M15x Problem/Technical Question thread

My optical drive is experiencing problems when i tried to install COD: MW2 when my optical driver freezes and stops in the middle of the installation. I cant find the drivers online or either in Dell support, anyone experiencing the same problem from the optical drive named PLDS_DVD+-RW_DC-8A2SH in their M15x?

 

I have a problem with my sound sometimes disappearing, and then I have to replug my usbheadset for it to work again - anyone knows what the problem could be?

 

That most probably related to the software which you need for the USB headset. Check if you find a newer version online.

 

An old classic - If I shut down while running on mains power my computer will always restart without fail. I have to unplug the AC adapter when I want to turn it off... Nearly lost the whole laptop once thanks to this. "Shut down" and packed it away only to come back a few hours later and find it was still on and seriously hot... Scared the living daylights out of me.

Does anyone still have this issue and did anyone ever find a solution other than unplug the AC before shutdown? I know it's not a big deal but when you spend so much money you kind of expect everything to run perfectly...

 

The M15x I had briefly didn't do that-and I would have only ever shut it down while connected to power.

 

Hello all,
I hope someone can help. I wanted to find out where to get the correct driver for the webcam on the M15x. It used to work but I reinstalled the OS (Win7 home premium) from the OS disk that came with the laptop. I tried the resource disk and installed the cam software in there but when I open this program, (youcam), it only shows color stripes like the old tv's with no video signal, those vertical color stripes. Turning on/off the webcam with Fn+F9 doesn't do anything. When I try to setup the face recognition for login, it says "unable to process biometric data please check camera".

My warranty ran out, so when I called Dell, all I was told was that my warranty has ran out but he also said that they don't carry that driver anymore. Is that true? I checked the Dell support driver website but could not find the driver there. Is this webcam made by someone else. By the way, I got this M15x in Nov of 09 and like I said before, the webcam worked fine until I reinstalled the OS. Any help/suggestions would be appreciated, thanks.

 

The Webcam uses a standard Windows driver, or at least mine does. You don't need a third party driver. You might try uninstalling the MS driver and let Win7 find and reinstall it in case the driver has become corrupted.

​

 

Thanks for the reply. I'm starting to think the camera is defective because when I reinstalled Windows, I didn't see Windows automatically look for the webcam drivers. When I look in device manager, it doesn't show anything about a camera.

I also have an M17x r3, and the picture you posted looks the same as the properties for the webcam in my M17x except for the driver version. In my M17x, device manager shows the integrated webcam under Imaging Devices, but in my m15x, there is no Imaging Devices tab. I just don't get how it could have went defective after a Windows reinstall. Thanks again, I will try to continue researching this.

 

Is the webcam enabled in your BIOS? Also, I can enable/disable webcam from fn+F9 (I think?) but I'm not sure if that stops it from showing up in Device Mgr. Good luck

 

I didn't even think about checking the BIOS. I'll check when I get home. As for the Fn F9, yes, on my M17x r3, this completely disables the cam, it doesn't show in device manager when it's disable. I tried that already with the M15x but it doesn't do anything. I'll check BIOS, thanks.

 

Also the connector for the webcam is under the keyboard. That may have come lose. I have an issue when windows couldn't find a webcam and turns up it just came lose.

 

Actually, you may be right, thanks. That makes sense because I change the keyboard a few months ago, the lights on one side stopped working when it was still under warranty, Dell sent me a replacement and walked me through the replacement over the phone. The cam still worked after that but I stopped using my M15x as soon as I got my M17x R3. I got the R3 during the first batch which I decided to keep even after learning about the whole recall thing.

 

Thank you!!! It was the connector! I opened up the laptop and got underneath and there it was. Plugged it in and cam works now!

 

You are very welcome!

 

I accidently reinstalled windows using the windows home premium disc and now I can't get my laptop back to factory settings...

How do I get all my stuff back (I dont mean personal things, games etc.) I mean drivers and the alienware theme etc.

I have the alienware resource disc but I dont know how to use it.

Thanks

 

DON'T use the alienware resource disk. If you reinstall the Command Centre from there, you will be sending your laptop back to Dell for a new motherboard. Instead get all you need from here:
Drivers & Downloads

 

And check here for the logon screen and alienware look:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/549358-how-restore-alienware-look-feel-after-clean-install-windows-7-a.html

 

Hello,

I'm new to this forum and would really like to get any information about my AREA-51 M15X.

I purchased my M15X back in 2009 so obviously I'm out of Warranty as I have not extended my 1-YR free service. It is just about a month now that I am having this screen/display issue wherein I will have lines all over the screen and sometimes black screen with colored pixels all over in the middle of what I'm doing. Based on what I've read, this seems to be graphics card driver issue. So I have been changing and testing the driver from the Standard VGA graphics adapter to the one I have downloaded on MyHive, M15x NVIDIA Graphics Driver 176.37 every time I get this issue. Could this be a faulty graphics card now and needs to be changed?

Would like to get help or information as I am not happy letting go of my 4+ grand laptop that is not even two years yet.

 

You'll find much better help here: Alienware Area-51/Aurora and Legacy Systems.

 

I'd assume the GPU is dying, but make sure your firmware is up to date, and you're running the newest drivers from Nvidia.com, not some site with unknown software.

 

Does anyone have a fan-control app that works on the core i5/i7 M15x's? It's my understanding that the i7 (and i5?) will run in a higher clockrate (turbo boost or whatever) more often the cooler the chip is. Depending on the game my graphics don't always force the fans to full speed all the time. Thoughts?

 

Did you try HWinfo32?
In the Sensors window you should have a brown fan icon in the lower part.
Mumak implemented support for the m15x also.

 

HWiNFO32 includes both CPU and GPU fan control. On the Sensors screen, click on the small fan icon adjacent to "Logging Start" button. HWiNFO32 Download

 

@bonez_11: At the bottom of the fan control Window you can set the "respin period". As the EC will always override the fan speed value of HWinfo32 it needs to send the signal again from time to time, otherwise the fans will spin up and slow down all couple of seconds. Something about 10000ms is a good value. Standard is 100ms which is a bit too short and uses a little bit of CPU all the time.

 

Thanks all, I will try HWiNFO32 tonight. I seem to remember getting a message before about it wanting to install a kernel extension that was 32-bit only and I had clicked no. Or maybe I'm thinking of something else! Anyways thanks for the quick replies

 

Hey guys,

I'm in a bit of a mess here. My m15x is suffering from heat problem. Just changed the thermal pasting with Noctua NT H1 but processor temperature is still very high - idle at 75c.

The heat is making problems on my keyboard too, the paint is wearing off and I got white patches on my keyboard.

I suspect the processor fan is broken and I want to get a new keyboard as well. Where can I get those items now that my warranty had expired?

 

Will Dell not sell you replacement parts? Despite your warranties expiry I would like to think you can still get a hold of replacements from them if you pay. Otherwise your next best bet would be the marketplace here on NBR. Last place to look would be eBay, although I wouldn't hold any high hopes for that one.

Hopefully inap will see this and offer some more informed advice. When it comes to replacements / repairs / upgrades he is definately one of the resident experts.

 

There are a lot of replacement parts on ebay for reasonable prices, some taken from used M15x systems, others brand new... and definitely cheaper or at least for the same price as the parts from Dell. NBR marketplace is also worth looking, like Laxxi said.

You should be able to tell whether your CPU works or not... for example on startup during the POST both fans should blow full speed for a couple of seconds, check again whether it reall works or not. The heat could also be due to badly applied paste, this may happen from time to time. If the fan still works you'll need to repaste again. Make sure you clean off all the old paste properly.

If the fan doesn't work make sure you plugged it in correctly before ordering a new one.

 

Appreciate the replies guys.

I've checked the fans during startup, and it seems like the sound the CPU fan is more muffled than the GPU fan. Is there anyway to check the speed of the fans? It seems like my CPU fan has less power.

EDIT: Downloaded HWiNFO 32. Attached image of temps and rpm.


I've cleaned up the old paste and I followed that thermal pasting guide floating around this forum. I doubt that's the real problem. <btw, whoever wrote that, thanks a lot!>

 

temps are high all around re do the paste

 

So my fan isn't broken then?

 

Fans are fine -- and working their hearts out to cool both the CPU and GPU.

 

Hm, I can't get my 240m to clock any higher than 405/324, any suggestions?

 

Stealth mode?

 

No, I pressed the Stealth mode button and it got brighter, then I pressed it again and it got dim.

I also tried the latest Nvidia drivers and the latest Dell video drivers?

 

You're plugged in? High performance profile?

 

Yes to both

 

Did you use some overclock tools? Sometimes this some options are messing up the clock speeds. You could try to reset them in this case.

Standard 3d clock is something like 1200 right? Weird...

 

I tried to use Nvidia System tools and MSI afterburner, after it wouldn't clock up.

I was trying to see if I could force the stock clocks.

Now my touchpad isn't working?

 

You tried a reboot & power drain? Just in case...

 

Ahh, I have an idea... in case your driver crashed earlier your card will automatically downclock itself until you reboot the system... so in case your driver crashed this will be the issue, otherwise there's a different problem.

 

Still can't get it to work. I just re-installed Windows and it didn't help.

 

Which BIOS version do you have? And which drivers?

 

Im running A09 and 26x.xx from Dell.

 

I just tried bios versions A07, A08, and A09, none of which fixed it

 

And it just stays at these clocks or does it go to 2d clocks?

 

It goes from 135/135 and .8 volt to 405/324 .8 volt.

Thanks for helping me

 

I have Intel i7-740QM, the core clocks stay around 2600-2800 MHz. When playing older games like CS:Source the clock speeds will stay in that ballpark.

When I load up Dragon Age 2 the clock speeds drop closer to the 1800 MHz range. This definitely doesn't seem right. There is a thread discussing FPS for DA2 on the m15x and everybody seems to kill my FPS numbers, including people with the same video card.

Any idea?

 

I don't know Dragon Age 2 well, so this should be taken with a grain of salt. The 740QM ( Intel® Core? i7-740QM Processor (6M cache, 1.73 GHz)with SPEC Code(s)SLBQG ) has a max turbo speed of 2930 MHz for one core, but if all cores are working hard, the clock speed slows closer to the 1960 MHz base clock speed. Though you can't adjust the maximum speeds, you could get Throttlestop (search this board) and see what is happening. It is possible that you are having some heat issues that could be improved with cleaning the fans (compressed air, machine off) and possibly repasting.

What video card do you have? Do the others who are posting better fps have a similar configuration?

Joe

 

You didn't mod the vbios? I already experienced similar symptoms when trying to change the voltage of a card. The voltage got forced down and the clock speed was forced at a low value as well.

I can't remember all the nvidia stuff, but isn't there a powermizer (or whatever it is called) function which helps saving battery and could be causing this?
You say you clean installed the OS... and the problem is still there. So this might be a hardware issue. Do you still have warranty on your system?