List of known (and fixed) issues with the M15x

Well after owning my laptop for almost 1 year now, My hinge finally cracked last week. First I noticed the small black screw protruding from the screen and then when I looked closer I saw that the hinge had completely cracked open from the bottom. Up until now I thought I was free of this problem. I was also one of the guys that had my laptop split open above the ehternet port. I sent it back to Alienware which took over 1 month to fix it. When it did come back the right rear corner of my new laptop had been chipped. I needed my laptop for work so I could not afford to send it back for another month to get repaired. Over the past 6 months that little chip has grown and grown and is now a totally ugly sore. I am going to try to get them to replace the cover and fix the hinge all at once. Wish me luck because everything I have done with alienware has been a huge struggle. The repair they did the first time to fix the cracking / seperation issues near the ethernet port is starting to re-appear as well. This will definately be my last DELL/ALIENWARE Product purchased.

I will try to talk to Roswell, because in reality only they seem to be able to do something effective for you. The general tech people just give you the run around.

Also has anyone been able to run and HDMI feed out to an external monitor and use that monitor only. ie set the external monitor as the single primary monitor and shutdown the laptop mointor. I can never seem to get that to work either.
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Well I just got off the phone with tech support and they are going to repair the hinge crack at no cost and they were amazingly nice to deal with this time. It was like dealing with a new company, I was impressed. Not impressed enough yet to buy again from them, but impressed none the less... Keeping my fingers crosssed this does not take 1 month again to fix.

 

You scary me...mine has over 1 year now, but I had 1-yr warranty

On the other hand, I have one more issue to add to the /recognised-not fixed/ list. 7 users has that, but I suppose more people will find that soon or later.
m15x constantly discharging battery


cheers

K.

 

i have also had my m15x for very very nearly a year now, and have had a re-read through some of the threads on here and thought id give my m15 a check over, and low and behold, ive found a crack!!! not sure if anyone else has had it in the same place. with the laptop open, and as you look at the screen, its in the top left corner, in the outer casing,originating from the gap for the light pipe.ill get a photo 2moro and post it here. but i will definately be contacting alienware before my warranty runs out thats for sure.

 

ok, i have just spent over half hour on the phone to technical support concerning this crack that has appeared, to be told that it falls under "physical damage" and as such, is not covered under warranty, if i want to take the matter further, i need to contact customer support, who are shut on sundays! so i have emailed them , stating that the only "physical" thing that has happened to my laptop, is the opening and closing of the screen, which obviously needs to be done in order to use the computer. i have also stated that Under the Sale Of Goods Act 1979 s.14,my laptop is not of satisfactory quality. and therefore either it be fixed, replaced or refunded.so i now await their reply!!

 

The constant discharging is from having the system set to "wake-on-lan". It performs this function all the time even when in sleep mode.

 

and how do we disable "wake-on-lan"?

 

I've just had my m15x for about a week, and suddenly my audio has completely died, has anyone run into this issue before?

 

reinstall the Realtek audio driver.

 

Hi I just owned m15x 2 months ago untill now i can't use it to render 3d's & idont know if the problem was in the cpu or gpu.

Here's what i observed: everytime the cpu reach to 100% for 5-10 min. & the gpu temp is above 65 max 75 my system automatically restart.

If someone can me, i'll appreciate a lot.

 

hmm. sounds like overheating. update your BIOS to x36. you can find it in the mini-MyHive.

 

Good point.

I know, I should disable:

1. Wake on * in the modem driver properties
2. Wake on * in the one of the system devices (I mean system audio board)

<- those above I can, have done already

3. Wake on * in the bios LAN settings and network adapter properties

<- that I can't because Alienware blocked that switch in the BIOS (it is hidden in fact) BTW - Any idea what for ? I can't understand I have to use always "WOL on" in the BIOS (because I can't switch it off).

Maybe this is solution (un-hiding that switch) for me, I'll try to contact with Alienware CS.

 

They need to fix that for free for you if it is the hinge crack. That's ridiculous but expected. Contact AW-James if he's still here. I know I haven't been on too much because of school.

 

hello~Im new here. and i got a new m15x.
it's with the vx36 bios but i cant low the fanspeed with the thermofan
because i cant find where the ”User Control” is ?

could someone help me?

 

you can't change the fanspeeds with thermofan, only monitor them.

 

thanks ,so how to slove the problem that cpu's fan runs at full blast the entire time because of a temperature reading bug

 

When i recieved my m15x the bios is allready x36.

Yesterday i download the ATITOOL to stress my GPU & i found that the gpu fan kick up to 5400 rpm when temp reaches to 85 then the gpu reduce its temp to 65 & my System didn't restart, i tried it 5 times. After that i stress the CPU with stress prime & in less than 5 min the system restarts automatically.

I guesss i have bigger problem now with my CPU, co'z all i thought was the GPU might be defective.

 

When i recieved my m15x the bios is allready x36.

Yesterday i download the ATITOOL to stress my GPU & i found that the gpu fan kick up to 5400 rpm when temp reaches to 85 then the gpu reduce its temp to 65 & my System didn't restart, i tried it 5 times. After that i stress the CPU with stress prime & in less than 5 min the system restarts automatically.

I guesss i have bigger problem now with my CPU, co'z all i thought was the GPU might be defective.

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by dsproductions
ok, i have just spent over half hour on the phone to technical support concerning this crack that has appeared, to be told that it falls under "physical damage" and as such, is not covered under warranty, if i want to take the matter further, i need to contact customer support, who are shut on sundays! so i have emailed them , stating that the only "physical" thing that has happened to my laptop, is the opening and closing of the screen, which obviously needs to be done in order to use the computer. i have also stated that Under the Sale Of Goods Act 1979 s.14,my laptop is not of satisfactory quality. and therefore either it be fixed, replaced or refunded.so i now await their reply!!

They need to fix that for free for you if it is the hinge crack. That's ridiculous but expected. Contact AW-James if he's still here. I know I haven't been on too much because of school.
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in reply to stone, the crack is not on the hinge, it is at the top left hand corner of the screen, in the silver plastic running outwards(and now downwards)from the light pipe. i left it 3 days without hearing anything back from my email, so i rang them yesterday and they were "more than happy to get it back to be mended" what a suprise after the email i sent.

so, yes, i have to send it back, and its apparently going to take 20 days for some bloke to change the plastic cover!! in other words, itll sit there for 16 days and then someone will do it and send it back.

dont get me wrong, i havent had any other serious probs with my m15x, and it is a superb machine, but having paid £2300 for it, i kinda expected a little more more customer service and thought if i had any probs, they would be happy to fix them asap, i guess not. just send me the cover and ill do it myself!! your allowed to upgrade hardware yourselves, but i cant change a plastic panels with a cable in going to a led? seems ridiculous

 

i agree they need to let some more things be repaired by the people, other then the rich guys who just wanna look cool people who get a lienware are usually pretty good with pc's. but i guess if they did that they could loose alot of money but ohhh welll

 

Hey everybody! Is there anyone out there that has had overheating issues on the GPU? Alienware is sending me a new heatsink and wanted to see if someone had to replace their heatsink as well. & did it resolve the problem?

 

hey everybody, I'm new to the forum but I just received my m15x two days ago and keys are popping off already. Not a very happy camper at this point. I've had 4 different laptops ranging from an HP, Dell, and Acer. This is the first time I've had a real problem with keys popping off. How easy is it to get a new keyboard and how easy is the install. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

 

call AW, they'll send you a new keyboard free of charge which you'll be able to install yourself.

 

Thats not good news! I had hoped that by now quality control was much improved from a year ago when they started pumping out these laptops. Let us know how long it takes to get a new keyboard installed. And yes if at all possible try to do it yourself - do not send it back to AW as you will be without a laptop for a minimum of a month and more than likely 2 months.

Good Luck.

 

I just spoke with Alienware and they said that they would need to hold my credit card and they would send a new keyboard but they will need to get the defective keyboard back so they can take off the charge on my credit card. They said it would take 3-5 business days to get the keyboard. I'm just perplexed about the durability of this keyboard. Everything else is excellent but the keyboard issue is really odd. I've seen it happen to older laptops but not on a brand new one, two days out of the box. This is making me think about sending this back and getting a refund. Although I enjoy fixing things, I think it is way too high maintenance for the amount of money paid.

 

The keyboard isn't a major issue. It's not exactly a hardware fault. It's dead easy to change the keyboard. Do it, you won't be dissapointed by the m15x.

 

yeah, i gotta admit, the keyboard is the only major issue here. performance is awesome and having the SB battery is a plus.

 

Yeah the SB is awesome. I sound a bit of a hypocrite telling you that you shouldn't refund it because the keyboard is only a minor problem, but I'm having to send my m15x in because I have the hinge cracking problem

But there has to be consequences for having the most powerful and best looking 15.4 laptop around ever!
Trust me, this thing is a beast, and you won't regret missing it for 2 weeks if a massive failure happens, just due to the fact it's the fastest 15 incher. I love it. The lights, the design, the hardware, the speed etc. It's awesome

 

Nap, I am glad your so enthusiastic still. I have had my notebook for a year now. It has had 10 hardware failures and uncountable software issues. 4 of the 12 months, 33% of the time it ha been in repairs. If you think that is great you must me smokin something crazy. I hate this notebook. It's the worst purchase I have ever made. I wish everyone else success with theirs but be vigilant with tech support.

 

sorry westcoast there must be months of pain in there. you should be happy lol

 

Mine was also popping off! the right arrow key, I saw that one of the very tiny part of the key was fractured but the good thing is that the tiny piece was not lost is just hanging on the key, so i quickly fix it with a strong glue & reinforced it & place it back using small forcep.

But the best way is return it to AW.

Note:
You need yo be patient.
Don't put too much glue on it otherwise it will not fit to its place.
If the broken part is missing you need to cut thesame size of plastic.

Hope This will help your problem.

 

I solved keyboard lag by not installing touchpad driver

 

Yeah the keyboard lag issue is quite annoying -- man, I wish I found these forums before ordering my m15x.
Uninstalling the touchpad driver is not an option for me as I simply need it. Or does it also work without the Synaptics driver?

 

Okay, while messing aroung a bit, I think I found a SOLUTION to keyboard lag issue on the m15x!

While trying to type something into the chat-window in a certain MMO-Game, I've noticed the following:
I kept a key, for example the "g"-key pressed and - of course - the keyboard started typing that character over and over again at certain speed rate. However, when I moved my finger over the touchpad at the same time, the speed rate at which new characters were typed into the chat-window dropped significantly. That was kind of strange, because the touchpad was actually deactivated, because I had my USB mouse pugged in. So it seems that even though the touchpad is inactive in Windows, it still registers movement on it an sends data to the ps/2 port.

So I went to:
pointing device properties(rightclick on synaptics symbol in your taskbar)
/device settings
/settings...(only works while t-pad is active)
/pointer motion
/pointer refresh rate

and there I changed the setting to LOW.

And all of a sudden it worked perfectly...no more "aples" instead of "apples"

 

Hi all, I am new here. I have a different problem with my m15x which I bought just a month ago. The LCD shuts down automatically when starting the computer but the system is still running, only the display shuts off. This is only happenning when I start the laptop, so my workaround is to close then open the display but sometimes after a few secounds it will shut off. So I have to do this like 5-10 times until it is stable. It is really annoying that I have to this everytime I start the machine. Is anybody here experience this issue and what is the best thing to do?

 

Did you talk to the customer service? It is sad to hear that even the new units are not free from faults.

 

I am thinking of a few areas of the problem. When they build the laptop they might not plug in the Screen into the laptop all the way. Which would explain why the monitor not working. Now a idea if you have a external monitor that can plug into the laptop. If it dose work it not your grapics card. Someone on here might have a idea how to plug it in.

If that dont work try Windows respawn or if you have a spare hard drive install windows on to that hard drive and see if the issue stops then it could be software issue.

 

look in my sig for the guide how to reseat your LCD cable and do so that will fix the issue

NVM

http://4help.alienware.com/cgi-bin/...SZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PW0xNXg*&p_li=&p_topview=1

 

Thanks, will try reseating the lcd from the guide. It looks like the LCD is the problem because connecting it to an extrenal monitor has no problem and also sometimes if the display shuts down, I can still see some of my desktop icons its like the backlight is shutting down.

 

I just tried the guide on how to reseat lcd inverters but still no luck. It is weird because I tried the guide with my laptop on and the only change when plugging in/out the inverter is that the light on the alieware logo/pipe goes out but the lcd is still working. So I guess its not really a guide for the lcd inverter but a guide to disable lighting on the logos/lcd pipe?

 

bad backlight

 

I just solved my problem. I was able to dismantle the lcd and at the back of it is the inverter. I just reseated both connectors of the inverter from the board to the lcd and the issue has gone away. I will try to create a guide on how to remove the lcd for m15x users if there is still none. The thing that drive me to do this is that I don't want to pay for shipping in returning my laptop and probably they might return it eventhough they didn't solved anything.

 

Yes please create a guide on how to remove the LCD on the M15X, as I plan on upgrading my LCD in the very near future to a 1920 x 1200. Thanks and God Bless

 

Hinge Problems, Cracking on Panels already fixed XD!

 

so, having read the 10pages here, I've realized that none of the questions except perhaps for the overheating one have been answered.

If anyone could chime in with definitive answers for the questions posed here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=416336

I'd appreciate it

that inclues the cracking hinge and panel problems which we seem only to have the word of an internet chat "guy" from alienware to support.