My M17x keeps crashing

Poor Bill. Lets hope it was fixed (which is why were not hearing from him). Ha!

 

FML. Okay so the tech guy shows up and he's some old old guy. He begins to disassemble the laptop until he gets to the palmrest where he looks utterly perplexed for several minutes. He then calls one of his coworkers, saying "have you ever worked with one of these AlienWARRS?" after a couple minutes he calls someone else and repeats the same thing except he then says, "model? you mean theres more than one type of these AlienWARRS?"

/facepalm

Now he's going home to look up how to do this. What should I do, guys?

 

oh and p.s. don't think i'm just gonna leave here once my problem is fixed. I've been here for quite a while just lurking but now that i'm part of the community, i have every intention of staying

 

It seems to me that you should call Dell and tell them that you are completely dissatisfied with this computer. Tell them you're tired of dealing with their games. Tell them that you're a busy person who doesn't have time for this anymore.

Send it back and don't ask for a replacement. I don't think they can deny you the ability to have it refunded.

Then I'd call back and order one again.

I just hope that after this AlienWARS guy fixes your motherboard, you won't have problems in the future. It seems really sketchy to me.

 

Okay he got the motherboard installed (and tried to leave with the palmrest still unscrewed and VERY loose, not sure how he missed that but he came back and fixed it). Now, though, when i try to boot on with discrete graphics (i enabled them in the bios), the screen flashes various colors until i hard crash it.

i rebooted in integrated and tried to install the drivers and then booted back to discrete to no avail (same problem). now on integrated they don't show up in device manager. however, three instances of "Base System Device" and one instance of "Unknown Device" show up there without drivers. Any ideas?

Edit: I also get the flashing colors of death when i try to open the command center.

 

okay so i reinstalled the drivers from the cd after running driver sweeper and now my integrated and discrete cards both crash on bootup. i called dell and explained to them my situation with the technician and the new crashes and they were very apologetic and have FINALLY agreed to replace my laptop. Now once the new one comes i can finally know what it feels like to have a functional All-Powerful computer. (and maybe i can haggle for them to compensate me with an upgrade to the 280's)

Thanks for all the help and support, everyone!

 

Looks like it worked out in the end. Congrats!

 

wow nice, all that stress xd Congrats

 

make it all worth your troubles

HAGGLE 'EM DOWN

 

Damn... must've been a pain going through all that trouble. How hard is it anyways to build a computer without it screwing up? I'm expecting my new M17x in a few weeks time... if something like that happens I'm not even sure if I have the time to deal with Dell's stupidity (having a job and all...)

Hope you get what you wish for buddy. Same to all of us.

 

Dear God in heaven, i just order one of these laptop and expecting in few weeks.
Please dear God make mine as normal as they suppose to be, not crash, not abnormal and certainly i wish to never have to call Dell in this matter.
Amen.

 

Has there been any other resolution to this isssue? I'm having the same problem.

Trying to play DDO and WoW. Crashes often where it just hangs and I have to hard reset.

I've ran MemTest 86+ and the Alienware diagnostics utility, but haven't found anything.

Personally, my suspicion is a graphics issue (drivers?), and so I'm going to re-install the 179.85 drivers and if that doesn't work, try beta drivers I found (186.12)

 

m17x: ME TOO , AMEN.

 

no known resolution.

I tried all of the drivers known including dox and omega (dont even think omega had a hybrid compatible).

sorry guys but this is something AW needs to address.

update though:
the supervisor I talked to said he won't have an update on getting a replacement until late monday/early tuesday due to dell customer care not being open on the weekends or something like that.

they better have good news...im ready to do some more yelling though.

 

oh and for you guys getting ready to call, here is what to expect:

the site may advertise something like this:


but in reality you get this:


and to service your computer under warranty you get:

 

Haha billdozed good stuff .

 

Hilarious!!!

 

Did you use a credit card company when you ordered?

I read your thread...man, you are one patient customer.

I would simply tell them that if they just don't change the whole lemon you got, I would return the damn thing, contact my credit card company telling them I received a defective product and that Dell is unwilling to exchange it....

Dell will change your computer super fast or you get your money back via a chargeback from the credit card company. Don't spend all this energy trying to solve a product that should work flawlessly.

 

I feel for you dude! I've been very lucky. My laptop itself is almost perfect, don't have any uneven lighting or dead pixels. Except for an occasion when I installed something I shouldn't have, no crashing.
Alas life is not perfect, and thus my AC adapter when kaput. Once the remaining battery charge drains, I have a very expensive paperweight while I wait for my replacement adapters....

 

Well, I've spent the entire weekend trying to fix a similar (or same?) problem. I've reinstalled all drivers, I tried out some beta drivers, installed Vista SP2, ran Memtest, the memory diagnostic tool from windows, the diagnostic tools from Alienware, and some benchmarking software and checked temperatures on everything I can find. If I feel like it later tonight, I'll run the alien respawn and try that for good measure.

Still, at some random time while playing games, the computer just plain freezes forcing a hard reset.

I was just on the phone with Dell Tech Support (again), and they are refusing to let me send in the computer to have them look at it (or replace it). I think this is unfair since I spent close to $3,500 to include the max support option just for this exact reason.

So, the funny thing is (and why I am posting here) is that I called back, talked to someone in billing, and then within 5 minutes I got an email with a shipping label to just send the thing back for a refund. I think the number there is 800-247-2076

That is right 5 FRIGGIN MINUTES to entirely return the thing, NOT A SINGLE QUESTION ASKED. I'm not sure if I'll re-order the same/similar computer again...

Anyway, I'm trying one last thing for now, running CHKDSK, I'm not familar with CHKDSK, but it's been running for about an hour now and seems to be doing something: XX percent complete. (XXXXX of XXXXX free clusters processed).

I don't know if that means it's fixing something or not..... hoping, maybe.

 

yeah i ran every test known as well and exhausted some great minds on these threads.

if I dont get anywhere with the supervisor when he calls tomorrow that will have to be my next step. the supervisor did sound pretty promising and im going to try and milk it for maybe an upgrade or something, haha.

 

No, chkdsk primary purpose is to fix issues with the file system / volume (also has a surface test for marking bad-sectors etc...). It's unlikely to fix the crashes in games you're getting (more likely to get error message from the program if a file was corrupted..

Problem with this sort of hardlock is it could be a number of things. I'm taking a guess here, but it may be GPU related, though could be anything from immature drivers for the 260/280M, overheating GPU, or overheating VRAM.

You can monitor the GPU temps with something like hwmonitor or Everest but monitoring the VRAM or diagnosing a driver issue is pretty damn hard.

My suggestion would be to try cooling the laptop externally and see if the problem goes away (or at least dramatically improves). Try a laptop cooler, a desk fan, spacers or a combination of the 3.

Laptop coolers like the NotePal or Cyro LX would do. I do suggest combining them with spacers however, as the airflow between the cooler and laptop can be vastly improved with an inch or so gap. I'm currently running both (Notepal at work, Cryo LX as home) and have modified them with solid rubber doorstops apoxied to the corners.

A desk fan blowing across the under-surface of the laptop would also be pretty good.

If the temps stay low and you're still experiencing crashes then at least you can reasonably eliminate an overheating GPU or VRAM as the cause.

If you were at least getting a bluescreen we'ed be able to isolate the problem better. i.e. if the faulting module was nvlddmkm.sys we'ed know the issue was something to do with the GPU.

There may be other issues as well as a few have already noted... bad ram etc... but if you've already tried the individual chips and the crashes are still occurring then it's either not the RAM or you're extremely unlucky and got two bad chips

 

definitely not temps, been monitoring them with everest

could be two bad ram sticks, what are the odds? haha

 

Yeah, but what were the odds of your m17x crapping out on you?

 

Though the thermal diode under the GPU is reporting ok temps, it's doubtful there is any monitoring of the VRAM. Issues with the VRAM overheating can be anything from despectling (little off-coloured/white dots appearing in textures or directly on screen if affecting the frame-buffer), texture corruption, and all the way upto system crashes.

 

well these crashes could come within about 5 minutes of playing (soon after bootup, so everything would be cool) or after over 2 hours of playing. that's how i knew it wasn't temperature.

 

You're getting it replaced, that's great. I also pray to God for a non-defective M17x. Amen. Ordering tomorrow because Best Buy screwed me over. Why can't we all just get perfect machines?

 

*Why can't we all just get the functioning machine that we ordered?

 

Heck I have a perfect machine, but with a crappy brick that died quick. And now I must wait weeks for the replacement. In the meantime my m17x is a brick....a funny looking brick....

Dude I hope your new system works like a champ!

 

There have been a LOT of reports of the chargers dieing...I'd recommend to anyone to buy at least one spare.

 

Really? I've searched the forums and net but didn't see many reports about chargers breaking. Just the same, I've ordered three chargers, plus I'm getting a replacement. I'm not about to let a bad charger turn my system into a paperweight again. No such thing as overnight express where I am (even DHL does not come here), so if another goes bad, I'll have several to keep me going during the weeks it takes to get a replacement.

 

Okay guys so i found out that they are not going to be able to replace my m17x by the time i head to school in a week. So..that means i have to fix my current one to get it to at least function or i'll be computerless for my first week at college (not good).

The current state of things is that the computer will turn on and my keyboard will light up/fan turn on but the screen stays blank and i have to hard crash. Any ideas of what is causing this?

It all started when i accidentally clicked to reboot into discrete graphics the other day. Before that, everything was running fine on integrated. Or at least i was still able to function.

 

Anyone care to work with me?

 

Crap! I seem to be having the same problem =(
I've been using DPC latency checker and I'm getting very bad results. Some times I get spikes of 70k+ and this is in windows environment.
I can't even imagine the value during games but I guess it's so big that the machine just gives up.

I can't play games =/, Crysis crashes within 5 mins of playing and even on Test Drive Unlimited!

My crash type is the same, screen freeze with a looping sound.
I really thought it was to do with this latency issue and that it could perhaps be solved...

What can I do? Should I call support?

 

I have found out that my crashing was to do with the drivers for the graphic cards. After installing different ones the spikes remain the same but the computer doesnt freeze completely...