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18392
Problems with my Area 51
Heya, heres my pc specs -
| Alienware Area 51 Lunar Shadow Standard Desktop Chassis |
| Intel® Core™ Core i7-980x (3.33GHz 12MB 6.4GT/sec) |
| Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64bit- English |
| McAfee® Security Center 30-Days trial version |
| 1 year of coverage included with your PC |
| 2GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 5970 graphics card |
| 6GB 1600MHz (3x2GB) Tri Channel Memory |
| 2TB Dual Hard Drive Raid 0 "Stripe" (2x1TB - 7200rpm) |
| Blu-Ray RW (Blu-ray, DVD, CD read & write) & 24X DVD+/-RW (DVD, CD read/write) |
| Display Not Included |
| No Keyboard |
| No Mouse |
| Killer™ Xeno™ Pro Network card |
| Integrated HDA 7.1 Dolby Digital Audio |
| 19-in-1 Media card reade |
so basically I got my Area 51 pc last week, at first all seemed to work fine, after a while though (a few days) I started encountering the blue/brown/grey/purple with black lines and stripe crashes whilst doing anything on my pc, like playing a game or browsing the internet, or watching a film, it seemed pretty random when it happened, I could have had my pc on all day or just for 10 minuites, either way it would crash my pc. the buttons would all be non-responsive and as a result am forced to reset the pc from the mains power supply.
After this happened, sometimes when I restarted my pc, it didn't detect either of my monitors on booting it up, so again, had to reset the pc. I don't know what it is exactly, whilst looking online it seems it may be a problem with the ATI drivers. So after having a phonecall with the Alienware support, they suggested I take the graphics card out, put it back in again, use different monitor cables etc still no use as it still crashed (mainly because I thought it was the drivers) either way, I updated the BIOS from A07 to A08 and after reading on these forums, not sure that was the best decision.
In the end I just reinstalled windows 7 on the system, to encounter my next problem, It still crashed my pc, I'm still getting glitches on the screen, and the main difference this time is that the AlienFX and Active venting are not being detected by the command center software, which is frustrating as I can't adjust the fan speed, as I thought maybe the graphics card was overheating, although my pc is in quite a ventilated area. So whilst reading up online again, I thought I may have installed the drivers in the incorrect order, so I proceeded to reinstall Windows 7 yet again... and well now I can't complete the installation without the graphics card failing and the pc restarting and crashing the pc again, and also as additional to that, each time I boot up my pc it won't detect either of my monitors that i'm using so it's just crashing each time, and as I said, each time I do manage to get through the boot up screen to try and reinstall windows, it just crashes in the middle of installation to i'm pretty stuck.
So yeah, sorry for the wall of text, just looking for any help at all, I've spoken to Alienware all week about this, with largely unhelpful information on how to fix it, although they did say they will send me a new graphics card, so maybe that may help, but that doesn't solve the issue with AlienFX or Active Venting. I guess when it comes down to it, the money I've spent on this machine, I expected it to last a lot longer than 1 week...
donta1979
30 Posts
0
June 25th, 2010 12:00
Feel your pain here iv owned a few alienware systems in the past before i knew they got bought out by dell first was an alienware area 51m 7700 notebook it worked ok, but i kept going though ati m28 aka x800 mobile gpus, and my notebook shell started to ripple/warp due to the heat it finally died a year later and i recieved 2nd degree burns from the solder coming out though the bottom.... alienware didnt even offer to compensate me in anyway sent in my notebook got it back new shell, the light on the top of the notebook with the alienware head was didnt work, the display came with scratche's they put put in a quadro, and the dvd drive still was not working correctly the older desktop I purchased from them in 05 had a bad motherboard, ram and a hard drive.... so after that whole ordeal I went back to building my own machines have not had any issues since, and if I buy a notebook I buy it directly from Sager the us branch of clevo that does all the high end gaming notebook designs for alot of companies like dell/alienware/hp and so on without the aftermarket parts. Most I will buy from alienware/dell is a case and thier lcds at this point. If you still have issues I would ask to get a couple of 480 GTX's to replace that ati card. On the plus side if you purchased a 120hz monitor you will be able to play in 3d as well with nvidias 3d vision kit.
But yeah it sounds like a gpu issue gl dealing with thier support.
antronoid
3 Posts
0
June 28th, 2010 14:00
As an update, recieved the new replaced graphics card and the PC booted up and havent had any graphical issues since then, but all my AlienFX stuff isn't working or being detected still :(
Tesla1856
8 Wizard
8 Wizard
•
17K Posts
0
June 28th, 2010 15:00
Press F12 at BIOS boot. Cursor down to Diags Partition. Run Diags on the MIO board. If that checks out, go into Windows, uninstall Command Center, reboot reinstall it, reboot, setup all three parts (make a small change in each and save it) and see if that works.
antronoid
3 Posts
0
June 29th, 2010 05:00
Just run through all of that, and well, the diags didnt show any problems, so reinstalled command center like you advised, and i got a new error messagethat said the "AlienwareFX controller stopped working" this is both good and bad because it didnt detect it before at all, and obviously bad because it stopped working :(
Tesla1856
8 Wizard
8 Wizard
•
17K Posts
0
June 29th, 2010 13:00
Yes, the F12 Diags (for MIO Board) seem to reset the MIO board somehow. So, you did all the MIO Board tests and they all passed? If so, that means the hardware is working and it's some kind of software problem.
Even though the hardware says it passes, I would still do a physical inspection at this point. Power down the PC and unplug AC power. On the MIO board, check all plugs. Especially, the 26 pin that comes from the motherboard and the 4 pin molex power. Then, check that the 3 connectors that plug it into the motherboard. On the Aurora, it's 2 usb's and 1 other small one (together, these make up the other side of the 26pin cable).
You might try disconnecting all extra external devices from PC. If you have the special Alienware mouse and/or keyboard you might try normal ones instead as a test. That way, if Command Center errors on install, you will know it's complaining about the MIO board and not some other AW part.
What version of Command Center are you trying to install? If the newest one doesn't work, try the next version back.