Alieware M17x R3 is mean

[birdboy385]

Hey Guys, I have the aforementioned laptop and so far it is the absolute worst free thing I've ever received lol. So when I got it, it was missing the charger, the battery was bad, the HDD(s) was/ were missing, the adapters and chassis were missing, No RAM, damaged keyboard, missing fans for CPU and GPU. I ordered a battery, RAM, a proper charger, an SSD, fan replacements and went to town on it. I verified it could post with some RAM i had laying around and a charger that wasn't quite to spec but worked. I threw everything in and well I've been chasing a weird issue for awhile. I installed windows 7 without really any issues, however, there are a number of times where it will get to "starting windows" where the balls spiral in to form the windows logo, that won't happen. It will just sit there indefinitely. Well the next issue that occasionally pops up is an 0xc00000e9 error when trying to reboot. sometimes I can force reboot and it will go back into Windows, sometimes it won't. It's worth noting that this has happened with Win 7,8 and 10. I also installed another SSD I had and it's doign the same thing. My only thoughts are that either that the SATA Port is having issues or there's something else wrong with the MotherBoard. I'm not really sure where to go from here. I tried running the support assist diagnostics from Dell. It ran for at least 2 hours with nothing seeming to happen.

[piernov]

Re: Alieware M17x R3 is mean

Is the BIOS up-to-date?

[birdboy385]

Re: Alieware M17x R3 is mean

Is the BIOS up-to-date?

Unfortunately not, the latest version is A12 and the version i have is i believe A08. I also can't flash it right now because the replacement battery I got is garbage and it won't let me flash without a battery at least 10%

However, updating from yesterday, I did put my SSD in drive slot 1 and have not had any issues at all. I would say it is either a BIOS issue or something with that port.

[dellxps15]

Re: Alieware M17x R3 is mean

test the ssd on another computer.

[birdboy385]

Re: Alieware M17x R3 is mean

I need to mention that I did use two separate SSDs. I orignally bought a 240GB on ebay then purchased a 480gb shortly after. So far I've had no corrupt drive problems. Although I'm now facing a BSOD Driver Power state failure shortly after booting. I'm not sure if it's related to the dead battery or aftermarket charger i got or if something else seems to be amiss. I can't get in to update the drivers because it ends up crashing too early. I'll attempt updating from safe mode but I was wondering what else could be causing this. The only change I've made is Activating Windows and plugging in the keyboard LEDS (the locking tab was broken off so I hot glued it into place.

[birdboy385]

Re: Alieware M17x R3 is mean

Slight update. I'm noticing in normal mode, the computer is acting very strange. attempting to open things like device manager, explorer take several seconds to load. sometimes up to a minute. In Safe mode, everything seems to run normally. Also no crashes in Safe mode. I'm in the process of installing windbg to try and analyze the minidump files from the crashes.

[birdboy385]

Re: Alieware M17x R3 is mean

Issue potentially solved. I downgraded the intel integrated graphics and audio drivers to the latest version on dell's site. Running the system normally is running much smoother. and it's gone much longer now and hasn't crashed.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Alieware M17x R3 is mean

the computer is acting very strange. attempting to open things like device manager, explorer take several seconds to load. sometimes up to a minute.

Heads up, looks like Windows 10, has a nasty ATA driver bug, particularly with Windows 10's storahci.sys. It causes the same symptoms:

Windows taking forever to open an item and when that happens, I bet the drive LED will be lit solid for at least about 1 minute to somewhere around 5 minutes!

Then of course, the event log has an error, even when listed under the "warning" category about the ATA port being reset and retried.

[SMDFlea]

Re: Alieware M17x R3 is mean

Whats the part number on the aftermarket charger .

[birdboy385]

Re: Alieware M17x R3 is mean

RJARRRPCGP - Hmm I'll have to keep that in mind, however the corrupt filing problem seemed to happen regardless of OS and has completely cleared since using the other port.

SMDFlea - I have the link to the charger i purchased on ebay. Hopefully that provides you with enough info. Otherwise I'll have to wait until I get home from work. https://www.ebay.com/itm/New-FOR-Ali...72.m2748.l2649


This all being said, downgrading the Integrated graphics drivers seems to have completely resolved the BSOD issues. Overall the computer is now working flawlessly. I'll let everyone know if that changes but I want to thank everyone for providing help and advice. Even if some of the info didn't end up pertaining to my issues, I'm sure it will help for someone.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Alieware M17x R3 is mean

Ironically, that storahci.sys bug, seems more likely to happen on Windows 10 with an SSD, than with a spinner!

And without even reading any posts, it did look like to me that it was more likely to occur with a Samsung SSD.

And here's corroborating evidence: (It's not just with 10240 or with a beta, IIRC)

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...b-22fb2f85d62e

BTW, that message appears even when not in RAID. I had the issue in 2016, BTW.

And this:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...d-4cdf820649c8

Expect to get the message from Windows 10, similar to the following:

The IO operation at logical block address 0x27c1ade for Disk 0 (PDO name: \Device\00000023) was retried.