M17 laggy often, running out of solutions

My M17 alienware has been given me more pain than pleasure not to mention the load of money I spent on it. The mouse and the sound becomes really choppy and jumpy sometimes when I play games on it and other time when I just listening to music on iTunes and I don't know what is causing all this, this is really frustrating. Been looking around and got Uniblue RegistryBooster tool and it found about 295ish files corrupted/missing/bad and after that's fixed, still no dice. My video driver and sound drivers are up to date. I recently installed Windows 7, it had the same problem on Vista as well, and I even wiped everything clean and re-installed 7 again, still same, I don't know what to do. Does anyone else have this issue, or know how to fix this misery? Thanks

 

I think you're talking about the stutter that so many M17 users have experienced. Try a search for 'M17 stutter'. It's well documented, and I don't think that a concrete cause or solution has been found. Funny, because according to your sig, you aren't even using a quad. Good luck with this.

 

This is just a shot in the dark but are these issues happening after you bring the computer up from sleep mode? Try to verify. This was a known issue in the M17. Solution: reverse the order of installation for the Audio and Graphics driver. Try both ways.

 

Well.. I have another angle, you have a x9100 which means to me there is a chance you like to OC. Leads to my question, do you have zfactor bios .29 in your laptop?

IF you do, there is a strong possibility this is causing the problem, as it was certainly the cause in my situation. I reverted back to B14 Bios and removed XTU, and all of my 'crackling' audio and lagging video games stopped in an instant. Made NO other fix. This is no negative to zfactor and his bios, but in my m17 it and/or possibly XTU caused some significant side affects making it completely worthless to me.

Jon

 

the XTU does gives me headache, after I uninstall XTU, my M17 runs great. and btw, I'm using zfactor's 0.29 BIOS..... I think the 0.28 is still better but I just dont care to revert it back cuz 0.29 is good enough for me.

 

why do you need the .28 or .29 if your not going to use XTU with it? There is no other way to oc through the bios. (Oh, I guess if you have an x9100 then you can at least change the mutiplier, but you cant undervolt, or overvolt without XTU). (Other then what zfactor hard writes in).

 

What is zFactor Bio .29? Whatever Bio system originally came with AW m17 is what I have, I am pretty computer illiterate, thought the brand name AW is notorious for gaming but it's definitely not worth the pain from all those other side problems. So whatever bio system comes with the laptop itself is what I have. And the stuttering and crackling sounds and mouse movement happens when I start from shutdown, restart or sleep. All of those time apply. So there's apparently no solution to this coming from AW? Sigh, I won't recommand AW to my buddies since I've experienced their "awesomeness" first handed. Thanks all for your inputs and advises.

 

And I just did a little more research, found a lot on topics such as Projecd Freeze and the ralated re-modification of the ventilation system. And yet I still haven't confirmed an absolute solution yet. AW really thinks that I am gonna re-mod the hardware due to their negligence of their products, they are higher than a kite. I did not spent near 4 grand of what it was supposed to be a gaming machine to re-do the work myself.

 

well to be fair the M17 is 3 generations old, so i wouldnt be to hard on them for the "Fix". just search for the "bios" on the fourms, or search by user name Zfactor. the thread tells you how to install it on your machine this will almost certainly cure your issues, unless you have a defective hardware issue, in which case can be cured by replacing the defective piece. the notion that Alienware is synonymous with gaming is somewhat of a generalized notion, in the earlier days i would say that they were the best option for hardcore gaming, but i wouldn't say they have the only ultra gaming computer these days.

if your looking for an upgradeable laptop that is well built that can be a monster gamer then AW is the right machine, but if your more of a "ugugh.,...i likes teh games" type i would recommend a different solution like the Newer asus computers with the i7 & 5870 gpu for around $1400 bucks...all things considered i wouldnt trade my M17 for a New one of those, i prefer the flexabliity i gives me & the fact that thousands have owned one and can offer solid advise & i can repair it till it melts....good luck with yours, Pm me if you need help flashing the bios or anything else ill do what i can

 

i hope you didn't spend 4k on an M17. you can buy a fully loaded M17x-R2 for less than 3k at dell. those mods aren't required, they just help.the cooling is fine if you use a cooler under the machine,(kind of a pre-requisite of playing games on a laptop, any laptop..) it just helps it run cooler.

 

read this and check your drivers against all of them. if you do a new install of & or vista follow the order of installing the drivers 100%. i recently did an install of Win7 on my M17 when i upgraded to a SSD, and i used this method and it worked out great.


http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=426562

 

greatly appreciated it Clever, I will try it out and see what happens

 

I used to have a M17. Always had the same damn problem. With me it was the quadcore that was the problem. Went back to the dual core it came with and never had the problem again..