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    M17x Control Panel crash, Dual monitor issues, and Taskbar

    Discussion in 'Alienware' started by alienmjs, Jan 28, 2010.

  1. alienmjs

    alienmjs Newbie

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    I've done a search in these forums, and couldn't find an answer to my problems, I'm hoping someone can help.

    For the record, I am running Win7 Pro x64.

    1. When I open Control panel, most of the time it freezes and then crashes, taking Windows Explorer with it. I've seen elsewhere that there can be a problem with specific .cpl icons loading, and it is recommended to go through one .cpl at a time taking them out, putting them back to find the bad one. Before I go through all that, I wondered if there was a fix to this issue specific to the M17x?

    2. I have an external monitor attached to my M17x via the VGA port. I have the video drivers set to "extend display" and I use the external monitor as my primary display. One day it suddenly switched from "extend display" to "duplicate display". After I changed it back my wallpaper seemed to disappear (desktop was black). I rebooted, and noticed that suddenly the custom Alienware startup screen was gone, instead I get the normal Win7 startup/login screen, but my wallpaper was back. Now, occasionally when I plug in a USB device (not a specific one) the display will suddenly switch from "extended" to "duplicate", and the wallpaper will go black again. I have to change it back to "extend" and reboot to get my wallpaper back. I have never been able to get the Alienware startup screen back.

    3. Occasionally the Win7 taskbar will stop functioning properly. Specifically, Jump lists stop working properly. When I click-drag to open a jump list, it disappears before I can click anything. Also ,when I hover over an icon with multiple open windows, it displays the thumbnails of the multiple windows, but when I move my cursor to click one, they disappear. I also can not rearrange icons on the taskbar when this happens. The ONLY fix I have found is to shutdown, unplug, remove battery, hold down power button for 5 seconds, replace battery, plug in, and reboot.

    While I am able to "work around" issues 2 and 3, and I could hunt for the culprit in issue 1, I am wondering if there is an official patch, or driver fix for these two issues so they will stop happening?
     
    alienmjs, Jan 28, 2010
    #1