Jason's M9750 Repair Log

Well, after 1.5 years of enjoyment with my m9750 I've run into a couple of issues and figured I would log the repair experience here. Glad I got the 3 year warranty.

1. Hinge Crack

I've always been very careful with my m9750 and it has never been dropped, stepped on, mishandled, or in any way abused. After about a year I noticed a fine line of discoloration near one of the hinges. It looked like a stress mark. I kept an eye on it and it became a little more defined over time but didn't crack. Then one day when opening the lid, I heard a pop. It was the hinge on the other side. It separated, much like the experiences of the M15 users.



I tried to live with it for a while because I had some important things going on and I did not want to be without the laptop. Eventually the other side with the stress mark completely cracked.



I was going to send it in within the month, when problem #2 occurred:

2. System Shut-Down

One day I went to turn my system on and the laptop would immediately shut itself down after 3-4 seconds into its boot cycle. It the made the same sound you would expect when you hold down the power button for 10 seconds. But it did this before any windows screen or attempt to boot from the drives. There was no apparent issue the last time I had turned it off so it was strange to have a problem turning it on this time. In any event, I couldn't get it to come on so I called Alienware support.

3. Telephone Support

The tech had me disconnect the CMOS battery, remove the secondary GPU, and try to boot. It worked. We tried booting with just the secondary GPU instead of the primary. That worked too. So we tried again with SLI. That worked. We assumed that disconnecting the CMOS battery and clearing the BIOS memory allowed it to get out of whatever state it was stuck in. There was, however, the issue of the cracked hinges so I talked to him about it. He had me take pictures then used the Alien Contact software to look at them through my PC. He said this was unusual for this model, but agreed that there was no apparent abuse of the computer and sent me a shipping label to send it in for repair. He was one the phone with me for a solid hour and a half. I packed up my m9750 and sadly sent it off.

4. Back from Repair

I mailed the laptop from NH on Tuesday, 1/27 and it arrived at Alienware Customer Service in TN on Friday 1/30. They repaired the cracked case without any dispute and shipped it back the following Wednesday, Feb 4th. I received it today, Saturday Feb. 7th. The case looks perfect and I was quite pleased with the turnaround time!

5. Too good to be true

I booted up the computer and thankfully all my icons were there and nothing was done to my hard drives. So I started up Neverwinter Nights 2 and the game play was really bad. I started playing around with SLI profiles and performance bars, which all looked fine. I couldn't figure out why it would be so slow, and then the computer suddenly powered itself down. Problem #2 is back.

6. Bad GPU?

I reset the CMOS battery so that the system would boot again, then I removed the secondary (parent) GPU and SLI cable. I tried playing with just the primary daughter GPU and the game was still really bad. I rolled back to an Alienware driver just to be safe and it still happened. The FPS was maxing at 3 when it should be about 30. I ran RivaTuner and restarted the game. I noticed that the core clock on the GPU would crank up from 200Mhz to 567Mhz when the game started and the player menu came up. As soon as I jumped into a previously saved game, it would downclock to 200Mhz again. Here is a screenshot that shows the core clock going up and down each time I start the game.



Do you agree this is probably my primary GPU going bad? I'd like to have it pretty nailed down before I get on the phone with tech support again.

So far, I'm somewhat satisfied with the support. I wish the first guy I talked to had a little more intuition to have me try some other things rather than call it a victory just because it was booting again. I was happy to move forward at the time because I thought it was just a fluke so I can't fault him too much. Thanks in advance.

 

while some of your issues sound bad/annoying, i think i can alleviate your fears in regards to the "defective" GPU... what you're experiencing is called "dynamic downclocking" and is a feature of the new Nvidia drivers - if the GPU is under a small load or idling, it will automatically downclock to reduce stress on the chip and reduce heat emissions. as soon as you start a game or something demanding, the clocks will climb back up to the normal level so you get the full power of the GPU.

 

Thanks but that's not what's happening here. It's downclocking as soon as the graphic demands step up (when I start playing) and it never comes back. The game only gives me between 1-3 FPS. Something, somewhere, is definitely wrong.

 

lol sounds like a driver issue not funny for you just the drivers are doing the exact oppisite of what there doing use a driver sweeper program and then reinstall

 

Yeah but I had been using the same driver for months when the problem started. I've already tried going back to other drivers using driver sweeper and it still is happening.

 

well now ... humm the gou coild be goin bad...call roswell

 

have you got Irish or Scottish forefathers?

 

nope good 'ol austrian /german

 

Alright, you can ignore the downclocking graph I guess. I've run a few other times and after playing long enough it seems to clock upwards again.

Something is still wrong though. The game stutters like crazy and gets FPS in the single digits whereas I used to get around 30. The laptop has powered down on its own again as well.