Starting laptop off on the right foot?

Hello everyone,

You may have seen my thread about my purchase of a new MSI Stealth from XoticPC. It's been a couple weeks and is finally set to be delivered Wed(July 30th ) . I've had laptops in the past but this is easily the biggest investment I've ever made in a computer. It's going to have 2 128GB SSD's in RAID 0 and a regular 500GB HDD. So my question for everyone is your tips and/or opinions and do's or don'ts to getting everything off to a good start? What, if any, programs(anti-virus etc..) are recommended to install? And are their any programs I should stay far away from? Also about the 3 drives. Never had to deal with 3 drives like this. Is there a certain, recommended, way to install different games or programs etc..?

Thanks in advance!
Rob

 

Commonly used games on the SSD and less common games on the HDD (same for applications), keep the heatsinks clean with compressed air every 2-3 months.

 

Thanks for the tip/s, Meaker!

Rob

 

I would recommend you do all your Windows updates first before installing or uninstalling anything. Next, update all your drivers like GPU, Wi-fi card, etc. Then start uninstalling the massive massive amount of bloatware MSi has. Keep ELAN pointing device (touchpad controls), SCM (MSi controller for webcam disabling), and Steelseries Default (powers your keyboard backlighting). Get rid of stuff like Norton and Windows apps you won't use. Install your internet browser and go from there

 

I always use my USB stick version of Acronis True Image 2014 to clone the boot drive to some small 2.5" I have lying about before I use a new system. I want to be able to easily go back to the original build w/o doing the system restore. I also clone the fully setup system with all updates and my games (My Windows systems are primarily gaming platforms). That way I can get all my games (Steam and Blizzard only) retired if I have a failure without the long download/install steps.

Cheers,

 

Backing up your recovery image onto a USB drive is a good idea. Or you can go the route panzer does and clone the entire drive (which may be more viable if you want to do so after updating Windows, installing and removing software, and updating drivers).

And of course: enjoy it! Treat it well and it should respond in kind.

 

Thanks for the tips HazrD, panzer, and Prostar! Appreciate it!

Got the computer Wed but wasn't able to use it for the first time until yesterday. Have to admit, I'm pretty disappointed to say the least. First the good. Love the look and feel, portability. And the Laptop came completely updated with latest updates and drivers, and also all the bloatware already removed. Which also leads to the bad. Since everything was removed, It's missing several of the MSI programs etc.. Half of the LED's behind the keyboard are burned out/don't work. Only tried one game(vanilla Minecraft) and it laaaags. Justs as bad, if not worse, then current laptop. And the worst part, the screen! For one it's soo "muddy", dull, and lifeless. . I think(hope) this is because of the matte screen and a gloss type screen would look much better. Would REALLY like others opinions on this. Would the glossier screen be a better investment? The screen also suffers from blinking/flashing when in darker areas or images.

Luckily, Josh at XoticPC has been AMAZING! Listened to my complaints. Told me to try it for the weekend and If I'm still unhappy, I can return it monday for a full refund.

 

You can download MSI software from their page so don't sweat it. The backlight keyboard lights upn in three different zones and different colors. It is possible that since the keyboard software was uninstalled, one or more zones remained configured as OFF so they don't light up. Try downloading the led manager/steel series keyboard software to customize it.

As for the games, what is the color of the LED when running games, on your power button? Make sure you are running the game with your dedicated graphics card and not the integrated intel card. This happens a lot with low end games like Minecraft and many others.

As for the screen, the matter finish is much different than a gloss type. This is up to personal preference but while glossy enhances definition and colors, it is way to reflective causing distractions when looking at the screen as well as reflecting back external light sources. Matte screens are less vibrant sometimes but they make up for it with a more even experience. If is possible that you might need to calibrate the screen and or colors with the nvidia/intel control panel. Maybe increasing a bit of color saturation will bring life to your screen

 

Thanks a TON for the assistance!

Sorry, forgot to mention that the SteelSeries LED software IS one that wasn't removed. I set it up how I wanted it(all lit up in Red). Almost positive it's faulty hardware. LED's are random. Examples - F1, F7, F8, F9, Enter, Shift, and one of the Alt keys are Completely out. While keys like(examples) Volume up, F10, F12, Brightness Up, and one CTRL key are halfway out.

The LED on the power button is White while playing Minecraft. How do you change it so games use the GTX?

The screen was Professionally Calibrated from XoticPC. Matte is just not for me. On a Sony Viao right now, and used an Alienware 18 earlier today, both of which have glossy screens. Much prefer the glossy. Reflections shouldn't be much of a problem as I don't play much it brightly lit rooms. But I think this screen may be defective as well because it has "flickering" at times and some really bad color banding.

Thanks again for taking your time to try and help another out, ryzeki!
Rob

 

For the keyboard, I have the stealth as well and it might be fine. All of those keys you mentioned do look dimmer on mine, but they're still lit. I think its because they don't have any fn options, as well as just how the keyboard is lit. If you are in a pitch dark room and you make your screen black, then turn the keyboard backlight off and on (fn + +/-, on the far right), you should easily be able to see the light difference then. If not, then yeah its faulty. Also try changing the color in the steelseries engine, the default red seem to be kinda weird sometimes.
The power button will be red when the nvidia card is being used. right click your desktop, nvidia control panel, manage 3d settings. then you can select which card to use for different programs.
The matte vs glossy is definitely preference, i personally much prefer the matte. the flickering doesnt sound good though, i cant say ive experienced anything like that.

 

Thanks for the input, Arcanine!

I've been playing around with the keyboard and you could very well be right. My only opposition would be that some are only HALF lit. I was told by XoticPC that keyboard LED's not working is common on these laptops too. I've also been trying to get Minecraft to use the GTX but it refuses(power light stays white). I've changed settings, applied them, saved them etc. Nothing has worked.

As far as the screen, yea I just can't get over how "dull" it is.

Another question and something I don't understand, I've run Microsoft Performance Index, and while overall it's good, the Graphics and Gaming Graphics scores are lower than the scores I get on my Radeon HD 7650M by over a full point. Why is this and what(if any) changes/upgrades could be made(after I return this laptop) to improve these scores?

Thanks again,
Rob

 

WEI is probably running on Intel and there is no way to force it to run on Nvidia - Optimus isn't compatible with WEI. And it's meaningless in every case. WEI is left out from Windows 8.1.

 

You can still run it in 8.1. Albeit more difficult to do. That's what I did and I'm 8.1.

 

Yes, I ran it,too. Got worse figure than my 4 years old laptop which has no Optimus. Futile.

 

Why struggle to run a worthless benchmark when there are better ones?

 

So does anyone know why Minecraft won't run on the GTX or how to get it run on it?

Rob

 

if you selected the nvidia gpu in the nvidia control panel it should run it. do you have any other games you could try? might just be your minecraft, im not sure. install geforce experience if that was one of the programs uninstalled, then optimize minecraft within it. msi afterburner might help too

 

Thanks for the ideas, Arcanine. I'm returning this laptop and another, slightly upgraded, is being built as we speak. Once I get that one, I'll try your ideas. Will let you know.

Thanks,
Rob

 

Got the new laptop yesterday. Going through updates after updates.. Once those are done, I'm going to uninstall all the bloatware. Can anybody help me out/list which programs I can uninstall and which ones I need to keep? Thanks in advance!

Rob

 

Would be easier if you provided a list of what you have, then get feedback of which can go and stay.

 

There aren't many, but Symantec products are the bloatware you should remove.
If you open up the list, you should notice a few of them that can be removed.
1. Symantec
2. Microsoft Office

If you post the screenshot of your "Uninstall Program" then we can help further.

 

Thanks for the help, fellas.

 

Hutsady? Kevin?

 

I don't see any bloatware. Did you install Magix? If you didn't, that might not be something you want. The Microsoft Office entry doesn't say "Trial". If you didn't install it then it is probably a trial and should be removed. I thought most MSI laptops come with some version or other of trial antivirus software. I don't see that in your list which makes me think maybe they removed it before shipping it to you. I don't see any issues there with stuff you need to get rid of.

Did you learn how to force a game to use the nVidia card instead of built-in graphics? If not, you go into the nVidia Control Panel, and select "Manage 3D settings on the left. In the right hand pane you will see two tabs. The second one is "Program Settings". On that tab you can add a new program like Minecraft or any other and select whether to use the discreet graphics card. I have had to do this for a few things such as emulators. I don't recall if I had to do it for Minecraft. Almost every "big name" type game is set up automatically and you don't have to change anything.

 

Yea, I had already removed the Norton antivirus stuff. That's the only thing I removed. And Java is the only thing I've installed. The rest came with the machine. So Magix and Microsoft Office are the only 2 I should uninstall?

Yes thank you, I got some help with this on another forum. Thanks!

What about apps? Any you can think of to look for to delete/uninstall?

Rob

 

You have a different laptop than I do. Mine did not come with Magix. I looked it up and it is a sound studio type of thing as far as I can tell. Maybe useful to a DJ? The Microsoft Office entry is usually a trial version of Office. That's an expensive package and I'm sure your laptop didn't come with that included free. You can remove that and free up some space. I'm nervous about the Magix. Since it is sound related I can't be sure it didn't come with the driver package for your sound card so I can't give you intelligent advice on it. MS Office can go but I don't know about Magix. All the rest of it looks like things I would not remove on my laptop.

I just messed around with Minecraft on my machine... started getting back into it again. I had to add the javaw.exe to NVidia control panel in order to force Minecraft to run accellerated. Just adding Minecraft.exe did not do it... as a matter of fact, Minecraft.exe was already in the list and set to use my 780m but it wasn't doing it. Once I added javaw.exe to the list it worked fine. Two other items to note for Minecraft, you can add some arguments to the launcher profile to increase the RAM it uses from 1GB to however much you want and using the x64 version of the JRE or JDK helps with performance too.

 

The only 2 things remained are Office (trial), and Magix which is like photoshop.
However, none of these should really be called bloatware.
Some systems have crazy load amount of bloatware, but not much for MSI.
Beat it, bloatware: How to clean the crap off your PC | PCWorld

 

Thanks fellas! I think I have gotten rid of all the unwanted programs and/or apps.

Now I have a question about the vBIOS. The version on my laptop is 80.04.F7.00.0D. The latest version on the MSI website is 80.04.F7.00.0E. So my question is, assuming the one on the website is newer version, should I update?

Thanks,
Rob

 

My rule with any bios update is:

If everything I'm running works great I don't mess with it. Unless you're trying to resolve some issue that you have a reasonable belief will be resolved by updating the vbios I wouldn't do it. Just my 2 cents.

 

Thanks panzer! That's usually my opinion as well(with all updates). Kevin from GenTech says to go ahead and update. The update process looks like a major pain/hassle though. Hmmm...what to do, what to do.....

 

Got my laptop back(after SSD upgrade) yesterday. Once again going through the process of updates. I'm having problems with SCM. The one already installed is Out of date and seems to crash everytime I try to use it(starts up fine). When I installed the newest version though, it doesn't work/start at all. Any ideas? Laptop is custom from GenTech if any of you guys could assist?

Thanks,
Rob

 

Somebody? Anybody? Heeeelp...

 

What version is it? And what's the crash code?

 

Ok, I got a couple more questions about my Stealth 037. I'm so ignorant on some things, so please excuse me.

So I have the 2 SSD / 1 regular drive set up. I'm going to be putting most all games/programs on the SSD's. And put all Pictures/Documents/Music etc.. on the regular 1 TB drive. First question, does that HDD need to be formatted first? It's giving me the option to do so. And then how can/do I move the Pictures, Documents, Music, etc.. folders from the SSD's to the regular drive?

Next question is the display. Overall it's good but sometimes in dark places I get AWFUL color banding issues. Is this normal for this monitor? How can it be improved? Also what's the best way to go about calibrating the screen?

Thanks in advance for any help!,

Rob

EDIT - Pretty sure the screen is an AUO panel.

 

BUMP

Ok so I got the drive issue taken care of. Still looking for help/advice on calibrating the panel. Anybody help out?

Thanks,
Rob

 

First thing to try is using the built in Calibrate Display Color that Windows has built into it. You can find it by typing exactly that into the search bar.

 

First thing to try is using the built in Calibrate Display Color that Windows has built into it. You can find it by typing exactly that into the search bar.

 

Thanks for the reply. Yes I have tried the Calibrate Display Color utility and it did help some. But the color still seems off and the color banding is still awful!

Any other recommendations?

Rob

 

You can do a google search to see if anyone has posted any color profiles for your same model. Download then try those. You can also get a color calibration setup like Spyder.

 

There is third party software that offers the ability to adjust individual parameters, similarly to how you would do so on an external monitor via its OSD. How well they work (IF they work) is hearsay, but you won't know for sure until you try.