Alienware M17XR3 HDMI-input connector does not work

Hey JAG, I am more than happy to help you fix this problem.

May I ask what version of drivers you are using?

The nvidia drivers above 285 tend to have this issue, in which plugging something into the HDMI-IN will cause the drivers to turn off the I/O port on the GPU, which causes the screen to shut off.

Dell/AW/nVidia are all aware of the issue and are working to correct it. In the meantime the best resolution is the roll back your driver to 285 and test, and then roll back to an earlier driver if not working with 285.

If you still need help, please post here or feel free to message me and I will be happy to assist further.

try rebooting your device you are plugging into your m17x. have you tried using the FN+F8? I know i had the same problems when first tried it...shoot i had to send my back to Dell because my HDMI IN port had bent pins. check your pins they might be bad. if not restart the m17x and try again. If nothing else works then i would contact Dell. Also have you made sure all your drivers are up-to-date?

I am surprised that you were unable to install them. Are you doing clean installs when you installed the other drivers?

Thanks for helping, but i was unable to get it to work. I tried the 285.62, 285.27 (oldest), 296.10, and 301.24 (newest) driver while restarting my laptop and devices in between. I could not install any older drivers because it said it could not find compatible hardware. Any more suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

I just tried to do clean installs on older drivers with no success. It says "the graphic driver could not find compatible graphics hardware".

The best thing I would recommend at this point would be giving a call in. Its a concern if it wont detect the hardware for the older drivers, even though it does detect for current drivers.

the 263 driver would be the best setup here.

I would give a call in, if nothing more than to create a paper trail for further review. Its possible that you may need a replacement of the hardware, but im just curious why it wont detect for old drivers, but will detect for newer drivers.

Have you had the chance to go into the device manager and completely uninstall the drivers before trying to reinstall?

I have called dell and after long conversation and the technical support guy using alien contact said that that fixing the hdmi-input problem was not his department but it was for the gaming service department(even though I told him several times throughout the conversation that it was an hdmi input problem.) He said that I would have to set it up through them. I think he might have misunderstood my problem; is it really a gaming service problem or a technical support problem?

I have the same hardware you have and also the same problem. The problem is a driver problem. Something got broken in driver version 285.62 and above.

The problem gets resolved if you downgrade to 280.26. The difficult part is to get 280.26 working since the installer says your hardware is incompatible with the driver. Note: I have Windows 7 64-bit. This is the workaround:

1.- Download inf file located here: www.laptopvideo2go.com/.../nvwi.inf

2.- Download nvidia's official 280.26 driver from support page: www.nvidia.com/.../notebook-win7-winvista-64bit-280.26-whql-driver.html

3.- Unzip (double-click) the driver file.

4.- Go to the unzipped driver's directory and then to the Display.Driver directory.

5.- Replace the file  nvwi.inf with the one you got from step 1.

6.- Install the driver.

7.- Reboot.

Hope this works!

Switching/reverting to older drivers just to use HDMI-IN is a pain, Nvidia needs to resolve this.

Beta 301.24 and still had the same problem; monitor shuts off.

WHQL 280.26 works fine with HDMI-IN.

Has anyone been able to get the 3D working with PS3 and HDMI-IN? I havn't had any luck yet.

Hey Alex ur fixed worked just fine. I was having the same problem as the guy that posted this. they kept trying to charge me money saying it was a configuration problem. I just have one problem now. I put my sound to the highest level but the volume is super low i can barley hear the sound it never use to be like this. Is there anyway i can make it so my volume can go louder?

New info on this (and second option to resolve issue)   (dopelol, hope this resolves your issue since you can use newer drivers)...

I been talking with a guy at Nvidia and he says that the problem is that I am using their reference drivers instead of the drivers supplied by Dell/Alienware. Well, that is true. I went looking for drivers at Dell's site and the only one I can find is Release Date: 8/2/2011      Version: A01 269.03. Too old for me.

He said that I could also try this option. I haven't tried it, buy if anyone uses it, please post the results here.

1. Make sure you are running the 296.10 driver or newer driver. [www.nvidia.com/.../notebook-win7-winvista-64bit-296.10-whql-driver.html]. If not then install the driver and restart Windows.

2.Go to the registry location where all the grpahics drivers are located. In my case it was on:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{8BE694F3-B078-4DAD-9F9C-F77B607024CE}\0000

3. Create a new key by right-clicking on the right-hand pan of the registry editor window and then select "New" > "DWORD (32-bit) Value".

4. Label the name of the new key as "DisableHPDFakeMonitor".

5. Once key has been created, double click the new key and then add the "1" to Value data area. Click OK to save.

6. Restart Windows.

7. Check HDMI-In functionality.

@AlexG, confirmed using the registry key as "DisableHPDFakeMonitor = 1 works perfectly!

Verde Version 301.42 - WHQL Windows 7/Vista 64-bit\

Thanks!

WOW that actually worked, I can't believe it! After trying so many other suggestions that just brought me back to the same spot. very nice Alex and thanks for the heads up on this post CiNcRoN. You guys saved me a long long long phone call to the overseas help Dell has hired. Anyways works perfectly! Very happy!