Alienware Alpha i7 & thrustmaster T500RS issues

Question

I have the following issues with the Alpha i7 and T500RS

1. During an F1 2013 or 2014 race using the T500RS wheel, if the Xbox 360 controller goes to sleep, I lose all Force Feedback in the wheel (goes limp). I have tested and confirmed this also by removing the batteries from the Xbox controller mid game. How can this be fixed without having to press a button on the controller every few minutes?? Its very annoying and ruins the gaming experience when I forget to press the xbox controller button :(

2. When I boot up the Alpha into Alpha GUI, and then proceed to the Steam GUI, I have an issue where if I touch the T500RS pedals while in the Steam GUI the Accellerator pedal is locked on. I checked the T500RS advanced settings and buttons menu in Windows 8, and for some reason the pedals are registering 50% on until I touch them - which then sends them to zero. I can only assume that the Steam GUI assumes the pedals are set at 0%, when they are actually 50% because of a calibration fail, and when I press a pedal they zero, but the Steam software registers this as -50% - and the Acc pedal registers like a D-pad down, so the Steam GUI menu is always going down and I have to fight against it with the Xbox controller in order to use the Steam Menu.

The interesting thing is that I have no issues in a racing sim game, but the issue persists once I exit the game and back into the Steam Menu. The issue does not seem to affect the Alpha GUI...

I have tried a brand new set of pedals, and also on another Windows 8 PC, and I cannot replicate the issue unless its on the Alpha, so there's an issue somewhere with the Steam GUI and Alpha. Please resolve, this issue is irritating..

1miracle2 · Answer

I kind of have similar (well maybe not exactly the same...) issues but I'm using the Logitech G27 and I'm not so sure it's the Apha UI or the Steam UI because I see my pedal @ 0% on normal desktop G27 set up option. However when I'm in Big Picture mode in Steam UI it seems like some thing, maybe not the pedal but it is as if the down menu is being help down. I tried my other Logitech wheel and had the same issue.

Wardski1974 · Answer

Yeah, I've heard G27 guys having the same issue.  For me its definitely the pedals causing the issue, because its not there if I don't touch the pedals in the Steam GUI, but the moment I touch any of them, the pedals must zero or cal, not sure, and then the down scrolling begins....  frustrating especially since the i7 Alpha is a cracking device (just installed a 1tb SSD in it too and uber snappy)

1miracle2 · Answer

I'm assuming you mean a 1Tb SSD. How much of a difference did this make? I'm getting horrible lag in Ultra High settings in NFS. I can't imagine how your game expertise was before SSD. I got the i7 as well. We paid premium price and got a 5400rpm hdd, what were they thinking? I understand not going with a 7200rpm drive because of heat but if it were such a concern they would have went SSD instead.

Wardski1974 · Answer

Oh yep, 1TB, not 1Gb lol.. The SSD difference is night and day. I got the Samsung 840 EVO (wasn't prepared to pay double for the 850 Pro for not much extra speed) and its brilliant. Boot up to the Console GUI is 5-6 seconds, and into Steam in around 10 more (network speed dependent).

Before it took over a minute for me to get to the Steam GUI.

I can understand why Dell went the 5400 2TB drive, its BIG! and high quality - but slow. Much better than the PS4 oem drive though!

Doesn't solve the "scrolling down" issue with my T500RS. Come on Dell, sort it out!!

Wardski1974 · Answer

Word of warning swapping hard drives - if you got a Microsoft USB disk with the Alpha, don't use it. Go to desktop and create a Rescue USB disk. Its far simpler to do it this way. I don't even know why the Microsoft USB disk was included, Dell don't even supply you with a Win 8.1 serial no...

Also if you're like me and running the console to a cinema projector (I have Panasonic AE8000), use an LCD monitor to get into the boot menu to boot from the USB, because for some reason the HDMI port did not trigger the projector to display the boot options on start up, so I missed it every time and thought something was wrong with my Alpha....

Opening up the Alpha is easy. 4 screws under, remove the top cover, flip the unit over, 1 screw holding the drive bay in, push it to unclip, 4 screws to remove the old HDD and you're in (reverse to install) Boot up using the Alpha rescue disk, and 40min later you're done :)

1miracle2 · Answer

I tried creating the recovery disc and booting from it with out luck last night. The provided CD is only an accessory driver, not an image or recovery CD.

If the SSD is that much better I have to say I'm disappointed in DELL and Alienware. I honestly expected perfection with this purchase and well here we all are.

I have a pending ticket with Alienware/Dell support so hopefully they have a fix for me. They should send us all new systems with SSD and better GPU.

jmojmo · Answer

Hi, I had the exact same issues with my Logitech Driving Force Wireless wheel (normally a PS3 wheel but it is capable of working fine in Windows, including force feedback). I resolved them all by changing my startup process to boot directly into a Windows desktop account that I setup to automatically run Steam Big Picture when the desktop loads.

Doing so allowed me to install the Logitech Gaming Software utility which I downloaded from the Logitech site (www.logitech.com/.../lgs510_x64.exe). It looks like the same utility supports the G27 wheel as well as mine. Back in Steam Big Picture settings it now recognizes both the XBox 360 controller and the Logitech USB wheel controller, and I have even mapped the buttons on my Logitech wheel to the Steam UI navigation inputs so I can now control the Steam interface entirely with my steering wheel. All the weird behavior with the Steam menus always scrolling down is gone.

Another benefit of the Logitech Gaming Software utility is that you can define game-specific button actions (even mapping to keyboard presses) and settings (sensitivity, etc) which automatically get applied depending on the active game. I can verify that these work because I mapped the controls for the Split/Second game (which required some button-to-keyboard press mappings) independently from GRID Autosport (with its own unique settings), and both games work great. Force feedback works fine in GRID Autosport but not in Split/Second, but I think that's a limitation of the game itself.

Hope that helps!

1miracle2 · Answer

TY for the feedback (pun intended).I'm booting into the AlienwareUI (or whatever it's called) and then logging off and back into desktop mode.Then loading up Steam from there as well.However I have not gotten every thing to work 100% or near 100%.My biggest gripe right now is with not being able to navigate through any thing in that Alienware UI using the Logitech G27 controller w/o tweaking some thing.Next to that is the PC not being able to handle 'Ultra' settings for graphicsBoot up is extremely slow, IMO, as well.I'm in contact with support over these issues and may be getting a replacement. I also noticed that unless I'm in Big Picture mode I can't get to controller settings (or I just don't know how to do it from outside of big picture mode). @jmojmo thanks for all the info man! If you come across any thing else relevant to steering wheel config and such please share w/us! lol.

Wardski1974 · Answer

So the resolution to this is to boot into windows 8, then run Steam from there avoiding the Alpha UI?  I'll give this a shot

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Alienware Alpha i7 & thrustmaster T500RS issues

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