The Alien Has Landed

dont even think about canceling until youve got your system and test everything thouroughly. the m15x is a beast of a machine and just because mine is playing silly buggers doesnt mean yours will.
give it a chance.

im the bloke that goes to vegas and puts all his money on red and it comes in black.

i will contact support tomorrow as its time to crash out cos ive got a very long day tomorrow at work.

the last words from me tonight are im still quite confused as to how it took 2 crashes and turn off at the mains to get the controls working.
good night everyone and thanks for all the support tonight.
tomorrows another day.

 

Too late for that. Got an e-mail today: Phase 9 - shipped. (Have now updated my signature.)

 

CptRawley, well as GRB mentions, lets be optimistic and hope that your system will be wonderful since not ALL laptops are defective.

 

sorry had to reply.
firstly thanks for the kind words.
i did actually take photos of the birth but to be honest lost interest about posting them after the first hour of tech support. it might be something to do with me deleting all my software and uninstalling all my hardware last night. im still using the fujitsu to type on this forum and that is the only thing left on it apart from my email.

 

I can attest that my friends m15x is really nice, and it is definitely worth it to see if you get as flawless of a system as his. The only problem he has is that he has the downclocking, which will be solved when he updates to the latest bios. I'm actually considering buying it now that I saw it in person. So, don't give up hope!

 

MrDJ, I hope you'll sort everything out. All the saga to receive it, and now this... I can well imagine your frustration. But hey, give it a chance. I'm sure the M15x is solid (appart from the GPU DC that seems to have been solved), and I'm sure they will tweak it along and the experience will only become better.
Good luck... Keep smilling and making smile.

 

Have you tried Fn + F11? That should be the hard on/off switch for the quick function keys.. too bad they don't actually document that in the 'manual' that comes with the laptop.

 

Well, here's another day - are you going to call in sick ?

Hope you can get yours fixed and actually enjoy having one, rather than getting problems at every step.

Outbound Gateway 2008-04-21 General status. Departure

 

Have not tried that yet Grey728. it seems to be working now after removing the sound card while a cd was playing. the cd stuck and went haywire so had to turn off at mains. once i rebooted all the touch controls worked.

wouldnt this have been the first thin support should of tried?

call in sick, i wish crystak ive been at work for the past 2 hours and have just been handed an asset register for my whole department with roughly 9 million pounds worth of equipment on it and they want it all checked by lunchtime (3 hours) told you it was going to be a busy day.

i wont get much time to visit today.

message to AW Steve
could you please pass on that the controls are working at the moment and i will contact support as soon as i get a chance.

good luck to everyone receiving their beast today.
jim

 

That's great news, surprising that the support guys didnt' think of it but...

So are you a little more happy with your baby now. I'm guessing you've got a whole raft of testing planned lol, shame about the work thing too but, i'm guessing being at work is paying for the M15X so...

Try not to work too hard

Save your energy for later

OB

 

sounds like your not really a computer person... should have gone with a mac imo.

but yer messed up driver install how fail... alien ware learn2install

 

well, I have my laptop!

Everything seems to be ok, touch controls work as well as everyone elses, no defects i can see.
My only problem is one that you had dj, this wierd pop up message when i log in:

windows script host
programs\startup\nero.vbs
line 5
char 2
error permission denied
code 800A0046
source microsoft vbscript runtime error

I'm not going to panic yet though, i'm not connected to the internet, i've not updated anything at all so maybe when i get home and connect it up, all the updates will sort it out.

Also... really bad question but... how do I open the DVD tray physically?

 

congrats Lu
opening tray is FN key and F8
it shows you on the inlay card that was on top of the keyboard.

the nero thing seems to be a problem.
you will need to un install it and re install it with the supplied cd

 

That's great news, bet your chuffed. When did it arrive in the end?

I seem to recall that when Viast was first released, Nero would not work at all and crashed Vista if you tried it. Nero updated there software and it works, i'm wondering if therre's a conflict with SP1 or something, assumking you have Sp1 loaded...

Anyway, when you get the time.....enjoy

OB

 

@MrDJ: so all your problems stem from Nero? 'cause that would be easy to fix i guess...

 

Well technically it never did arrive!
I called DHL who told me I could go to the depot to pick it up as the driver was having a hard time finding my street. So off i went this morning, to be told that a driver had picked up my parcel and drove off to deliver it even though they didn't know where my house was! So i threatened to cry and they called the delivery van man and he came all the way back to the depot and gave me my parcel!

Ok, embarrassing question number 2: There's steath mode and integrated graphics mode... but how do i know which mode I'm in?

 

IF it is Nero, you could always try Infra Recorder. It's free and doesn't crash windows...

Just a thought.

OB

 

Yeah I don't like Nero anyway, there's too much going on. I'll probably get a free burner off the net and if that works, uninstall nero.

 

i wish it was whizzo but sadly not the case.
nero was the first problem noticed when i initialy turned the computer on for the first time. error box appeard like Lu above. i didnt want to uninstall it without finding out what was wrong so thats why i rang tech support.
once i re installed it everything was fine.
then i tried the touch controls. that is where the fun (or not) began.
none worked at all and if i had pressed any harder as tech support said to do i would have bent the chassis
uninstalling drivers and chipset done nothing.
after an hour she explained it would be better to send it back for a full check or i had the option to cancel. i dont really want to cancel as ive waited 2 months for this system. i said i would speak to support today.
after putting the phone down i tried a cd. also loaded the external sound card and plugged the headphones in but it didnt override the on board speakers. in frustration i pulled the sound card out which made the cd stick and repeat. i re booted as nothing worked. once it came back up all the touch controls worked?????

while im typing can someone check how many programs they have running. the only 2 things ive loaded are nero and mc afee. ive got 66 aplications running, is this normal for a new system?

 

i thought that at first. i think when you click stealth, if its lit up it means its using on board and if its dim its using 8800gtx. could do with on/off in the boxes on screen.

 

sorry if i'm repeating myself, but right now, only nero isn't performing as expected (the touch controls all work now right)?

 

Well I'm installing some stuff and I don't have McAfee but I have 64 processes running. Sounds fine to me, Vista is a complicated beast!

 

Which one is steath? The flying saucer?

 

no i think that's alienfx. stealth is the clock/speedometer thingy.

 

benefits of being a girl. The way you know your on integrated graphics or not is you'll see a little blue screen in the bottom right hand corner and when you want to switch between dedicated and integrated just hit fn+f7

 

Try talking to a supervisor and talk him into building a brand new replacement system for you. Like this you can keep this one and play around a bit (I'm guessing it should keep you busy for a while) while they rebuild everything from scratch and super-test your new m15 on super priority. I'm sure they have some kind of offer like that. Then they can get yours and find out what is wrong without wasting a customer's time.

 

once i un installed and re installed nero it works fine now.
touch controls are still working at the moment but not got much time to check as im at work.

xfi external sound card doesnt seem to work.
plug it in the port and it loads drivers. it lights up blue. plug headphones in and nothing. sound still comes out of on board speakers.
any ideas on this one peeps.

 

Well... I've just looked in the Startup folder and i've found the cause of the nero error on login. It's a script file called nero.vbs, i opened it up and looking at the code it seems to be trying to run a file called install_local.bat in the nero directory and then a file called remove_nero.bat in the windows directory. After these two files are executed, it then attempts to delete itself so it will never run again. As the error i'm getting is "Permission Denied" i think it's failing to delete itself after running (probably because of Vista's fancy security, maybe a new SP1 thing if this hasn't been seen before?) which means the script file will stay there and run everytime I log in and never be deleted.
I'm going to run those 2 files manually and then move this script file out of start up, i reckon that should stop my errors.

Edit: Looks as though those files aren't there anymore. I think this script is a leftover bit from the automatic install of nero alienware must use. Something must have changed so that this file isn't automatically deleted after nero is installed so it hangs around and gives me errors. Alienware should probably know about this i suppose. On the bright side, it looks as though nothing is actally wrong with my install, there's just a previously run script lying about.

 

I have just trawled through this thread, after being away for a few day
all I can say is WOW & OMG and various other things....

what on earth are AW doing?

anyway, MRDJ I think You should seriously consider sending the machine back
as I fear there is someting loose inside, yanking out the addin sound card has no doubt moved something inside and made the connector for the touch buttons make a connection,
if you transport your laptop anywhere you may find it works its way loose again.

it could also be something inside thats crammed in a little too tight and not sitting properly

crashing a machine in that way to make it work, is not a pleasant idea for the future.

and as for the nero thing. If I remember rightly its to do with the registration process. so like laptopLu says , you can pretty much remove it from startup.

good luck with your machines

 

Just a thought try right clicking on it and selecting run as administrator, this give it full security rights.

You could also try Infra Recorder, it's free and works

OB

 

thanks for that investigation, I think the same error message popped up with my baby today when I booted for the first time, but I was too eager to read an just clicked it away. Good to know I'm not the only one!


@MrDJ: Hang in there! I think you have only minor problems with your machine, a fresh install of windows will solve most of it! Not that I don't trust AW, but I always prefer doing an installation on my own with a new computer!

 

Did you try to switch from Internal to XFi Soundcard? You should be able to do that under "Control Panel" -> "Sound" ... don't know how its called exactly.. I'm running a German Windows - but I think you have to switch from internal to the external one manually before its playing sounds out of the external XFI Soundcard!

 

I used to have an Audigy 2 ZS PCMCIA card for my Sager and I remember that it never played through the internal speakers. Are you sure the X-Fi does?

I suggest downloading drivers from Creative's site.

 

@Bofh... Come on, just admit it ot us... you are just jealous you didn't wait for yours.

@MrDJ- I'm sure you will see it's only a software problem, nothing more than that. I would really try to re-install Windows and all drivers fresh (only what you think you will really need).

I think people shouldn't let themselves feel depressed or upset due to a software problem. It happens, and there's always ways to get around it. You should worry with Hardware problems (e.g. downclock, overheating, cracking, no lights, etc etc...). Appart from that... if you keep trying to find problems, you will. And those problems, even if minor, will become gigantic monsters (I know what I'm talking about... I'm a bit like that.).

Anyway... Good luck to all the new owners. Hopefully I'll join you on the AW's owners "army" soon.

 

lol Milcs
I have admitted that many times, however I have had a great machine for well over a month

I will miss out on the amazing design, but in the end, I have a great machine with very few problems,
I would have been gutted to receive a machine with so many issues.
and yes I do my own windows installs, but I wouldnt expect everyone to have that ability, its easy when you know how, but learning can take time.

Plus once I mod this beastie I have, I might even be able to make you guys jealous well maybe ........

 

ok then, so, what does stealth mode actually do? i thought it was supposed to switch to internal graphics and not 8800gtx in order to conserve power and lose heat, but it seem you have to press fn and f7 and reboot in order to switch graphics

 

stealth mode down clocks your cpu and your gpu in order to conserve power.

 

Stealth mode still uses the 8800M GTX, but it downclocks it by half to reduce power. As well, the CPU speed is also downclocked under stealth mode (to 1.5 GHz)

edit: tacomenace wins!

 

Hey Mr DJ and LaptopLu_Girl !! Congrats on getting your laptops !! I had the same Nero error thingy once and I dont know what I clicked on but I havent had any problems with it since. Do you guys have the same ' dull ' bits with your keyboard lighting ? Not when viewed directly from above but while sitting a bit back in a chair?

 

So they install Nero with OEM license for free or is it a trial version?

By the way, does anyone know where Hams Hall is?

General status. Sorting(Domestic Transit/Import): Hams Hall / GB, 2008-04-22

 

It's kinda half and half. There are some options only available if you get the paid version, however you can't download the Nero program installed on our laptops for free.

 

Ah right, well I bought Nero 7 a while ago so I'm going to install that anyway.

 

Before you do check that it's compatible with Vista, there was a ersion of Nero that didn't work with it and kinda crashed Windows...

OB

 

yeah, they were the early versions of Nero 7. I just disabled the troubled parts, but there is also a patch for Nero 7 you can download to fix it.

 

ok just a quick update.
took lappy to work to show IT bods and of course everyone liked the look of it and touch controls were working.
first thing noticed. boot up test.turned this and a xp that was loaded with software and all sorts of IT stuff on and this took an extra 35 seconds to boot up. for a brand new pc with hardly anything on it i thought this would have been faster.

2 IT blokes said send it back.
turned off and went back to work.

turned on again lunchtime. touch controls didnt work. gave up and went back to work.

meeting at 5.30 after meeting showed laptop to friend who first introduced me to AW
loved the machine but said it wasnt right. touch controls still didnt work and it was very slow booting up. said to run respawn and do a system install. will ring tech first though.
got home and read what schnaker wrote about the external sound card:

i tried this. it lights up when inserted and i rebooted as it suggests. put cd in and music still came out of on board speakers. looked in control panel/realtek high def speakers working,headphones and realtek digital output were the only options so x-fi not detected. removed card and a high pitch sound was heard and everything froze. rebooted from mains.

its not meant to. i had my surround sound and then tried my headphones but with no joy.

i am once again going to talk to support. and then it gets sent back.

 

aw that really sucks MrDJ. they make you wait that long and then send you a lemon.

 

Sad to hear that especially after going through all the trouble!

You mean send it back forever or send it back for repairs? I hope the latter .

 

I would ask Alienware to ship a new one with upgraded specs, I wouldn't want to send it back so the chassis gets damaged or gets some minor scratches. You've paid so much and have barely gotten to enjoy your new beast.

 

the way i feel at the moment its going back for good.

may change my mind after a good nights sleep.

 

good idea. ask for the extreme CPU, or maybe a smartbay battery.