audio has a mind of it's own

My m15x audio has started to turn it's own volume down to off. I have turned the volume up and in about a minute have watched it slowly turn itself down. Anyone here experienced that before?

 

Maybe it`s start to real AI?

To be more serious, have you tried standard procedures like reinstalling drivers?

 

rgauchy,

My m15x started doing that shortly after purchase. After speaking with Roswell Division, we elected to send it in...

Turns out that the problem - in my case - was a defective LED/MM board in the laptop. However, they did have some cases where if the main battery wasn't making good contact it could cause the same symptoms.

Before we elected for an 'alien obduction' they had me reseat the primary battery... In my case it wasn't the cause. But they did indicate that it usually is the cause for most users.

Apparently there's some corrosion resistant coating on the connectors that can cause it not to make good contact and cause the problem.

I'd recommend reseating the battery first. If that doesn't work give Roswell (1-866-ROSWELL) a call. Yeenvi, the rep who handled my repairs, is very familiar with this particular issue.

Total turn around time for me was 10 days. I received an update each afternoon by Yeenvi so I knew what was going on. I've never received that level of personalized care before -- from ANY vendor.

Hopefully this will help.

- Denver

 

I've been looking into this issue for quite some time. I've had this several times and was fortunately able to fix it for myself. Try the following and see if this resolves the issue for you.

Most people usually have that problem fixed by the third step, so if the problem still recurs, try out steps 4 and 5 to see if it fixes it for you.

 

Oceanus,,,,,,I've tried the first reinstall steps to no avail. l'll try the rest of the steps. ThanX for the replys everyone. My driver in Myhive is like 1.87. I see Realtek has a v2.11 out. Does anyone think this will work?

 

I've finished all the suggestions and installed R2.11 audio driver. It's only been one day but ....so far..........so good.

 

Good. Please keep us updated on your issue.

 

I have had a hell of a time with mine since getting it last Feb. This past month I had to return it 3 times and was without it for a total time of a month. The last issue I had was this very issue and after receiving my completely new replacement...within one hour this issue came up again. Why can't I just remove the OSD? I don't care if I see the volume thing on my screen? Also how do we tell what version of Realtek driver we have or for that matter what OSD ver we have? Any help would very greatly appreciated.

 

Ah, but you see, removing the OSD doesn't solve the problem. The volume can still automatically change on its own even without it (I learned that the hard way.) Try my steps above to see if it alleviates the problem.

To answer your question about the Realtek drivers, you can check the version of your Realtek drivers by going to your Realtek HD Audio Manager (the orange sound button in your icon tray) and then clicking on the "i" button on the bottom left side of the window that pops up.

 

Well I pulled the battery in and out a couple of times reseating it and thus far the OSD hasn't done it. We'll see. If this issue is so rampant why can't they fix it? They put me through to next level of support if it happens again. Thanks for the advice. I'll keep checking in to see if anyone comes up with anything else.

 

I do think it's the battery contacts. Removed my battery and everything worked fine. Put it back and within hours the volume acted up again. Now I've recycled battery install about a dozen times in as many seconds to "clean" the contacts. We'll see how that goes.

 

Just started mine up this evening with battery only and IMMEDIATELY it started the flickering volume symptom. But AC to it and so far....There has o be a fix to this issue. This is a design flaw if there ever was one SO why hasn't it been addressed?

 

I wish I had something to contribute... I just opened up my m15x Christmas day and saw the blinking volume touch control symptoms with erratic volume changes. This was happening on both AC power and on battery power. I followed Oceanus' 5 Steps. Now the blinking only occurs when operating on battery only. If the m15x starts up on AC power, there is no blinking. However, I remove AC power and the blinking occurs. If I return AC power the intensity of the blinking will subside but it still persists. The random volume changes interfere with keyboard and mouse inputs - simple keystrokes or mouse movement are halted, making operating the laptop very difficult.

I am feeling very reluctant about my purchase. I had ordered the laptop on Nov. 6th and it took an entire 36 days for AW to finally send my order. There were no financial issues and the only explanation I received was the laptop had been forgotten somewhere in their manufacturing department. Now that I have received the unit, it is defective. I've had a very long stretch of patience with this company. Very likely I will have to send the laptop in for this, for another "indeterminant" period of time. It breaks my heart, but I'm already considering returning the laptop for a refund.

 

This is indeed a really peculiar issue. I've had it several times over the past 5 months, but I always managed to fix it some way or another. The last time I've fixed this problem was around 2 months ago and it hasn't come back since. If I can replicate the issue again somehow, I'll be sure to research other alternative solutions for this issue.

In any case, you are providing very valuable information! I've noticed the same about the AC/Battery as well when it happened to me though it only happened when the battery was not fully charged and when it was on AC power while it was being used.

Hmm! If you don't mind, I have a few things I'd like you to try. The steps are almost identical to step 5 (in my other post), though I've added one more step to it. I'm not quite certain it'll fix the problem (seeing as how step 5 didn't work for you,) but the information gained from it will be valuable and will help us move forward to figuring out where this problem is coming from.

Note: Allow a good portion of time to do this. Charging the battery may take up to 1-2 hours depending on the amount of charge it currently has.

#1. Shut down the m15x.
#2. Fully charge the m15x's battery.
#3. Take out the battery.
#4. Unplug the AC power.
#5. Continually press and release on the power button for about 20-30 seconds. Then press and hold on the power button for 10 seconds. MAKE SURE THERE IS NO POWER SOURCE IN THE M15X WHEN YOU DO THIS. IT HAS TO BE COMPLETELY WITHOUT ANY SORT OF POWER.
#6. Put the battery back in and then plug in AC power.
#7. Boot up the m15x.

If and only if the volume slider does not flicker or automatically change the volume after using these steps, proceed to testing the following:

#1. Unplug the AC power and then run on battery power for at least 10 minutes.
#2. Plug the AC power back in and see if the volume slider starts to flicker (or check to see if the volume starts to change automatically). Play around for a good hour or so. If the volume slider does not flicker (or if the volume does not automatically change) even once during this hour, then the issue has been resolved. If not, the problem will have to be looked even further.

 

Kampma I feel ya on this one. This AW I just received is one they built after I had soo many problems with the first one they built for me. It started with the 8800GTX M overheating on 2 seperate occasions for no reasons. Finally after the blinking volume issue I was told to send it in for repairs. After I got it back after a month I opened it up and guess what? It still did it even after the invoice stated they replaced a part. I received my laptop last February and between then and November my laptop had been out of service for over 2 months and through that time period I had been on the phone with support for over 50 hours, which amounts to a full work week. As you can imagine I was extremely upset. I took it upon my self to write a long letter to AW and I usd their various emails at first but NO ONE EVER responed. Finally I faxed a signed and notorized copy of the letter to their corporate HQ. Within 2 hours I was called by a company rep who said they would just replace my laptop with a brand new one. Last Wed. I got it in and within a few hours the blinking started. I've used these steps on here to clear it up. Thx Oceanus and others for your continued support on this issue. I am gonna stick with it for a while but I will be calling the corporate tech support level Monday to let them know it has showed up again and see what they come up with. At this point I'm almost ready to tell them to replace this model with an equivalent of one of their other models that haven't been having the same issue or simply put a laptop without touch controls.

 

No problem! It seems like the people from AW are dumbfounded by this issue, so who else is going to do the dirty work for them? Somebody is going to have to look into it! =)

 

We'll it's appreciated from me and I'm sure others. Do you know if other sites are also talking this up?

 

Not that I know of. You can try searching notebookforums to see if they have any threads up about it.

 

Oceanus, thank you so much for your help! Here is an update: I followed your new set of instructions. After step #7 I have no flickering at all. Once I get to the last two steps (#1 and #2) the AC power is removed and the blinking starts. I noticed that once the AC is returned, the blinking will continue until the battery is fully charged.

 

Just as I have suspected. I'll look into this further and will give you a new set of instructions soon.

 

Just back online after a day and a half without power. Played solitare til the battery died. 1 hour 20 min. I think that's not bad. But, using my 'puter while recharging the battery caused a reoccurance of my flickering volume problem. I turned it off. Went to my desktop. Came back to the m15x latter. Removed battery (Which is fully charged now) and the volume is stable.

 

Same here, seems that the batteries have issues.

 

Perhaps, but that doesn't explain why I managed to fix it on my notebook. If it was hardware related, it would still be occurring right now.

 

I have the same - sometimes volume slider has his own AI. Flickering and random changes of volume are VERY annonying. As I remember that occured after media board BIOS update (this well known v.41 - m15x_MMB_41.iso). Funny, because it dissapeared from MyHive last time I visited. So, I think it was buggy and AW removed that, but no way to back to the older media board BIOS.
I'm on x36 BIOS, and nothing helped. Latest OSD reinstalled, CC v.17 because I had problems with v.28 (and this doesn't helped too).

Really I'm tired that constant trials with installation of the software which is considered to repair hardware issues. I have one of the first m15x (service tag QA00005A) and luckily no hinge issues, but those volume slider and touchpad http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=336188&page=2 and battery http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=253432 are making me crazy.

M.

 

This hardware problem can be fixed with software. Maybe Alienware is contracting out there software engineering instead of having a hands-on in-house engineering dept. handling integration.

 

I changed the color of my AlienFX last night. I change color every month just to play with the feature. It was all white. Now that I have changed color there has been no problem with volume. What color is everyone else using when having problems? Or, it's only been a day, maybe too soon to say there is an affect.

 

I'd say that's a really odd correlation, but eh, if you think AlienFX has anything to do with it, play around with different colors (go back and forth between your previous and current colors) to see if AlienFX is the problem.

 

That's VERY interesting..... After my experience with my m15x yesterday, rgauchey may definitely be on to something....

Yesterday my volume control (after just having the board replaced a week ago) started 'blinking' again and randomly changing. Not nearly as bad as before, so I think something was wrong with the old board, but still annoying.

I decided to do some experimentation... Being a holiday it wasn't like I could yell at anyone

I uninstalled OSD, Command Center (1028) and the Audio drivers... in that order.

Reinstalled OSD, Command Center (1017 from MyHive) and the Audio drivers. After Command Center downgraded the AlienFX firmware from .35 to .22 the problem immediately went away.

I tried Oceanus's test (on battery, on AC, while charging, etc.) and it passed with flying colors.... no wierdness.

Keep in mind, during this time I didn't touch or do anything to the battery.

Makes me wonder if all the blinking is another bug in the failed 1028 release of Command Center. I'd also like to note that when I had my blinking I had the touch controls set to dark blue... I never changed the color of them from how the machine shipped.

But this does make me seriously wonder if we may be onto something... Hummmm.

Also...

Oceanus, if I remember reading correctly, in one of your posts a while back didn't you say that you downgraded AlienFX back to .22 but stayed at 1028 for Command Center itself? I'm wondering if that's why your problem went away and has stayed gone.

- Denver

 

Huh, due problem with discharging I removed battery - and problem gone Maybe because of battery is placed directly below of touch slider it is making some "noise" for it ?

According to AlenFX ROM...I have opposite: .35 ROM of AlienFX and using .17 CC (upgraded to .28, found it buggy, restored to .17 using system restore, but left new ROM).

And this is not solution...removing battery to use a notebook. Phew.

Anyone ?

K.

 

Everything works great today. At the time I changed colors I had also set "wake on LAN" to off.

 

Everything is still absolutely stable. Just like before Dec 1st. when I changed my color scheme to all white extended.

As I typed this I just realized that was the only color scheme I've tried the extended mode in, where you let applications pulse your colors. It didn't work but I left it enabled anyway. My previous color mode and my current are just the simple color schemes.

 

Rgauchey,

What version of Command Center (1017 or 1028) and AlienFX firmware (.22 or .35) are you using?

Based on what happened to me yesterday and your experience, I'm beginning to wonder if this whole thing isn't an issue with either Command Center or their screwy firmware....

Just out of curiosity, for those that have the problem - What versions are you running?

Maybe we can figure this thing out once and for all.

- Denver

 

I'm using 1017 and alienfx editor .24 from myhive.

What happened to you?????????

 

It happens on both versions of the Command Center.

The thing is, the problem hasn't yet been fully isolated yet and it can be based off of several factors. Because both the OSD and the Command Center control how the touch buttons react, uninstalling and then reinstalling both software would essentially clear out or overwrite any corrupted files associated with the OSD Utility and the Command Center.

However, it hasn't happened often enough (to me, at least) to tell where the problem is exactly coming from. The steps I've listed earlier are what worked for me and it apparently, it doesn't seem like it works for everyone.

Not really. I had 1028 for quite awhile but I didn't really need AlienTouch or AlienSense, so I reverted entirely back to 1017.

----

Out of curiosity, who here still experiences this issue? (Sorry, had to bold that to make sure everyone sees this question.)

 

Hmmm. My problem gone (I hope permanently) after reinstallation of the CC (new one, and back to the .17 with leaving .35 BIOS). Now with battery attached, slider is stable.

PS. I afraid to touch that slider. Maybe "he" sleeps and this can wake him. Last time "he" was very crazy.

 

If the slider isn't flashing on its own every once in awhile, it should be safe to use it. =)

 

Everything works as it's supposed to right now. Doesn't make alot of sence does it?

 

**ck. Started again.

After some tests I'm 100% sure this occurs when battery is loading (at least in my case). After battery ends loading, volume slider is going asleep. When using on battery - no problems, using on wire, battery 100% loaded - no problem. Loading battery call up spirits of aliens...
And because notebook is discharging battery always when you detach power brick (like I'm doing) it will start flickering day after day.
Today I found worse thing. This self-activity on touch controls moved to main switch ! Laptop switched off himself when I observed activity of volume slider. In 40min found it three times.
Detached battery - problems dissapeared. Now m15x fully stable, but on wire. Nothing flickers untill I attach battery.
So, now I have second reason to keep m15x attached to power charger all time. First reason ? Because I wanted to keep my battery in good condition - as far AW wins (and screwing up the battery) but this is another story http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=253432.
Seriously I'm thinking this surrounds each other. Oceanus, what you think ?
But... is it notebook or desktop ?

cheers

M.

PS. I like my baby, but now tired with this fight. Will consider to sell it.

 

The self-activity on the touch controls are a software problem associated with the Alienware Command Center. Please do the following:

#1. Uninstall the Alienware Command Center.
#2. Uninstall the OSD Utility.
#3. Restart.
#4. Reinstall the OSD Utility.
#5. Reinstall the Alienware Command Center.

Fortunately, that problem is a lot easier to fix. Tell me if it works for you.

 

Noo. Can't agree. In fact I've done that exact way few times,but this helped only once and for short time. Problem returns always after discharging battery, exactly when laptop starts charging.
This time, with no hope I've done that once again. Doesn't helped as I supposed. Volume slider was crazy. I would say very. Crazy.
When laptop fully loaded battery flickering stopped. For me solution is remove battery. But.. isn't stupid ? Hope in new bios (If I can find enough love for my m15x and keep myself to not sell it). At least, with battery removed I can play some games (but not music, latency spikes occurs sometimes and this killing me).
Funny I had many laptops, now two others and NEVER had so much issues.

cheers

Mark

PS. Oh, forgot. With battery removed I can solve my first problem...discharging. LOL.

Allright, will try to do something different. Battery seems to by electromagnetic emitter - I'll try to make some EM screen.

 

Actually, when I said that, I wasn't referring to the audio/volume slider issue. I was talking about the other touch controls. If the touch controls (the volume slider is an exception) act on their own, it can be fixed by uninstalling and reinstalling the Alienware Command Center.

 

Here your right. Sorry for my tone, I little exagerrated in previous posts.
Power button went back to normal after reinstallation. Thought all of the touch controls are one-in-piece board, not separate. If slider is separate than other, then issue is much complicate. Anyway, random changes of volume are very annoying. In my case from 30% started, it can change in periods of around 3-5sec to : 35, 50, 0, 4, 65, 20, 90 (%) etc. Tryied to listen music on earphones... so quick change of volume to almost full can damage hearing. Add to that : dpc latency high peaks in random (so music frozes for second by each peak. I'm on x36 BIOS and still have peaks), battery issue, last fight with touchpad (at least solved), constant worry about plastic weak LCD cover (will crack today or tomorrow ?). Got my point ?

Still I'm trying to be happy with this notebook. Really.

cheers

Mark

 

Today was on battery only and of course the volume slider does its thing. One thing extra I noticed I never mentioned in earlier post. If on battery and I right click over the volume icon in task bar(when volume is doin' its thang) explorer hangs for a bit and sometimes must be restarted. I have done all the previous discussed steps. On A/C everything is perfect... for now, knock on wood. Have you (Oceanus) or anyone else seen this occurance?

 

I actually did not notice that. What operating system are you using? Vista or XP?

 

Mine is doing that only when charging battery. After loading is finished, flickering immediately dissapears.
Worse is main switch has his mind as well. Reinstalling helped only once, now I have that issue again. When slider is starting self-activity, after some time (about 5-10 minutes), main switch is self-switching too. After that I have to start system again
I don't think it is software-related. Rather hardware, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, I'm trying with aluminium self-adhesive foil as electromagnetic screen under battery, but results are so-so. It is better, but not so significant I wish. I have to try more.

cheers

 

Vista, after a few minutes and the "not responding" prompt it went away. I was only able to alt-tab or Win-tab to another window. Also when closing programs about thirty minutes later, while sutting down, seemed to do it as well. On A/C this doesn't occure.

 

In that case, I'm going to need you to try uninstalling and then reinstalling the OSD Utility (which you can download directly from here). I know it's a bit repetitive, but it seems like there are some conflicts with the OSD utility, the volume control (within windows) and explorer.

 

Oceanus,

You had right. At least I isolated problem (remember, this can by only on my example and not related to all series). I excluded electromagnetic floatings and CC. I found OSD is to be guilty. After I uninstalled that, problem dissapeared permanently. Reinstallation causes flickering again, so I left it uninstalled. CC works flawlessly, touch controls too (ofc without those nice icons). Now I have to wait for new version of the OSD, LOL.
My second (from three) problem solved.

K.

 

Well, I'd say reinstall the OSD Utility, but if you'd rather have it uninstalled, then go for it.

 

Mine has worked perfectly since the 1st of the month. I just realized that my OSD is also disabled. I think kitir has the answer to this problem.