Alienware Aurora R4 ALX MIO Board Issue

Can u give this a read: Help having Aurora R4 function properly on the Rampage IV Gene

CmndCntr 2.8.11 / 3 / 3.5 / 3.6 will not install on a non-Aurora mthrbrd due to a software block. 2.8.9 requires .netframework4 installed for it to work.

note the MIO USB is the black connector, lower right, #25

Justin9985 tends to be the seller on eBay whom I suppose you're referring to, I wonder if you've messaged your seller about tips & tricks over this problem. From the sound of it you've done the basics. As a last resort, remember I suggested buying another MIO, they're reasonably cheap.

"when I unplugged the usb cable from the MIO board to the motherboard the fans are quiet and all the lights work but when I hook it up again then the fans are on max and the lights are out" Doesn't sound good; when I unplug my MIO USB cable, my lights all turn white. Your unknown device is of course the best clue. Normally, Tesla & I have tried to encourage people to disconnect the MIO USB during a clean Windows install, and after Windows installs, at a certain you plug it back in, bam the driver installsl this is due to reports that having the MIO USB plugged in during a clean Windows install has an odd effect on the board, perhaps similar to yours. I'm not sure how to force install the driver, but I would try the jumper reset trick:

• Alienware Desktops MIO (Master Input/Output) Troubleshooting and Policy
• reinforce it with power dissipations inbetween jumper pole switching to press the point of these reset techniques

If you move to a different version of CmndCntr, like down to a 2.7 or 2.5, uninstall CC 1st. Use the landmarks chart to verify all your wiring, & when you're out of ideas, like I am, replace board. Let me know if anything here helped. I'll post back if anything else occurs to me, it is late here, good luck

For those who need basic pertinent MIO / Command Center Help from Dell:

• Desktop Command Center Issues with fans, lights, or vents
• various procedures outlined

Wow, I didn't expect such a quick response thank you!  I will take a look at that thread later as I have to work late today. As for the command center I have .net installed the latest version and yes Justin9985 I believe was the person I bought the case and wiring setup from.  I messaged him the problems I have been encountering, but so far hes stumped as well and said hes never had these types of issues when he sets up the cases he makes. Although he always did them completely for people to insure that there were no issues. I only ordered the case, motherboard and cpu from him and he wired it all up for me I did the rest of the hardware installs. One last detail I forgot to include which matches exactly with what your saying about the windows install. Before I even installed the OS, I had to power on my pc to make sure certain fans were running in the case and when I did the fans in the case would run quiet and the lights were on as well they were a green color. Then afterwards I first installed the OS onto a 1TB HDD due to my SSD not showing up in the bios for some reason. I didn't check in device manager to see if my MIO appeared yet, as I was trying to both get my SSD to work and follow the instructions that Justin sent me. Turns out I forgot to plug my SSD in which is why it didn't appear so I had to reinstall windows again to it. Both times I did this though the MIO board wiring including the usb to motherboard cable was plugged in. At the time I didn't know I had to have that main usb plug unplugged because I was afraid of unplugging something and forgetting where it goes because Justin did all the wire work for me since I had no clue, nor could find any tutorials online on how to properly wire it. So all summed up my MIO board was connected fully during both installs of windows which is why its probably acting the way it is just like you said. I'll try the jumper trick as its the only thing I've yet to do and may work since I know the board isn't fired/bricked just stuck in some mode. However, if that doesn't work I'll get a new MIO board and just reconnect it then. Thanks again for all your great input though and I'll get back to you later on tonight.

We might call an MIO board soft-bricked if it is fussy after a clean Windows install, where we'd rely on power dissipation & jumper resets to un-soft-brick it. In this thread we tried to revive a truly hard-bricked mio, threw everything at it basically: MIO Board Died ... highlight USB in device manager, scan for hardware changes, no luck. Install & reinstall motherboard USB drivers, no luck. Device manager, unknown device, get online, allow Microsoft updates to look for / install MIO driver, no luck. I believe those were steps tried anyways. In the end, a new mio was needed. In the Gene IV link I gave u, I believe a different version of CmndCntr cured things.

In 'MIO board died', Klengen had no recourse but an mio swap which worked, & even more recently an Area-51 owner contacted me, who in an attempt to re-use the Gen1 i7 had bought an Asus X58 mthrbrd, but zero luck in getting AlienFx to work with it. I was skeptical, why wouldn't an mio feel right at home tethered to an Asus? Again, the kitchen sink was thrown at it, but in the end the mio was replaced & when it was?, AlienFx was had at the snap of a finger using a different mio. Whether it was him or you, I think it is possible if either of your pc's was here I could get AlienFx to work sooner or later, even if I can't type out every single last 'trick' to try & pass it down through the forum posts. What it would take is for me to come across a truly pesky one which needed help above and beyond the published advice, but, I've yet to personally come across one that failed to work with a non-original mthrbrd. The three mio's I had here that were fussy when tied to an Asus easily responded with the jumper reset, so I trust it to un-soft-brick at least some of them roaming out there in the wild.

Perhaps Justin can trade your mio, he 1st sends you a known-good one, you return yours later where he can possibly get it working again in his shop. Replacing yours would be a disappointing failure of sorts, but, do what you have to do when all else fails.

MIO driver is listed under HID Devices; if yours isn't there, your mio is the unknown device

start pc up with mio usb unplugged, then power down, then reconnect it, then power back up; you are looking for Windows to have installed the driver at startup. Repeat that process til it does, (instances of usb unplugged / & reconnected, so the mthrd 'sees' & does not see this usb device). if it does install driver (mio driver listed under HID)?, install / reinstall CmndCntr as many times as you think 'should have' returned the system to normal. Give up when u think these tips will not work.

Well, I just got back from messing around with my pc for 3 hours and here are the steps that I took to fix my MIO board problem.

1. First, I followed what you said in the MIO board died thread doing these steps "Place your Green jumper on the pole/pin next to where it sits right now. Power up, shut down. Do a PDR. Take green jumper off, place it to the side, power up, power down. PDR. Place green jumper back on its original poles, power up ... see if it fixed it." Did this step and nothing so far.

2. Second, I followed your next step in the same thread "No? Do another Reset series: this time, disconnect your usb cable 1st. Everytime you power down, do a PDR.

Switch pole, pwr up / pwr down. PDR, remove jumper, pwr up / pwr down. PDR. Replace jumper. Pwr up / pwr down. PDR. Reconnect USB, pwr up. Now does it work? Check device mngr, try to install drivers on an unknown USB device if Windows did not." Same thing nothing changed.

3. Followed what Chris M said in the thread for MIO troubleshooting.

Jumper Reset

* Shutdown the PC

* Open the case cover and find the MIO board

* Locate the green plastic jumper on the MIO board

* The jumper is on pins 1/2

* Remove the jumper

* Turn the system on. Once into Windows, do a proper shutdown (turn power off)

* Place the jumper on pins 2/3

* Turn the system on. Once into Windows, do a proper shutdown (turn power off)

* Return the jumper to pins 1/2

* Turn the system on

4. Finally, tried one last drastic step by shutting down, PRD, unplugging both my usb headers, then removing the green jumper from the MIO board. Restarted, shut down, PDR, then switched the usb headers to where they were originally connected and plugged the green jumper back into pins 1/2. Turned it back on no change still.

So now I've decided to give up on doing any more troubleshooting work as I have exhausted all available options. I'm pretty sure my MIO board is damaged/toast after I had installed windows twice while having the usb mio cable connected to the motherboard during both installs. I already knew how fragile these boards were when it came to installing the Command Center software on them, but I had no idea that having it connected during OS installs would affect/soft brick it as well. If you could though could you please tell me what kind of new board to buy? Would this work? www.ebay.com/.../121796815179  There are cheaper ones on ebay, but I don't know how much they've been used, but at the same time I'd hate to spend almost a $100 dollars on a board and have something happen again after doing all the work to replace it. If you could give me some advice on which one to buy I would greatly appreciate it. I want to buy it ASAP so I can get it and reinstall it on a day I have off from work. Thanks!

Sorry nothing worked, I'm as bummed as you are about it. Your mio will have a white part# tag on it, lower left corner; 2JXP2 is for ALX, V51MH & P0GVP are for standard, so if you confirm your part# I'll survey the available units & vendors you'd be choosing from. I think you should ask Justin to send you another one if he can, or to offer a remedy of sorts. MIO's are searched by part# or search term:

• Aurora i/o >< Aurora master

I'll take for granted you have an ALX with 2JXP2. The pattern of behavior on eBay, you will have individuals & vendors; if you see a vendor, chances are you want one from Texas - since Dell is headquarted in Texas - and Dell will cut their stock loose to these local vendors thus assuring you're most likely going to get a part direct from Dell, where the vendor is simply your middleman. I see a few Texas-based vendors for 2JXP2, I would probably buy the manufacture refurb for ~$63, it is offered by the same vendor you linked to, they have three prices, any from them would be ok.

Sorry for the late reply, but yeah it's unfortunate, but there's nothing more I can do about it except for replacing the board is all. I tried to text message him back about what happened, but he hasn't got back to me. However, it's not really his fault he did all the wiring work and it was all fine, but it was my fault for not properly researching on installing the board and accidentally soft bricking it. I also took a look at my part tag# its exactly the same as the sequence you said 02JXP2. It also has a similar part number to the one in that ebay link I shared. Also, thanks for all the part info as well! Now that I know what kind it is I think I'm going to order one of the manufacture refurbished ones. It's not super expensive or a very used one, but your recommendation sounds great though so I'm going to order one tonight. I'll let you know more about it after I order it and I get it in the mail.

Again, your MIO driver installed if it's listed as an HID device. In my Windows 10 post, I documented what happened; I'd unplugged MIO USB, install 10, reconnect USB, I assume the driver loaded once 10 recognizes MIO is now attached, & I boot into 100% fans which were cured on a restart; similar to your scenario however my lights reverted from white to red, a good sign. Yours as we know spazzes out for some odd reason.

I find it hard to go back & read some of my old posts, but I hope I mentioned that trying to induce Windows to install the MIO driver, sometimes you want to boot up with the MIO USB unplugged, power down, plug it back in, restart, such that you're giving Windows a startup instance without the MIO attached so that the next time it starts up & it is re-attached then Windows should oblige by trying to install the driver; if it doesn't, you repeat this over & over - unplug usb / plug it back in - hoping eventually windows installs drivers. You would sprinkle in as many times as you can, power drains & jumper resets, the idea being to show Windows instances where it isn't plugged in & then reintroduce the MIO to it on the next startup attached / plugged in, so it can try to install the driver & I'm not sure I have time to explain it better than that. Inside of all that, you can try to uninstall / reinstall CmndCntr, hoping it might 'force' install the driver on-the-spot or after the reboot it needs. Obviously when you've had enuff of that u buy / try a new one.  

The last thing I can think of, device manager, clik unknown device, try to update driver both through online windows update & 'search my pc for driver' etc. If no good, you can do a manual driver search (let me choose driver etc), if I pretend you have CmndCntr 2.8.9 installed then it is possible the MIO driver is on the hard drive at least in a folder, if so, it will be under HID devices / Dell Master I/O Filter driver or similar. It's been too long since I had to look for it in device manager, or do anything in device manager so I'm rusty with all the steps, but fool in there while you wait for your new MIO, good luck

Well I double checked again and the only area it appears under is Universal Serial Bus Controllers and it's shown as an unknown device. Also, in your post as you described trying to unplug the usb cable from mio to motherboard, power on then off, then replug, I did all of these steps at least twice so I know continuing to try and troubleshoot that way wont work. I did try and do the device manager trick you mentioned as I hadn't thought of that. I checked to see if windows could find the drivers online for it but it says I already have the latest and best drivers installed, yet under Device status it states that "No drivers are installed for this device." I tried also to check and see if the driver was located on the CC 2.8.9 and tried to install that one, but I get this error when I attempt to "The Installation Package is not compatible with this platform" Weird thing is that the other CC I used the oldest one installed with no issues at first, but it doesn't work when you try and run it. Which leads me to a quick question too when I do get the new board which CC should I install? Justin said in his instructions to install version 2.5.27 since the latest version is kinda buggy he said. I followed his instructions and installed it, but it doesn't work when you run it due to the MIO board not being detected. I noticed in your windows 10 thread you linked a bunch of versions that you can get which one would be best for my new board then? I don't want to use that old version since that's the same version I believe that comes on Dell Resource CDs that have bricked other peoples MIO boards due to it flashing old firmware over new ones. So I could try the other versions and see if those work I suppose but other than that I'm 95% sure to fix the issue I need to replace the board with a new one.

As a test, maybe with mio usb plugged in you could reinstall your mthrbrd USB drivers, see if doing that invokes a brand new instance of device discovery, if not, follow it up with highlighting USB Controllers > Action > Scan for Hardware Changes. With that, I'm tapped out of advice brother. What u need is Justin to send / trade u for a known good pre-tested MIO he keeps in stock.

here are some screenshots I took while in device manager. My software's installed because of the CmndCntr install I did & because the MIO works. Generally, the scenario should be that Windows installs MIO drivers from the get-go, long b4 a person installs CmndCntr, so i'm not sure where driver files lurk on your hard drive, but u can try to look for them in these system32 folders:

Using the uodate driver feature, I was able to find the filter driver amongst a list:

browse my computer

let me pick

driver is automatically there, but below I can uncheck 'show compatible hardware'

it's in my D'Alienware list

I'd assume CmndCntr should be installed to improve your chance of seeing similar in your device manager, you'd highlight your unknown device & go from there, knowing it is an HID device your trying to uncover which leads into a D'Alienware mio filter driver. If so, try to manually install it. Doing so may not cure your issue of course, but if it will install you would then try to get Windows to help out through device discovery, perhaps by changing the mthrbrd USB header you boot from, alternating which header you attach to during startup, all of this in combination with power drain resets, more jumper resets etc, throw in several CmndCntr install / reinstalls & 'repairs'.

Ok, I see you've had enuff of this, but I'm also trying to address & possibly help the next fellow who has issues, that was true yesterday, true today, I'm passing out info to anyone who may need it. The point is to do everything you can to un-soft-brick-it in the rare chance the next time you try a procedure it works & the board wakes up, where you're hoping for a fluke.

If you have win7 then 2.8.9 is what we would normally use, I myself wouldn't use a version earlier than 2.7, mainly because I don't have to. All versions newer than 2.8.9 can't install on an Asus due to a block, 2.8.9 should install on an Asus, that is the one I would try, but in that GeneIV post the guy was forced to move to an earlier version for some reason, so I might try the version he was on if forced to, 2.7.25 & If 2.8.9 fails to work, uninstall it 1st & move to the next version down, working your way down til u find one that works. At the near bottom of this post I archived all CC versions still available for download. 2.8 1st > 2.7 next > then work down the line til you land a winner or brick your board, whichever happens 1st (=

Before giving up on your mio there, I wonder if a brand new windows install (while mio usb is unplugged) followed by plugging it in afterwards might lead to an actual usb device discovery & driver install through Windows of course, like it's s'posed to happen, & if so then .netframework4 needs installed b4 CC is installed. I have umpteen hard drives, so doing a 30minute reinstall is no issue here, but consider it if you have a spare drive or can install over your current drive in a last ditch attempt.  

That vendor? $63 or make an offer? offer $55, see what they say ...

Hello again sorry for the late reply, but I ordered a new MIO board off of ebay and should be in sometime early this week. I took another look at your post where you showed what the MIO driver should look like in device manager. Under HID my MIO filter driver isn't listed and under USB in device manager it still shows unknown device. I wanted to try and download the other versions of CC and install them so I could gain access to that MIO driver, but I cant install any of them. I've tried from version 2.8.9 all the way down to 2.6.17.0 and I always get the message "The Installation Package is not compatible with this platform" So the only version I've successful managed to install, but still not function right is version 2.5.27.0 but that package doesn't come with the MIO driver I believe because the later packages said in the description on dells site that they added it to them, but I can't install any of those. I was wondering would it be possible to send me a back up of your MIO driver files so I can try and manually install them? I can't gain access to them through the install packages because I cant install the software. Even if that's not possible that's alright though I still have the new one on the way and will see what happens when I properly install that one.

In this photo we see the MIO Filter Driver for 2.8.9 is split up into 5 separate files:

4 of them are basic Microsoft OS Files found in system32, the mio.sys is also in sys32, but from Dell:

You can check your sys32 folder to see if any or all of these are already in there. I suppose it's possible to place these 5 in a folder & use it as the designation place for Windows to 'look for driver for unknown device'. It occurs to me that if you installed CC2.5 it should have everything your mio needs, Windows itself should provide that certain something it needs. This is why right after the Windows install, you plug your mio usb back in, power up & bam, Windows loads what it needs. Anything 'else' it needs is provided through CmndCntr software. It is for that reason I suggested doing a Windows reinstall (with mio usb unplugged), then after that new install plug in the usb, boot up & see if windows does its thing by loading up that basic driver for it. It could be that Cmnd Cntr, after that is installed long afterwards updates with a better driver for it.

It has been a while since I got a platform error / block when installing CC. If the error prompt happens right away that is one thing, however I've had CC also try to unpack CmndCntr into a temp folder, then 30seconds later give a platform error; if that is the case, before exiting the error prompt u can sniff in that temp folder CC unpacks to, ok? If the error prompt allows you to see the failed install log, I believe it will say the name of the temp folder it dumped CC files.

I'm not averse to sending you the 5 files in the 1st photo. I am a member of dropbox, but have never shared files there, just received one a long time ago. I doubt I can email them to you.

Did some more troubleshooting just now from the advice you gave and I reinstalled CC 2.8.9 and tried the temp file trick to see what files were in there. I found a folder called MioFilterDriverV2 which was an Win32 exe and tried to run it, got a security error fixed that, and then tried to run it as administrator but it wouldn't run at all. Since that didn't work, I tried to once again to scan for drivers for the unknown device in device manger and set it to scan for drivers in the Windows32 folder. I still get the message "The best driver software for your device is already installed." Then I checked my sys32 folder and found 3 of the 5 files that you have in your device manager. I'm missing mio.sys and WdCoInstaller01009 but honestly, I'm just exhausted now from trying all these troubleshooting options. I could try to reinstall the OS, but I have a very strong feeling that it wouldn't fix anything especially with everything else I've already done and I just don't want to have to reinstall all my drivers and update everything a second time when I'm pretty comfortable with everything else that I've got working now. Thanks for all the tips and assistance, but I'm 99% sure I just need to replace the board so many other threads I've read about MIO board issues were always usually fixed with replacing the thing so that's my next step now. I'll get back to you when I've received the board in the mail.

yes, frustrating to no end. So which mthrbrd/cpu did you buy?