im trying to figure out why its not working/changing the colors.

Any ideas?

 

Did you order your P2 Chassis with the AlienFX customizable hardware? It costs an extra 100. Just getting the computer with Standard AlienFX lighting will not let you change the colors.

 

he bought it on ebay, mate.

 

Regardless, ask the original owner if he bought it with the standard lighting or the customizable. If it's standard, then he can't change the color no matter what he tries. It's the hardware that's the limitation.

 

Of course this is not a notebook issue, but in case someone still got that problem Andy mentioned: The difference between a system ordered with AlienFX and w/o is just the controller card you can see in the middle of his 3rd pic, in the SO-DIMM slot like the one being used for notebook ram. The lighting and wiring inside the case is the same, in fact it would be possible to upgrade to AlienFX just by swapping the card. The AlienFX card is able to control and dimm each led subset individually via OS, the passive one not - but you can set each primary color (red, green, blue) for all subsets at once on/off, thus allowing 7 colors to be set, not counting 'black'. It's a bit hard to see on the picture, but in the front corner there's a 3-dip-switch for that. Just btw: the color here's not set to green but to teal (left to right g/b on, r off). Hope that helps.

 

Hi to all,
Great information guys, amazing !!!
I am having the same problem as most on this thread "AlienFx board not detected" in AlienFxtester.exe or by Command Center, no lights at all etc. etc.
I have an m17x 4gb ram, T9800 cpu overclocked to 3.4ghz, Vista 64 bit, 640gb raid 0 HDD.
I've had it for 5 days did upgrades from dell site, no keyboard lights after installing the software upgrades, so a fresh Vista install later and still nothing.
I have tried everything on the threads and from dell site, but no good !!
Any ideas ?
My next option is dell support.

TIA

 

Hey guys! Hello to all of you powerbrain tech minds!!! thanks to findvikas for all his great work on this forum!! I have been reading all of your posts for the past 2 weeks!

Ok, here's my problemo. I have an Alienware ALX Predator case and I have a problem with getting the LEDs to work. Now before I go explain the situation - let me just say - that I DID GET them to work ONCE! Perfect with all the LEDs active and responding perfectly to all the Command Center commands (as well as findvikas's nicely edited AlienFX Desktop Lights application)...Ok, to the story:

I have all the needed software for LEDs - such as the original AlienFX 1.03 and 1.05 versions. I have the latest (or so I think) CommandCenter 1017. And I have downloaded the AlienFX Desktop Lights application. Here's what happened. I installed windows XP on my PC, as per forum's suggestions - I figured it would be easier since XP wouldn't need all the patches and updates and such. Anyway - then I installed all the software and plugged everything into the card (all the wires) besides 1 - it was the USB in wire - which was not supplied with my Desktop. After a few days of trying to make it work (not thinking that it might be feeding its data through that exact USB cable) - I finally decided to just make one of those bad boys. As soon as I connected it in the card and out to the motherboard - turned on the computer and voila - the LEDs came on right away - i was so happy - everything! worked - every program.

Now the thing is - I have a few of these desktops and I have a few of these LED cards - because I'm building 1 case for me and 2 cases for my two of my friends. Just in case info on LED cards is needed - they are REV 4 ELC Active Cards with the REV 4 LED Boards. All of my connectors (all the actual LED chips are all in place and are correctly installed). So - basically what I did was I happily took out the LED board with LED card (of course with the computer being off) and then proceeded to test the 2nd LED Card/board by plugging all the wires into it. This one did not respond at all. When I booted into Windows - it gave me that nasty error of AlienFx controller usual - "There was an error while communicating with your AlienFX board..blablabla" - hmmmm....I think I've seen that message before somewhere...oh yea - like 124 times this week. So anyway - tried reinstalling all the software - tried again and again - nothing worked. So then I tried the 3rd LED Board/Card. Same thing! Nothing worked, same old message.

After this - I decided to plug the first board back in (since that thing worked so wonderfully before) - and test it out again. This time no lights came on of course. And I got the "TUSB3410 Boot Device" New hardware found screen. Never had it before.

I read a bunch of stuff on this TUSB3410 Boot Device thing - I guess its the actual LED chip made by TI. But why doesn't it recognize it and install it when I install the AlienFX Software??? Nothing has worked... How do I get it to load properly and how to I point this thing to the correct driver?

PLEEEZ HELP GUYS!!!

YOUR HELP WILL BE IMMENSELY APPRECIATED!!! THESE DESKTOPS ARE SPECIAL BECAUSE OF THE LEDS.

-Ex

P.S.
I'm not sure if this could help but here's what I got from the "USV Device Viewer" which comes with the AlienFX 1.5 software package. It gives you device information on every port in the system. For TUSB3410 (which is under Generic USB Device category along with 1 more port) - it gives a bunch of info in there (I can post it if needed) but here's the weird part - right on top it has 1 ERROR - it says:

OPEN Pipes:
*! ERROR: No open pipes! :confused2:

And thats it, everything else seems to be in order in this configurator.

 

Thank you very much for all your help, however there are some things that i couldnt figure out. I have an active card Rv04, both backend an controller.

1: On the left panel, do i need to plug that little connector ? I'm not plugin the molex, but the fan isnt working too.




2. I bougth my case and my light kit on ebay, separately. So it didnt come with a hdd pw cable, i made one but im not sure if its correct.



I'm connceting one side of the cable i made to the MOBO hdd+ and pw+, and connecting the other side to the first 2 pins of the back end card. Is that correct ?





My question is, the two last pins at the back end card, and the HDD- and PW- pins at the MOBO, are not used ?



3. About the usb connectors, it dosent matter if I connect the cable from the MOBO to the USB in or USB out, the USB front port will work, but only one. Im kinda concerned about that, but at least indicates thats my card its not fried.


4. As i have an active card do i need any software to get the lights running ? mine havent lighten up not even once.
I installed AuroraFx and i ts says it didnt find my card, but it is installed accordingly to to this picture.




5. Only one of my usb front ports are working, the other powers up my pen drive but doesnt recognize it.

Any help will be very appreciated, i'd really like to see some lights this weekend. Thanks !

 

I have mine working with a 2 wire 5v molex connected. What are you using for power?

 

I don't have the two pin wire coming from the powersupply. Would it be possible to use a 2 pin female connector and solder it to a molex connector? Would 5v be enough to power this thing? Thanks in advance.

Amazon.com: A pair of Molex 51021 2 Pin Female and Male Connector for MCX Batteries: Toys & Games

 

so 5 volts should be sufficient? thanks in advance.

 

Continue this in the Alienware forum on desktopreview.com.

Alienware Forums - Alienware Desktop Computer Forums and PC Discussions

Thanks.