-->*OFFICIAL: Dell XPS M1730 Owner's Lounge*<--

I think this could all be away of messing with the prices before the 8800M's are introduced.

I'd say the system is going to be crazy money initially for the 8800M's...

Interesting to see what the comparison between the Alienware m-17x and the M1730 in terms of price will be.

Also does anyone think the naming scheme for these two very similar laptops from the same parent company is oddly similar it's self?

m-17x -vs- M1730 ... weird huh!

 

I feel the Alienware m17x is a better machine
cos wont need a upgrade & will come with the 8800 cards
As for Price hhhmmmm they all High
just need to close ur eyes & pay up lol

 

I bought the M1730 shortly after it came out for over €3k.
(returned a week later - too many prob's)

Then the price dropped €800 over the next 6 weeks, no doubt the same thing will happen when the 8800M's come out. But at this stage after all the waiting I think it'll be worth it, provided screen leak and wobby base don't become any issue again.

 

I would actually let the leackage and wobbly base be if they upgraded me for free to the 8800GTX... XD!

UPDATE: If tomorrow I know nothing I will start by excalating my problem to see if I can get my money back... Do you think that after 1 year they will return the whole purchase?

I will use this point thats on my contract with them as my issued started on the 17th oct with my old precision m90...

10.3 If the Force Majeure event lasts longer than 60 days then Dell shall have the right to terminate the Agreement by providing notice in writing to Consumer & returning all sums paid by Consumer under the Agreement. No compensation to Consumer will then be due in these circumstances.

 

Question for you guys. I have a M1730 with blue ray player. DVI to HDMI output cable hooked to a Samsung 42" tv. I get incompatable device driver error 0122 when i try to play a blur ray disk . Any help ???

 

I use ANYDVD HD to fix the Blu-ray security ****.

Question - just got a replacement of my M1730 the first sucked ... to slow and hardware problems.

The question is "do all of you with samsung monitors have problems with cold start of the m1730 with ex. 167.45 driver - only 156.22 and the 169.22 do not give black screen at logon in Vista"?

And is the LG screen really that good compared to Samsung - I think the samsung is better quality than the sharp, that was on my old m1730.

 

I've been on 169.04 for a while, eschewing the later drivers for stability reasons. However, I decided to give 169.25 from laptopvideo2go a try. I prefer NBF versions, but just having some fun...

By the way, I downloaded a tool called Tweak VI http://lifehacker.com/software/vista/download-of-the-day-tweak-vi-windows-252105.php

My system is running faster and smoother than ever as a result. Excellent program.

 

Well Overall it seems weird - But I did just configure a Machine to match the Machine spec of my XPS 1730 which I have had for over 2 months now and it costs around £150 More for the machine today than it did back then.

Hopefully we will see the 8800M GTX Upgrades in the new year.

Frag. Out.

 

Hello!

The black screen thing seems to only plague certain users (myself being one of them). I had thought it was those with samsung screen, though I have since discovered my screen is a Sharp (SHP 13D9), I believe it is the newer Sharp, which I would assume has some merits over the older model - which you probably got with your first machine. It would appear not to suffer from the "light leakage" issue which seems Samsung specific, though I have no idea how it compares in other areas (contrast, color definition etc) to the Samsungs or LGs.

Back to the black screen mystery, I didn't know that 169.22 was another driver that avoids this problem, the latest I knew of was 169.04, so I may well give 169.22 a go. There are tons of new drivers being flung out at the moment - Nvidia may well have resorted to the "scatter gun" approach! - the 158.xx series has just had several new additions, there's sure to be a definitive one for all of us soon...............I hope!!!!!

 

I downloaded anydvd and dont get the error message now that i was getting but still can not see the blue ray dvd on the samsung i can see the laptop desktop and a regular dvd but can not see a blue ray movie on the tv. Is there anyone that has this same problem ?? All i get is the black screen???

 

Watch out guys. Last time I downloaded Anydvd it came with embedded trojan virus. Kaspersky killed the virus and the program worked fine.

 

AnyDVD is a real program - and you probably got the virus from a torrent

If you download the 21day free trial from their site it's clean... at least it was for me.

On a second note - if you have both monitors enabled - in any fashion (clone, extended monitor, etc) blu-ray disables itself on the second monitor. Thank you Microsoft for making such a restriction rich operating system.

If you do the FN+F8 to the point of disabling the laptop screen and only having the DVI port as the solo display - it will display the picture.

On the happiest note yet - for those of you who want to playback Blu-Ray in Vista 64bit and not have to pay extra money for programs like AnyDVD HD and such - there are new drivers out yesterday - WHQL 169.25 on nvidia's site. I used the modded inf file from laptopvideo2go and installed them - everything works as perfect as could be expected.

OK now for me to return to my own problems for you hefty "have to read every line" readers out there. Dell has scheduled a replacement for my laptop and supposedly a replacement motherboard for the meantime of the long wait - however I have yet to have confirmation on the second motherboard besides what the lady told me on the phone when I called for an exchange.

Right now I am certain the systemboard is whacked. My CPU rating WAS 5.3 in vista's windows experience index, however now it reads 4.0. If I turn on speedsteping and all that crap it falls down to 2.9 usually... so I leave all that turned off for a little extra boost (and battery drainage, which won't charge). The reason I am posting this - is to ask if anyone else with a T7700 in vista 64bit has successfully played back Superman Returns without any stutter? My CPU maxes up at 100% in various screens (usually where the bitrate goes above 20mbps) and then it lags (audio stays constant). I just want to make sure that when I get my replacement - it'll be able to handle this petty playback issue that a device 10 percent of the price of my laptop can do...

On a happy note - I got to use my laptop briefly during a photoshoot today - MAN was that great. I can't wait for it to go at full speed again

Thanks for reading... *winks*

 

I can't find the stupid 64bit quickset utility for 64bit vista for our XPS machines - can anyone find that? I have found half a dozen other versions of it - but none of them allow me to adjust the LEDs and such - just has "mobility options" and that's it... Any pointers?

 

I got it a few years ago from downloads as a demo.

That quickset utility does not work for me too well, either. I am running 32bit Vista on T7700 machine and to make a change to the lights I have to go to the Bios. It is kind of awkward.

The quickset offered on Dell web site is for 32bit vista, so either they did not bother to make one for 64 bit vista or you will have to call tech support to get the right one.

 

I should re-emphasize that I HAD the right one a while back... but reformatted my PC in attempts to troubleshoot my bad motherboard and now cannot find the download again - but it DID work from 64bit... I'm curious if my bad mobo is causing the quickset not to display the LED pages... might be too screwed up by now.

 

Yeah turning speedstep off results in a constant 1.2ghz speed, I wouldnt ever turn speed step off, Somone needs to make a docking battery for this thing so it can run closer to full speed on battery.

Can anyone explain why speed step ends up cutting the processor speed in half?

 

Just moved up to 169.28. I haven't gotten any freeze ups lately with .25 or .28. However, I think the stability has come from turning Write Back Cache OFF (default) in Intel Raid Matrix Storage Manager. I had enabled this for extra performance, but while troubleshooting the freezes, I have not experienced any lockups when disabled... and I do see lockups when enabled...

 

This press release suggests otherwise... http://www.dell.com/content/topics/...ce/en/2007/2007_09_27_nyc_000?c=us&l=en&s=gen

" Looking ahead, Dell engineered the XPS M1730 chassis to handle the thermal and power requirements of the most powerful next-generation graphics technology. Dell also will offer a graphics upgrade program when next-generation graphics processor technology is available.

And this dude from Dell on youtube suggests it also... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nIsx9ZwMws


Of course companies go back on things they say all the time and this may not happen but it looks like its possible

ten

 

Btw...

Got my m1730 on Friday.

Immediately formatted it and threw on Vista 64 bit, overclocked cpu to 3.4, installed 169.28 drivers, enabled SLI, overclocked the 8700s with rivatuner a bit and ran a couple of hot fixes. I knew it wouldnt be blisteringly fast but all the games I have tried so far are absolutely flying along on this thing, very impressed. UT3 is almost on par with my desktop Albatron 8800GT. I still do hope Dell offers an upgrade to SLI 8800M GTXs though

ps: Sharp LCD is a little dark (can be tweaked with nvidia colour controls) but has no backlight problems, no dead pixels and very nice colour display.

ten

 

Which upgrade steps did you follow? I have not been successful with any of the other drivers. I am still using 167.45 drivers and would like to venture on to the 169.28.

 

Is anyone else using the A03 bios or even an A02 bios?

Mine came with an A03 dated 10/30/2007. I cant find mention of it anywhere on the Dell site or the net !??!

ten

 

im on A03 too...

 

I have removed the nvidia drivers, no have "Standard VGA Graphics Adapter" and cannot install 169.28... the error is "The system cannot find the file specified". I did download the L2G 169.28 package and copied the inf to the extracted folder. Still nothing. I also now can not get back to the 167.45 dell drivers. from 169.09 to 169.28 I get the same error message.

 

Ten - is your 800 MHz Kingston RAM running at 800? Also, I assume the Seagates came with the machine? I got Hitachi drives....

I wonder how I can get a copy of the A03 BIOS....

 

What kind of problem did you have?

To upgrade a driver, I do the following:

1. uninstall old driver (don't reboot yet)
2. run Driver Sweeper and clean out nvidia display (display ONLY)
3. run ccleaner and cleanup "system" and "registry"
4. open start/run prefetch directory and delete everything
5. reboot
6. install new drivers (with modded inf)
7. reboot
8. from nvidia control panel, enable SLI and apply... after doing this, just wait around... screen might go black... and it might prompt to restart.... just ignore all that and wait... when it comes back, you'll get a confirmation dialog... but it may come up behind the control panel, so click the control panel and then confirm.
9. configure 3d settings and apply
10. reboot
11. done.

 

you might want to rollback (to undue the driver uninstall) and try again?

 

So what is the consensus these days. I am still on 169.12. is the 169.28 really an improvement or nothing to worry about yet?

 

Just keeping up with the curve here... got nothing better to do

 

I would also like to know if anyone has had any success running any RAM at 800mhz, Also

Just a reminder, when configuring bios setting etc, DONT DISABLE SPEEDSTEP, although logic would tell you it would make the CPU run at full speed all the time, It actually makes it run at a constant 50%.

Can someone with 4gb, run a stress test, then remove 2gb's and run another? Any program is fine CSS stress test, 3d mark, anything, I wanna know if its worth it to upgrade.

also

anyone else agree that the GLCD Should show, Temp, battery remaining, fps, backlight levels, wifi signal strength when using the Wi-fi catcher (or even number or names of networks available w or without Protection)?

I really think they way under-did it with the LCD, they could have made it alot more useful than it actually is.

When i press eject eject should pop up on LCD, when i press LCD/crt it should show which is selected on the LCD (seeming as when SLI is on only 1 actual monitor is able to be used!) When i insert a disc, a spinning disc should appear with the type CD/dvd/movie/mp3 cd next to it. Some more difficult to implement examples, When copying a file in the backround, burning a CD in the background converting audio using WMP, all of that status info should show up on the LCD.

When i drink a vitamin water, it should show how much i have left... wait.... okay maybe i went too far ;-) but you get the picture.

Also anyone ever think that someone should write a program to allow you to control your computer with your hands using the webcam, IE backwards twist with your finger to go back, with the integrated cam it would be sick to sign to my computer what i wanted to do.

AND ONE THING I REALLY HATE IS Vista's Low battery warning, it is nowhere near enough, If the LCD BLINKED AND SAID (LOW BATT (%) when it got to a point that would be VERY HELPFUL, it sucks when your web browsing for 45 minutes and your screen fades out when your so close to your power adapter.

 

Well I have the original Dell 156.61 drivers installled. I can not install the 167.45 anymore. I also can not get the 169.28 drivers installed. I am getting a "File not found error"

Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-User-PnP
Date: 12/23/2007 9:11:14 PM
Event ID: 20001
Task Category: None
Level: Information
Keywords:
User: SYSTEM
Computer: XPSM1730
Description:
Driver Management concluded the process to install driver FileRepository\nv_disp.inf_a90d47d8\nv_disp.inf for Device Instance ID PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0409&SUBSYS_019C1028&REV_A1\6&2E031093&0&00080008 with the following status: 2.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-User-PnP" Guid='{eea178e3-e9d4-41ca-bb56-cede1a476629}' />
<EventID>20001</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>4</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8000000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2007-12-24T02:11:14.177Z" />
<EventRecordID>48444</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution Processid='5564' Threadid='1876' />
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>XPSM1730</Computer>
<Security Userid='S-1-5-18' />
</System>
<UserData>
<InstallDeviceID xmlns:auto-ns2="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events" xmlns="http://manifests.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/windows/userpnp">
<DriverName>FileRepository\nv_disp.inf_a90d47d8\nv_disp.inf</DriverName>
<DriverVersion>7.15.11.6928</DriverVersion>
<DriverProvider>NVIDIA</DriverProvider>
<DeviceInstanceID>PCI\VEN_10DE&amp;DEV_0409&amp;SUBSYS_019C1028&amp;REV_A1\6&amp;2E031093&amp;0&amp;00080008</DeviceInstanceID>
<SetupClass>{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}</SetupClass>
<RebootOption>false</RebootOption>
<UpgradeDevice>true</UpgradeDevice>
<IsDriverOEM>true</IsDriverOEM>
<InstallStatus>2</InstallStatus>
<DriverDescription>NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT</DriverDescription>
</InstallDeviceID>
</UserData>
</Event>

 

I got one of those, just log on in safe mode if you haven't tried it, that did the trick with me.

 

No luck on the 800mhz here. I'm running 32bit Vista so I can't really comment on the performance boost but I did jump up to 4gbs of OCZ DDR2 800 memory.

 

Yeah, I've started using the LCD, but I noticed I dropped in the CS:S stress test 175+ to 140 ish when the CS stats plugin was enabled. Which it s dire shame..

All the above IS possible, the G15 logitech plugings work fine, as its 2/3rd the height of the keyboard version some of the graphic logo screens get overlaid. I totally agree with the hinge issue. In typical typing and gaming posture the bottom of the LCD is obscured.

Best place for the LCS resouce I've found is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logitech_G15

 

The LCD is actually the same size as the one on the new G15, the old one has the bigger screen, they are the same resolution though

 

Hey Everyone this Is My First Post! I am Anxiously Waiting the Arrival of my 1730 !! Santa should have it on his sleigh and I will be taking delivery Tomorrow Morning!! haha I have been snooping around and Have found My MaxD out 1730 And am SOo Pumped to be rocking Crysis and Gears of War TOmorrow Morning!! haha Cant Wait ! BTW thanks for all the information I have aquired by reading this forum. Quick Question for you all with 730's already.... If you could get a brand new 730 What would be your Very First Move and do I need new Nvidia Drivers Etc.....? THanks Everyone and Merry Christmas!

 

Same error. Is there a way to view an install log?

 

My system is freezing up again using 169.28.

Back down to old trusty 169.04.

 

Now I get this "There is no driver selected for the device in formation set or element." I think I am going to reinstall everything from scratch and try to at least get 167.45 back on.

 

I get the same with this driver. I think 169.04 is the best thus far.

 

I agree. 169.04 is solid. While it's not the most downloaded driver at LV2G (that honor presently belongs to 169.09), it does have the best overall poll standing, and having tried nearly every other version, I have to say, newer is not always better

 

I have not tried .28 but I have been able to work/game solidly off of .25. No lock ups or anything.

 

I have read in vista/intel forums that there is an issue with Vista+RAID and the Intel Matrix Storage Manager that leads to freezes, BSOD, etc.

There appears to be a registry fix that people say works... I have followed those instructions and will be trying the more recent drivers again... will report on this after trying it out.

http://www.flyingnerd.com/intel-raid-problem-under-windows-vista/

Just delete the "parameters" subkey to iastor and iastorv according to the pictures.

Hope it works !

 

Bluetooth issue

Hi everyone,

I am trying to get to work bluetooth. Can't find any software pre-installed on my machine, so downloaded the driver from dell website R140135 Bluetooth module etc. tried to run it but it asks me to activate bluetooth with fn+f2 but it doesn't work. So I checked in my device manager but I can't seem to find any bluetooth device. Cannot find any useful info about this: can someone help?

JI

 

It seems that I tend to get freezes when I have Write Back Cache enabled in the Intel RAID Matrix Storage Manager. So, I have disabled that, installed version 7.8.x, and removed the parameters subkey of iastor and iastorv.

Let's see how it goes today. Trying this out on NBF version 169.09

 

Another issue I've been having is that sometimes processes (such as IE and Adobe Acrobat) will stop responding and cannot be killed via task manager... so that I have to restart... which is ridiculous.

I've read that disabling iaanotif.exe (by turning off the startup program RAID EVENT MONITOR in msconfig startup) takes care of this...

I was hesitant about this since it pertains to the RAID controller, but the documentation indicates it relates to RAID 1 (whereas I'm using RAID 0).

Anyway, I'm crossing my fingers.

 

uhhh, 3 crashes/freezes in the last hour, despite the finger crossing...

back to 169.04 for good.

 

I havn't had a crash yet. Been playing this for 4 days in various games now using the .25 drivers. Only thing I cant work out is how to install the damn audio software on a cd i got. Says 'install sound drivers' when i run set-up.

 

Hi guys,

playin' Crysis and trying to understand best way to play it on my M1730 2GB RAM, dual geForce m8700 etc etc. I noticed that if SLI is disabled the game runs much better. Can someone confirm and help me understand the current best way to play the game?

cheers,

JI

 

ozzo - can you post your specs.

Are you on RAID, SLI, Vista 32/64, XP, etc?

Thanks

 

Is it better to get the 4gb Ram
will it make the games better to Play & computer faster ?