*** Windows 10 + NVIDIA WHQL Drivers are Killing Alienware and Clevo LCD Panels ***

3 weeks and its fine, what ever the second trigger is must be... Well not a popular software because the amount of people to trigger without EVGA is so small. Really we need those people to make a nice list of everything they had installed, updates.. Software and that way we can do an elimination with the software we have (Non EDID trigger setups) to see what they have different then work from their

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Anyone mentioned Steam? Or like I said previously, Geforce Experience?

In other news, in a moment of stupidity I enabled Legacy Rom support (Still UEFI, but no longer 'pure') and the cursed 8 beeps returned even on HDMI output to external monitor. I attempted to install Windows 7 (UEFI-enabled USB) but it just got stuck forever at Starting Windows and logo. Reading up a bit suggested enabling Legacy support and...well...

My replacement panel is here on Thursday. If I plug it in will the system work again guys? No more beeps so I can install Windows 7?

 

well, it's actually easy.

1. Make a backup of your drive with Macrium or Acronis and uploadto the cloud.
2. Fox downloads it and recovers it to his drive.
3. Comparison and test.
4.???????
5. Profit.

 

Stupid because it was written about not setting this to Legacy otherwice no HDMI workaround.
First thing with new LCD - set back to UEFI.

 

UEFI + Legacy should still allow you to run from HDMI?

mine is UEFI + Legacy and with that combo and software I mentioned its EDID corrupt free.. Just putting it out there for when the time comes that we rule out things

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No mate. I just learned the hard way few minutes ago. Pure UEFI only. No Legacy whatsoever. Mine was pure UEFI. Just enabling Legacy support ROM (combo) will lead to 8 beeps.

 

If you get 8 beeps then you hope you were in pure UEFI mode because then you can watch through HDMI connected monitor and even fix EDID if you care to install Linux package andfollow instructions.

 

So you was running fine and once you enabled Legacy with your UEFI it triggered the 8 beeps?

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You don't have a GTX 980m do you?

See UEFI + Legacy won't trigger an EDID corrupt for me, I used it so many times when I flashed my VBIOS and BIOS and Mr. Fox as rebellious as he is runs Pure Legacy if I'm not mistaken?

So taking those two into consideration unless you have a combination of things to trigger with Legacy.. I can't see why you'd be any different.

That said, looking at your information if you have changed to Legacy + UEFI with a 980m (possibly 880m) as well as you have both then you'd get that from switching to Legacy anyway?

 

Yes. In order to install Windows 7 it seems there must be Legacy ROM in there somewhere.

No I don't have 980M on the AW17. 880M only. All my current systems are in my sig. Prior to the dead screen saga I ran pure UEFI with Win10 because it booted up so fast, granted the SSD might help (5-6 seconds and I was in desktop).

Just to clarify: AW17 BIOS can be either Pure UEFI, UEFI+Legacy combo, or Pure Legacy. Only the first option allows HDMI/mDP output in case of EDID 8 beeps.

@James D No need to be a condescending prick with broken English mate. @Mr. Fox already said Linux Mint is not for everyone, and the length you have to go through to fix EDID vs buying replacement panel just doesn't add up to the trouble. I myself have used Mint on the old R2 for the last 6 months starting as a complete Linux noob. If you can afford to buy your ways through these troubles then by all means. I'm still posting because I want to contribute and learn, not to ridicule others' mistakes

 

Hmm so strange and that 880m is in your AW17 which means its soldered to the motherboard so my incompatibility suspicions would probably be wrong.. I was just thinking given the 980m couldn't run with anything other than UEFI (on M17/18) models maybe it was a similar thing.

In that case, I'd say wait for Mr. Fox to do his EDID flash video, hopefully it should make things easier for people to follow.. Not that the instructions by t456 isn't easy to follow but I must agree I am a person who prefers watching to reading things.

So.. Just before we finalise this and say Legacy ROM triggered EDID corruption was there anything at all you did before hand? You may have already wrote what you did but I've not been following this thread as much now.. See I only ask because Mr. Fox did a similar thing where he was adamant that Nvidia triggered it when I'm fact when he reassessed his steps he noticed EVGA was also installed and that overlook right there caused many weeks of fraustration.. So just before we add Legacy ROM as a potential trigger was there anything else you did before hand?

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Gosh, it wasn't. let's stop making speculations. His EDID was borked way before that and he wrote that 2 days ago.

 

No @mrsweet1991. Mine is the R1 Ranger model. I gave up on Alienware a year ago when they went BGA. BIOS mode is irrelevant to the EDID corruption trigger that's right. I have no idea what all those fancy OC/performance monitoring software are.

 

As I said I haven't kept up to date with the thread, when I come on today I just read "changed to Legacy ROM and got 8 beeps" so I went from there.

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I had to change to display legacy ROM on my AW 18 to set up RAID 0. It disabled Secure Boot. Windows put a watermark on the screen stating that Secure Boot was not configured. However Microshaft has a patch to remove it. Does it sound like I have this set up correctly? I'm using Win 8.1 Pro.

 

BTW, thanks for taking care of me but I'm not like this.
I'm also not a lazy boy who doesn't care to make a search but who always cares to pick his very precious observations about someone yet it's same handy as everything else he writes. Don't know why I decided to make such concrete notification. Not because I was inspired by someone's precense here, clearly not!

 

I this its been blown out of portion a little bit, I do feel that your comment that he's referring to was unnecessary strictly because hardly anyone on the internet does proper research.. The amount of people who jump on this thread and come out with what they feel is the ultimate fix yet it was already discussed hundreds of pages back. So if he didnt read properly I think its better to just not reply at all than point out his errors.. Maybe at that point he might even go and research more.. Who knows.

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Clock is ticking. DX12 games will appear in future and we won't be able to play them. Nice...

 

Is any company recognizing the problem? Is it just not widespread enough? I would think there would be a lot more people screaming about such a serious issue.

 

You can reset this in a simple way... I was able to boot into BIOS after a few CMOS resets... In the Haswell machines, you want to remove the battery and do the reset procedure especially to clear NVRAM..

 

I have legacy ROM enabled so that I could set up my RAID 0 array. I haven't had any issues. I don't see how that could cause the 8 beep issue at all. Maybe Mr. Fox can chime in and give some insight.

 

I have a UEFI + Legacy, Mr. Fox has legacy and you have legacy so its fair to say we're proof that those settings alone trigger nothing. I mean 'Maybe' Legacy plus an application/driver combo combined maybe.. But the guy said his laptop went into sleep and never woke up.. Upon restart he then got 8 beeps.. I think it went something like that anyway, what ever triggers the EDID is very likely a software by the looks of things.

But EVGA appears to have been the one software that many people had and is a fix for many.. But there's not a huge amount of people who's actually managing to install this second trigger.. Therefore its hard to source a descent number of setups to identify what those people all have in common.

The guy in question seems to have almost a Vanilla setup? Again I stand to be corrected, if anything a list of every step took and application installed would be the first step, then someone else who triggered it without EVGA would need to do the same thing and from that point you could look to see what they had in common.

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I'm running the M18xR2 with Mint Linux, Windows 7 and Windows 10 triple-boot in Legacy mode. Legacy does not cause any issues. Running Windows 8 or newer in pure UEFI mode is not beneficial to prevent EDID corruption. One of the first Alienware 18 owners to experience this was running his Windows 8.1 system in UEFI mode. Some (not all) can boot with an external monitor in UEFI mode if the LCD is corrupted. My Alienware 18 could not and neither can my M18xR2. I have tested that theory on the M18xR2 several times. It may depend on the EDID doe rhw monitor (or HDMI television) connected and whether it was connected and frequently used prior to the EDID corruption.

Yes

 

I'll probably be the lucky guy to brick after installing Windows 10 fresh lol. I always have the worst luck with this stuff.
I'm praying that I don't find the second trigger because I'm definitely not installing Precision X. Hopefully that will be good enough.


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i am still confused as to how some can trigger with PX and some without PX.

is there a link to a method of blocking all updates?

 

The proper way to prepare yourself before installing Windows 10

 

Even though I can boot now I'm experiencing significant issues. I have Windows 7 installed with 347.88 drivers and flashed BIOS. When using the integrated graphics card everything is going smooth. Once I use my 580ms either SLI or just one of them after a few minutes or when the screen would flicker to ask administrative confirmation the fans just speed up and both screens go blank. It will never recover and I have to hold the power button down for a while to restart: sometimes I get 8 beeps when restarting, sometimes it restarts just fine. Usually, if I wait a little after the 8 beeps I can restart and the issue goes away... Can't seem to figure out what's going on with my 580s.

Can it be that I don't have the proper EDID? I would appreciate any advice.

 

If you had an EDID issue, it just wouldn't start. You can however check it with the proper software.


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Look at the images and links in what I quoted here. You'll need to use Group Policy. Also install Destroy Windows Spying. Use it to destroy anything that has that funky Windows 10 smell. Be sure to review all of the links in post #1 to bend Windoze OS X to your will. I have been using it almost exclusively since 10/11 and still think Windows 10 sucks like a big dog... super crappy OS.

You forgot to mention, you have to do that three times on the first day, before every meal, at bed time, then a minimum of once a week thereafter. Mercy is a undeserved gift that is not earned, but you have to ask for it to receive it.

 

Check MSI Afterburner too please.

 

Maybe Precision X opened up the vulnerability in the first place with any OS and Win 10 just took advantage of that in some way as long as Precision X was still being used. Perhaps Precision X is the whole problem. Has this happened to someone that has never used Precision X on their laptop at any time? I'm probably wrong but just bringing it up.

 

Yes, I believe more than one person has already said as much. One person did not even know what Precision X is and had to ask.

 

Jericho15, I don't want to be rude but for now all your multiple assumptions and speculations just add some mess to this thread and don't seem to help anyhow. Maybe first post needs to have additional information about our observations for such case that neither PrecisionX was the vulnerability maker but just the one which used opened breach to brick EDID, nor simple UEFI>Legacy mode switch is by any chance responsible for that.

I really appreciate your enthusiasm and I bet many others do too in terms that such uncommon software/hardware failure should bring more attention yet after 200 pages every simple explanation has been already specified and brought to some conclusion. If you don't have bricked EDID (and I lost track already who had and who hadn't) then the best way you could help would be installing Windows 10 AND PrecisionX to see if your laptop will be bricked. I predict that you are not willing to test that so unless you have some specific information or uncommon theory, well...

 

I run that on windows 8.1.. Its fine

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I run that too but im talking about win10

 

Hey, since your 880M is running on the stock VBIOS, I would like to know if you've encountered any issues with windows 10 (assuming you are/were running windows 10 at all) cause I have the same GPU as you but in SLi.

 

@Arestavo -
Have you gone back to Windows 10 since you got your screen fixed? I'm just trying to make a last minute decision on what OS to use and can't make up my mind. I'm super afraid that my EDID will get corrupted again. Just wondering if you are encountering any issues thus far


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To help, here is the original EDID off my LCD model SDC4C48 (Alienware 18 2013). Brand new, retrieved off 1st bootup in Win7.

00 FF FF FF FF FF FF 00 4C 83 48 4C 00 00 00 00 00 16 01 04 90 29 17 78 0A C8 95 9E 57 54 92 26 0F 50 54 00 00 00 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 29 36 80 A0 70 38 1F 40 18 10 25 00 99 E6 10 00 00 1A 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 1A 00 00 00 FE 00 58 4A 59 37 4A 80 31 38 34 48 4C 0A 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 41 01 A3 00 00 00 00 02 01 0A 20 20 00 F8

For those interested in retrieving EDID using Windows, I used Monitor Assest Manager then outputted an inf. Inside the .inf will be the EDID. Remove the 1st 0x01 then plug that into edidreader online, uncheck the adding of 0x then verify it.

Now I gotta figure out how to write a modded inf in Windows, otherwise, I'll have to wait until this weekend to make the Linux ISO. I tried to figure out an easy way using nvflash, but can't quite concentrate much right now.

By the way, this Alienware 18 may have to go back. The new Skylake Alienware 17s are a better buy since I keep laptops an average of 5 years. This is already 2013 tech... AWESOME tech, but still... the 17s have what I expect out of a current 2015 laptop... PCIe SSD, Thunderbolt, USB 3.1 support and 4k screen. Unsure yet whether it supports NVMe booting, but for sure NVMe ought to work once in the OS. Dell can absolutely enable generic PCIe support in the 18, but I doubt it... even if they did it may not have full bandwidth for NVMe, but at least it'll still have the reduced latency.

I wish... but we're lucky they still released a 2015 refresh for 980m support. I thought 2014 would be the last year for the Alien 18s.

 

I haven't encountered any in windows 10. This does not necessarily mean you won't (or will). I'm unsure what might trigger the EDID corruption beside Precision X.

 

Just wrote it. Damn... it changed. SDC MOD V2. Checked using i2cdump. I didn't reboot to see if the change stays. Too afraid that it changed at all. I rewrote the original EDID back. Anything else you'd need? Should I install Win10 to see if for some freak reason it gets write protected?

 

Thanks

 

Don't even consider that if you're serious about having a real enthusiast machine. Forget about 5 years... you'll have a disposable antique in less than 12 months that is essentially incapable of being upgraded or service properly. The new Alienware notebooks are a joke, with BGA turd CPU and crippled BGA GPU. You can't upgrade them and if a repair is needed the mobo, CPU and GPU all get tossed into the dumpster. And, you pray you did better in the silicon lottery because what you had before cannot be transferred if it was actually worth keeping. Don't let "old tech" mislead you, because newer is NOT always better. That hasn't been true for several years. New is sometimes totally screwed up. If it's BGA, being screwed up starts at the point of concept.

 

GPU soldered too? Is it for sure?

 

tbh they screwed up the AW 17's on the second revision in my opinion, no longer has 3 audio jacks to support 5.1 surround sound and the move to m.2-SATA only instead of the mSATA with 2 SATA III ports means less available space and as these are built as desktop replacements I like my setup of 250GB mSATA, 1TB SATA & 2TB SATA drives (although eventually will go 1TB mSATA & 2x 2TB SATA).

 

Exactly why I joined the Clevo bandwagon - last refuge of the socket enthusiasts. Also the P7xxZM/DM are confirmed SAFE from this corruption.

 

@ Mr. Fox what version nvidia driver are you using on your win10?

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Got a link for that?

 

Newest Aw models is screwed up with full package of BGA junk. A full throttle package from Dell.

 

I just re-read your original instructions for test. 1) I should write SDC MOD V1. 2) Install Win 10 3) write SDC MOD V2. I'll have to run it again. I knew I shouldn't have done the re-write that late at night, but I was pretty excited to play around with it.

 

You do realize the AW15 and AW17 R2 are basically the same product, except the 17 R2 is just a little wider with more screen space? Same motherboard/guts, just a slightly larger exterior. I've never seen this much compromise from Alienware before. It is extremely disappointing. The were they unrivaled king of awesomeness for a long time, but I guess nothing lasts forever.

I am using 345.20 for Windows 10. That's the newest GeForce driver I can use with 780M SLI that doesn't cause severe throttling. My 345.20 desktop mod works excellent with the crappy Windoze OS X. It's not even designed for it, but who cares... it works is all that matters.

This is what you actually need... https://biosmods.wordpress.com/2015/10/21/sky-x9/