M11x R3, not completely computer illiterate, just mostly and need help

Question

Alright, so a long time ago (2011?) I bought an M11XR3 to tote along with me, and it had been great for a long while. I've decided to go back to school and need to resurrect this thing and bring it to current times for seamless use during such. I'll start with: I've already contacted dell "customer support" and their response was basically "dude, you had a dell!!! Time to start over because that thing is a dinosaur." Gee thanks for all the help. I refuse to believe that I can't make this little powerhouse do everything that I need it to do.

Since Win7 stopped being supported (and there was a fair amount of *ahem* extracurricular viruses) I decided that I would snag a new hard drive and basically hit reset. Currently, it's running fair with the 8GB RAM, 1TB Samsung SSD, i7, whatever outdated graphics card is in it, and a copy of WIN10 Pro from work. My problems are as follows:

1) I miss being able to control the lighting and such, i think it was called AlienFX? and can't seem to find anything to make it work.

2) I cannot for the life of me get the bluetooth to function or even recognize that the hardware exists.

Any and all help beyond "buy a new laptop" (thanks customer support, but these things aren't exactly cheap) is greatly appreciated!

*Edit* - I'm not opposed to replacing the bluetooth hardware if need be to function with Win10, but there was nothing wrong with it beforehand.

mattyb3 · Answer

Hello! The M11x R3 is a great little machine, I've owned 3-4 of them over the years.

On the bottom of your machine you will have a little sticker with a Service Tag printed on it. Go to the Support page on this website and punch in this Service Tag. From there select the Drivers and Downloads tab. You will see the Alienware Command Center Application. Installing this will allow you to control your AlienFX again.

You can also take a look for your Bluetooth driver here. Hopefully manually installing it will fix your issue. You may also see a blue tab that says Detect Drivers. You can use this function to help find drivers that need to be updated on your laptop. Just be careful for any BIOS updates. Only flash a BIOS if you are having issues with the laptop as a bad flash can brick your system and Dell won't help at all.

bvodron · Answer

@mattyb3, thanks for the response. I have tried every BT driver that I could find on the Dell site so far to no avail. I've also tried a couple of third party sites with no luck.

I haven't seen anything about the Alienware command center, but will look a little harder. Thank you.

bvodron · Answer

I guess I should also state that it's an R2, not an R3.. that's my mistake, although I'm sure it doesn't matter much at this point. I actually found some files in one of the bluetooth downloads that I didn't see before that recently brought the bluetooth back to functional, so SCORE on that... now I am on to trying to regain control of my lighting. When I put in my service tag ID, nothing comes up for command center, nor will anything come up if I do a search for it. Any ideas?

A51-06 · Answer

You need to download Windows 7 again to reinstall the Command center again.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=dvv2x&oscode=w764&productcode=alienware-m11x-r2

Bluetooth:

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=ttw58&oscode=w764&productcode=alienware-m11x-r2

bvodron · Answer

@Alienware Area-51 ALX 2006  Is there a way to patch the win7 command center to function with win10? Would rather not take a step back in time to an unsupported version if I don't have to.

A51-06 · Answer

Sorry man. It's the only way unless you run windows compatible mode which you can use it to make the app think its o

mattyb3 · Answer

The Win7 version of Command center works perfectly fine with Win10. I have it running on my M18x with no issues.

mattyb3 · Answer

@Alienware Area-51 ALX 2006   Where did you find an MXM 2080? I know that the Quadro cards are available (RTX 3000, 5000) but I didn't think the 20xx series were coming out until later this year (if at all).

A51-06 · Answer

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NVIDIA-RTX-2080-N18E-G3-8GB-CLEVO-P75xDM2x-P775DM3x-ohne-without-G-SYNC/283794610762?_trkparms=aid%3D1110006%26algo%3DHOMESPLICE.SIM%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20131231084308%26meid%3D72974c6eb4804a4a8c77d47f28858a39%26pid%3D100010%26rk%3D3%26rkt%3D12%26sd%3D132960535674%26itm%3D283794610762%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2047675%26algv%3DDefaultOrganic%26brand%3DCLEVO&_trksid=p2047675.c100010.m2109

mattyb3 · Answer

Sorry, I meant the standard MXM 3.0b cards. Did you get the Clevo card to work in your 18? It usually it means some modding to the MXM port, Heatsink and/or chassis.  Any power issues?

A51-06 · Answer

Nope, power draws for me are around 180watts at load and with a 250mhz core overclock it reaches 195 watts.

Heatsink wasn’t modded. I just had to put fresh thermal pads and a dose of server grade paste that stays liquid for a very long time under extreme temps.

I love this laptop because even after 7 years it still works like new with the additional horsepower of the RTX 2080, it’s a force to be reckoned with. The 4930MX is also at 4.6Ghz to elevate any bottleneck issues but since it’s 4 cores and 8 threads, it still is pretty powerful.

mattyb3 · Answer

Any chance you can do a 'how-to' thread over at NotebookReview and include some benchmarks? It's a pretty huge thing you've done.

A51-06 · Answer

Really? I just bought the card and installed it normally inside of my laptop Like I said, The thermals and power draws are pretty low even when gaming.

I can’t really use notebook review forums because I’m always using the dell community thing, but you can post some of my info on there like how I did it?

My specs:

Core i7-4940MX @4.6Ghz

GeForce RTX 2080 MXM Card with 8Gb of VRAM

32Gb of DDR3 @1866Mhz

128Gb mSATA Drive for Boot

2Tb 2.5 inch 7200RPM HDD for games

330Watt powersupply

I bought the card from here:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NVIDIA-RTX-2080-N18E-G3-8GB-CLEVO-P75xDM2x-P775DM3x-ohne-without-G-SYNC/283794610762?_trkparms=aid%3D1110006%26algo%3DHOMESPLICE.SIM%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20131231084308%26meid%3D72974c6eb4804a4a8c77d47f28858a39%26pid%3D100010%26rk%3D3%26rkt%3D12%26sd%3D132960535674%26itm%3D283794610762%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2047675%26algv%3DDefaultOrganic%26brand%3DCLEVO&_trksid=p2047675.c100010.m2109

I didn’t do any Heatsink mods except adding some high quality server grade thermal paste on the GPU and added some high performance 2.0mm thermal pads.

Overclocking was done using MSI Afterburner

CPU oc was by Intel XTU

Alienware

M11x R3, not completely computer illiterate, just mostly and need help

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