Sound Blaster Recon3Di Defect Discussion Thread - Questions/Solutions Here [M18x R2, M17x R4 Audio]

No major issues here, sound randomly loses control (max volume, need restart) but its not done that in a while. Sleep cycles are fine for me. New drivers for windows 8.1 might be worth a try (on dell website).

 

I manually installed those drivers, no benefit really. Hard power cycling is still a toss up, with high probability of not having the sound card on initial loading.

 

I've temporary installed Linux(Ubuntu) on my m17x r4 and the soundcard worked perfectly, Has one of you also tried Ubuntu for example? (like this guy
Create bootable USB of Linux OS on Windows via Universal USB Installer - YouTube )

 

Does it work ALL the time, regardless of hard cycles or sleep cycles? If so, it might be a bug in the windows drivers...but i'm not holding my breath.

 

I didn't tested for long time, but if it's working it's probably windows or the drivers. And if it isn't working it's the hardware and we can't do anything. I'll write if Ubuntu will fail. :-/

 

Ok keep us posted.

I've tried disabling onboard azalia HDA in the BIOS, didn't make a difference. I'm scared to continue exploring BIOS options in the fear of bricking, since the recovery procedure isn't exactly 100% guaranteed to work.

 

Damn it happened on Ubuntu too :cry:

Usually


after 6th restart (turn completely off and on again), i couldn't hear anything not even rustle.

For me it's only when I'm on battery
I've noticed that the headphones do not even rustle during the start. As if the card even don't get any current. The same with windows. During the boot (windows logo), the headphones start usually slightly to rustle.
So its most probably the hardware.
Has Dell or Soundblaster said anything to this problem?

 

It only happens in battery mode (for me). So I think It's definitely a hardware problem


P.s.: How can I get signatures like you?
Alienware M17xR4 Space Black
Core i7 3720qm | ATI Mobility Radeon 7970M @ 0.95V .....

 

Go into your User Control Panel (UserCP) using the link in the upper left corner of your browser window, then navigate to the link on the left margin and click on "Edit Signature" to add that information.

 

Hello friends,

i`m new in forum but i was following this discussion about this ``no sound card detected problem``. In my case, the problem occured after upgrading my m18x r2 3630QM to 3940XM. After this, my system started occuring this problem frequently. Is incredible that Dell don`t help about this problem, i think they don`t know what to do. After this problem occured ``no sound detected`` i sent my laptop to service and no solution again. Now the only way is to replace the motherboard. Maybe the only solution is replace the motherboard.

 

HI CSARQUITETO,
It's nice that you joined us!
Well I think Soundblaster is the problem.
Like Mr. Fox said:

The question is: If the sound card generally has a design flaw, does it help to exchange this card/motherboard with this same design flaw????!
I think therefore Alienware has replaced the Recon3Di in the (link)new Alienware17/18 with a cheap Realtek(link) :/
Are you sure that the change of your CPU the trigger was?

 

Oh Heavens to Betsy, no. I would NOT be happy with a brand new Haswell machine as a replacement for an Ivy Bridge beast. That would be a horrible trade. The M18xR2 would be a better machine even if the audio never functioned ever again.

 

Why is Haswell such a bad CPU?
And I would never again buy a Realtek Soudncard

 

It's fine for low-powered Ultrabook trash. It runs WAY too hot and throttles like a piece of feces, and gets it butt kicked by Sandy, Ivy and Ivy-E processors because it doesn't respond well to tweaking like they do. The 4930MX gets killed by an antique 2920XM in every test I care about. If I said what I really thought about it I would be banned because it requires an excessive use of profanity. Look at the video in the opening post of this thread.

 

I did not have this problem before the change of processor...All alienware m17x, m18x r2... owner have this problem? maybe a new motherboard made in 2013 can have different sound card chipset installation.

 

Maybe... we don't know. :-/
Did you notice any regularities when it's happening?
And this Thread has about 41040 view(s), so MANY people have this problem

 

I dont remember, but i had updated the bios and processor.

 

There are no new boards being produced for the M17x R4, M14x R2, or the M18x R2, so for the love of all that is good, do not gamble with a refurb board. It is likely recycled from systems with bad audio cards to begin with (I've gone through 3 "refurb" boards, all of them were garbage). I am however, thinking of going back to M17x R3 board with the IDT soundcard, which I NEVER had problems with. I contacted Creative about it, but as expected, they were of no help. We can't RMA an integrated sound card. Dell will likely ignore us, or maybe by some stroke of luck, they will recognize this pandemic of failing sound chips like they did for the M11x's hinges, and do a recall/fix of some sort.

Shall we initiate a campaign to get the issue recognized? Maybe ideastorm, or messaging reps, or alienware support themselves?

 

If drivers and BIOS updates don't cure it, the only solutions available are (a) live with; or (b) have the motherboard replaced.

See this information: Audio not detected (M14x-R2, M17x-R4, M18x-R2) | Dell Community Forum

 

i agree with you. But If the problem was software maybe have some solution, but if was hardware... very difficult.

 

Its not like they can't crank out new boards to replace faulty ones, its already been designed and built before. Perhaps they simply choose not to. I wonder how the hinge issue got recognized enough to merit a recall/replacement.

 

For what it's worth, I've got an M17x-R4 since March 2013 running...well, shipped with 7, I threw 8 on it, now 8.1, and have never had any issues with the audio. In fact I'd considered it a bonus.

I do NOT like that the new Alienware systems have that "Killer NIC" stuff on 'em. I don't want all those extra drivers, and I could swear the CPU's clock speed stayed pegged in the 3+GHz range AFTER installing those drivers... (EDIT: I mean on an Alienware 17, not my M17x-R4, which has nice good old fashioned non-pointlessly weird Ethernet lol)

 

Well, I suppose the fact that it was a design defect that was unique to a specific Dell/Alienware defect that affected 100% of the product sold may have had something to do with it. In this case it appears to be a Creative audio chipset problem that only affects some systems.

It's common enough that we have a couple hundred posts about it here, in addition to posts in other forums on other brands of laptops with the same audio chip, but it does not affect everyone. I seldom run into it and it's easily corrected for me in about 30 seconds. Some never see it (like you) and other have a constant battle with it. It seems like the problem is influenced to some extent by individual use patterns and different system configurations. For example, I turn my machine off completely when I am done using it and cold boot the next time I use it. Some folks use sleep and hibernation features.

 

I agree, because I stopped using the sleep button and it's been 10 days that I do not see the problem with the sound. I turn off the laptop normal and when i turn on it is cold.

 

yup, i do the same however " recon3di stuck in headphone mode" occurs VERY frequently despite PC shutdowns

 

Hi folks,

I have the same problems on my M18x R2 with sound blaster hardware. after couple of weeks "No SOUND" on system.

Here my solution for this peoples who have the problem with driver install "Hardware not found on your system"

Step one:
Uninstall all Sound-Blaster driver-packages from you system, Driver and FX Package (when you use original Dell driver) (Windows 7 64 HP & ULT)
Step two:
Reboot a machine and than uninstall the "Alienware Onscreen Display Driver"
Step there:
Shutdown (not reboot) the machine and power up. After reboot find the Windows a new hardware (High Definition Audio Device) and use own WDM driver.
Step four:
Install the driver what the "Mr.Fox" post in begin of this thread.
Step five:
Reboot the machine- and Sound-Blaster will be found in Hardware Management.
Step six:
Now install the "Alienware Onscreen Display Driver".

l have this solution for 2,5 months in use and on all my Systems (win 7 64 ULT, Win 8.1 64 Ent and OSX & Linux in WM) and everything work fine.

THX Mr.Fox for Driver.

Folks, hope this help someone.

(My System M18x R2 - Last BIOS)

greetz an best notebook community on the world.

d4f_Mac©

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d4fmac.deviantart.com
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Thanks for the tip, and welcome to the Community. +1 Rep

 

Thanks for trying, still doesn't work on my system.

 

is there a recall on the old machines because of the audio ?

 

No *10chars*

 

Wasn't there something about replacing motherboards

 

Some have been replaced under warranty. It's an exercise in futility unless you have an extraordinary example of one that does not respond to normal conditions and refuses to wake up.

 

Hi,
I have a few questions on Dell support. I have an Alienware m17x r4 laptop, it's about a year old now.
So I'm having problems with my audio at the moment, one moment the audio works after starting my laptop, the other moment it says audio is not connected and it does not show up in the device manager. I can't really reproduce the problem it happens pretty much randomly on boot.

This happened after a Dell technican swapped my motherboard and graphics card. That was the third repair I got from Dell in a series of motherboard issues.

To give a quick summary of my repairs:
- First time the audio wouldn't work, same problem as I have now, except I could reproduce the problem
- Second time was because the first guy didn't fully manage to solve the problem if I recall correctly either or both the motherboard and the speakers got replaced
- Third time was around 2 weeks ago, the guy replaced my graphics card and motherboard, which gave me the audio problems I have now

Is the current problem a motherboard problem again? If so, how do I best go about getting proper support that will actualy give me a stable product? I feel very frustrated by the quality of Alienware products. I thought buying something this expensive would mean the quality would be good.

 

Welcome to our Community. I hope we hear more from you in the days ahead.

There's nothing to be frustrate with as far as the quality of Alienware products. What you are experiencing is a latent defect that Creative is responsible for and apparently Alienware's only error was choosing Creative as a business partner before the defect was discovered. It's not obvious, happens sporadically and probably never surfaced in engineering tests. It's not unique to Alienware.

In short, what you are experiencing is an unresolved issue that it appears will never, ever, be resolved. There's a defect in the audio chipset or a firmware update is needed, and it seems Creative is famous for providing garbage support to end users and OEM/ODM business partners alike. There's nothing Dell can do about it other than a motherboard revision for the M18xR2 and M17xR4 with a different audio chipset, such as RealTek. You would think by now they would have taken care of business if they had any intention of doing so, so don't hold your breath on it.

I dumped your post into the thread we have for this topic. You'll find some workarounds posted that help minimize the problem. It's a nuisance more than anything else, (I can always revive my audio 100% of the time,) but certainly not something expected on high-end uber-expensive hardware. Motherboard replacement is a waste of time because any laptop with this Recond3Di chip has the same problem, including other brands not sold by Dell/Alienware.

 

I have this same problem, I've got a m14x R2. Usually, i just close the computer or restart to get audio back, but recently my computer decided to re-do my power settings and make it so after 15 minutes it goes to sleep. So, it went to sleep and when i re-activated it the audio was broken. Nothing new. I let it sleep a couple hours and returned, audio still broken. Getting unusual. I restarted several times, including one time holding the power button 30 seconds to reset. Still nothing. I shut down, opened the back and took out the battery. Still nothing, except that now every time i restart the audio comes on for a couple seconds, except its not the correct device. It's the Nvidia HDMI Out device, and it does not seem to actually work as audio. It s disappears after a few seconds anyways. Now, i'm in uncharted territory and utterly lost. Any suggestions?

 

Sometimes removing the drivers in Add/Remove Programs and reinstalling them works. Sometimes it does not. Usually, but not always, the sleep>wake does the trick. I am dual booting Windows 7/8 and sometimes booting the opposite OS does something to slap it into submission. None of it makes any sense, it's just a defect in the audio chipset from what I can tell. Thankfully, it does not happen frequently in my case.

But, once in a while I have something like this happen with the M18xR2, where it is really hard to get the audio to work again and no audio device is detected at all after repeated sleep/wake cycles. Then it magically decides to cooperate. It happened today, as a matter fact. I fought it for over an hour, which is really unusual. This time and the last time (about a month ago) this happened my mSATA caching went totally nuts at exactly the same time. My cached HDD data became inaccessible, the mSATA suddenly became invisible, and I had to do a scan disk on the HDD before mSATA SSD cache could be disabled. I think I am going to stop using the mSATA SSD cache acceleration because of this nonsense.

What audio does the M14xR2 have? Is it RealTek? Recon3Di?

 

M14x R2 also has the soundblaster chip. All of the Ivy bridge alienware laptops were equipped with Soundblaster cards. I still think its a bug in the EEPROM (which is re-writable with a proper flasher), but I would have no idea where to begin troubleshooting the code, let alone dump/reflash. The fact that it works sometimes means the hardware is technically fine, but the low-level programming is borked somewhere, probably has something to do with sleep/wake cycles maybe out of G0, S3, S4 or S5, so and so forth. Perhaps even maybe a degredation in solder joints on the sound card connecting it to the board, I really have no idea. Or perhaps bad IRQs which may be causing the disappearing on sleep. Dell really can't fix the problem, without issuing a replacement program where all affected units could be exchanged for a newer model.

The Recon 3Di shares device and vendor IDs (ven 1102 dev 0011) with the Soundblaster Z, which is LOADED with similar problems of disappearing.

 

Yup, it's definitely a defective chipset... no question about that.

 

What revision is your card? For mine its HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_1102&DEV_0011&SUBSYS_1028057B&REV_1009 , personally not had the issue of no sound card very often, had sound cut out (device still visible just wouldnt play sound) but its not happened for a few months now.

 

FWIW: v 6.0.101.1024 dated 5/23/2014 now avail over at Microsoft® Update Catalog!:thumbsup:

 

Does that new 2014 driver install on Windows 8.1? I try to go to device manager and tell it to find the driver in the folder I downloaded from the update catalog, but it just says my driver (from 2013) is up to date.

 

Go to the Windows Update Catalog, type Recon3Di in the search field and you will see a list of available drivers, including this new one. Unfortunately, you will have to use Internet Explorer for this because the good browsers (Chrome and Firefox) won't work with the Windows Update Catalog.

Download it, then extract the contents of the " AMD64_X86-zh-tw_de_en_es_fr_it_ko_nl_pt-br_zh-cn_pt_ja-nec-20657642_639467f23696937eaa62345ea2f62158aacbbc6c.cab" file into a new folder.

Rather than expecting Windows to find it automatically, use the "Have Disk" method in Device Manager and browse to the folder with the new drivers.

 

Installation fails for me. My sound has been pretty stable tbh. The odd crash but sound device is still showing just won't play sound, restart usually fixes it.

Tried dxisabling driver signature enforcement makes no difference.

 

How strange. Worked fine for me under both Windows 7 and 8.1 without any trouble.

My system goes through "phases" where it is fine for a long time and then randomly decides not to work any more. Then it suddenly decides to behave right.

 

Yeah saw this but the issue is when I install this it buggers up the control panel, there are new options in the panel, but none of the features work especially as the mic stops working as well

 

Yeah I can report same problem, the 2014 driver made my M17xR4's mic array disappear. Went back to 2013 driver.

 

I just checked and found the same thing with the mic array. Totally gone with the latest driver.

 

Yeah, but now even with the older drivers I cannot have my sb recon show its task bar icon....

 

Is the Sound Blaster Recon3Di Control Panel still available in your Programs Menu? If so, launch it from the shortcut there, then use the menu in the upper right corner to set it to load at Windows startup.

If you no longer have it installed, download the driver package from Dell Support and reinstall the original driver package which includes the Sound Blaster Control Panel. You can update the drivers only without affecting the Sound Blaster Control Panel.

 

How do you do this Mr fox? When I tried updating the driver in Device Manager, the control pannel doesn't work.. Creative updater also sees not updates.