M9750 Problems :(

Hi everyone,

I have had my M9750 (Vista Ultimate, 4Gb memory, mirrored drives, 2 x 512Mb 8700 Sli) for about 4 months now and sadly it died last night.

I bought the laptop because of its great gaming ability and have been happily playing EVE Online since I purchased it. About 2 weeks ago it froze and I had to hold in the power button to turn it off.

Last night I had the exact same issue, but with one slight difference....It would not power back on.

I removed the battery and waited a few minutes, replaced the battery and tried to turn the laptop on. I get an initial sound of the fans spinning and a short burst of hard-drive actility, but nothing appeared on the screen.

At this point I called AlienWare support and was glad to have quickly got through to a support agent. He then proceed to talk me through taking the battery out, holding down the power button, taking out the memory, then the fans and video cards etc. It was at this point I noticed the housing around one of the video cards was loose, it was here I was told to but the laptop back togeather and an RMA would be created.

I am concerned that only after 4 months worth of use that it needs to go back!!

I cannot imagine it was the video card(s) as we tried just using one, I even tried connecting it to a monitor, but this yielded the same problem.

I have been searching the forums this morning and found a number of people who had a similair problem which was caused by enabling the SLI on the video cards......

Can anyone confirm if this would be an issue? The only other thing I have been doing differently is that I have been playing EVE with 2 clients in windowed mode - again I cannot see why this would cause an issue.

I am sending the laptop back tomorrow and I am hoping for a quick turn-around!

Any advice most welcome

t1c

P.S I am annoyed that the hard drives will be wiped, I had 2 disks mirrored as to protect my files - I best go buy an external drive i guess

 

i highly doubt its about SLI. its mostly a power issue.

 

Can a video driver cause this issue?

I was readiing an article on a forum whereby the guy installed the wrong driver, which in turn cooked is GPU :S

Cheers,

t1c

 

dude, a driver cant cook your GPU, and it willl never can, unless you have installed the driver of a nuclear reactor.

 

Brainer,

I thought that was the case, I just wanted to make sure it was nothing I did to cause the issue, after spending over £2000 on a laptop for it to go wrong after 4 months is slightly concerning....

I hope that AW will fix it quickly!

Cheers,

t1c

 

Good luck dude, i'm sure they'll get it fixed!

 

It could be motherboard failure....
Try changing your GPU's drivers, and if nothing change, call alienware's 911 !

 

MiniKissKool,

I did indeed speak with AlienWare support, they were really quick to answer the phone (22:00 BST) and the technical support guy was very patient and helpfull. albeit we could not fix the problem so it is going back for repair.

I think it is a brilliant laptop and I am hoping it is something simple to repair, I will have to sit and twiddle my thumbs in the evening now, no more online gaming until its fixed *sob*

t1c

 

Hi t1ct4c,
It does sound like a motherboard issue. However, the good news is that Alienware takes care in taking appart the system. It won't come back all scratched up or anything. I sent my m9750 in three times, and each time it came back, it didn't look like it was ever taken appart (past experiences with HP depot have left me a little scared as they always scratch the casing). But rest assured you're in good hands.

Gabe

 

Gabez,

That is good to hear. Shame they have to format the hard disks though

Well it will be collected tomorrow I hope, so fingers crossed

Cheers everyone, I will let you know how this works out.

t1c

 

Hi t1ct4c,
I've never had them reformat the drive. You may still want to backup everything just in case. But I'm pretty sure that everything will be exactly as you left it. I think they realise the value in the information on your hard drives, so they only restore it as a last resort.

Gabe

 

Gabe,

Sadly I have no way of backing up the information as the laptop is completely dead. I had the mirrored drives put in so I wouldn't need to worry as much, but I think I will buy myself an external drive!

t1c

 

Since you have a mirrored drive, I would think you can simply remove one of your drives before sending it out.

Isn't a mirror an active backup copy of your drive? Shouldn't it work by itself if you had to?

 

Grey,

The mirrored drive should be an identical copy of the primary drive, warts and all!

I will leave both drives in, just on the off chance they need both i for some reason.

Better safe than sorry!

t1c

 

LOL my laptop has been with AW for less than a few hours and it looks to be fixed already (so the support webpage tells me).

Just waiting for confirmation

t1c

 

Oddly, got an email from AW saying my laptop is still being worked on, although going onto the support page indicates it is resolved - slightly confused!

t1c

 

Hi,

My laptop is on its way back to me *YIPPEE*

I would just like to say that AW support was brilliant, one of the best I have encountered in a long time.

Though I have to say the Customer Services needs to be improved slightly. Even though I asked for updates, none were forthcomming. As someone who has ran call-centers keeping your clients informed of what is going on is paramount, all I wanted to know was the cause of the issue....

Eitherway I am glad it is fixed and winging its way back to me, hopefully whatever the cause was will not re-occur!

Cheers everyone,

t1c

 

Well collected my laptop today from the courier......sadly that is as good as it gets...

Badly packaged, no documentation, no fault report.

I assume it has been installed with some sort of image, the desktop configuration is odd, the laptop screen within system properties reports as plug n play - not sure if that is the case or not.

When I first bought it there was information on the laptop about its specification and testing etc - none of that.

I.E7 has been configured in some wierd manner.

Overall I am not impressed at all, I dont expect to spend the amount of money I have for this level of support/customer services.

OH and to top it all off, I of course have lost all the files etc I had on my PC....

*sigh*

t1c

 

=( sorry to hear it. You REALLY should have taken out that second hard drive so you wouldn't have lost your data =( My computer's monitor also simply reads "Plug and Play Monitor" so I wouldn't be too worried about that.

 

@T1C - Yea unfortunately AW's repair is not that good at all and they will do things like that. I would blame them for wiping your HD's, but they probably warned you and some folks here warned you to back up your data before you sent your computer off to them.

At least you have your system back though and hopefully it works flawlessly from now on.

 

Yeah in hindsight perhaps I should have kept one of the disks, though in truth I was told to return it all - just in case....

Sadly my system does not seem to be performing as it should, after playing EVE Online for 5 minutes one of the GPU went over 90 degrees celcius!

Things are not looking good

t1c