Laptop Problems, M17

As you all may or may not know, I went through a long decision making process to get an M17. I finally got it three weeks ago or so with no problems. However lately and more frequently then not, I get lag spikes with my sound and whatever I am doing on my computer. It usually starts with the sound starting to scratch up, and then my game or anything I am doing starts to go slow. Sometimes it goes away, and sometimes it is there for a long time. The sound usually will stay messed up for a while so I have to cut my speakers off to turn off the annoying sound it makes. It first started happening when I was playing world of warcraft. The only change I have personally made to the computer is a memory increase to 4 gigs. This situation is very irritating as you can imagine, especially since I saved up money to make this purchase. I'll put my computer info below, thank you for any recommendations/comments.

Processor: T9400 at 2.53 ghz
Memory: 4GB RAM
System Drive: 160 gb

 

I know you've done this, but I have to say it (or someone else will!)

Checked your drivers?

I seem to remember one driver in particular for the video card (9.1 maybe) had some issues with WoW for some reason...

EDIT: yeah, it was 9.1, I just looked at the M17 driver comparison thread. Though it said it caused an error while playing, which doesn't sound like what you're seeing...

 

I'll be the someone else.

This is a driver issue, as a full-blown hardware failure generally is not intermittent.

Make sure ALL of your drivers, even ones that seem insignificant, are up to date.

HINT: Alienware's drivers are not generally up to date. Remember that M17s are rebrands, and there are several places to get good drivers.

 

i had same issues and tried to fix it like this ;

1- installed 8.9 ati drivers
2- 2.19 sound driver from realtek
3- updated the bios to modified ocz (zfactor)
4- installed windows vista x64 (with 32 bit i have a lot of problems)
5- updated windows
6- disabled and enabled high definition audio device (microsoft)
7- installed directx 9
8- using high performance power plan

now i am okey, i hope. at least i dont have any sound problem like before. mouse lag and wow shadow jitters are gone.

hope helps.

 

lol this is the sleep issue

its a chipset problem after you put your compter to sleep and wake it back up it goes crazy

its on all the m17's the only way to fix it is to not put it to sleep

 

everybody telling sleep problem but it is not. never use sleep never activated sleep but i had those problems. when i google it, it is sleep problem with realtek drivers but the old ones and that problem is fixed. not anymore. at least for me.

the lag, sound and slowing problem is something else. at the moment i fix it somehow but i dont know how , i think i resolve it with bios update with zfactor's because i have quad core cpu.

 

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads...=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

try that then i never heard of it ...... fixing it so , it wont hurt it

 

Still having the same problems every once in a while but less frequently now for some reason. I didn't change anything.

The laptop also has a problem with not turning the screen off when I close the laptop screen. It will just stay on, burning into the keyboard. This also happens less frequently then more but its still annoying.

 

Does it make the 'usb has been discovered/unplugged' noise before and when it starts going slow?

I have quite a similar problem that just annoys the crap out of me. I have no problems with the quality of my sound.. what I'm getting screwed over with is my keyboard. I hear the usb discovered noise crap every so often, then my keyboard just gets all sloppy, sometimes not executing the letters or characters I press: often creating A LOT of typos. I'm a fast avid typer and I'm confident that I am pressing every button (so I'm sure it's not my typing).

On WoW, it's even worse. I'm a constant raider doing PvE content (such as maly, naxx, os, and ofcourse dieing over and over again in ulduar); and every now and then I hear the "USB noise of doom", creating huge lag spikes for me often causing 0.4 second freezes, and ofcourse ing up my keyboard.

Haven't really came up with a solution to this, I'll check back when I do find one.

Keep in mind, I'm an art student who uses lots of computers for specific programs and transfers files often with a usb drive/external, I plug in my usb drive almost 99% of the time I'm on my m17. I never just unplug it, I always safely remove it via the icon on the taskbar (as I'm aware that plugging your drive without doing so will corrupt your files etc).

This problem sees to die off when I plug my usb in, after I here the noise, and then remove it via 'safely remove'. (It's been working fine for over a week now, it just came back )

 

I just had similar problems, where my lan, optical drive and video card just fail and my sound started lagging. I had to do a full blown system restore.

 

I suppose I'm fortune as I haven't had any issues with my M17 at all so far and I regularly use the sleep function. As everyone is mentioning this doesn't seem to be a hardware related issue. If updating your drivers doesn't help have you considered reinstalling windows? Are you using 32bit or 64bit? Perhaps switch from one to the other. I have no issues with 32bit but as Kanuni mentioned, he had issues with 32 bit vista.

Also this sounds silly but have you contacted Alienware's support? You just purchased the laptop a few weeks ago, they should be able to help you with it!