codral

Hi guys, just to add to this... I had exactly the same problem and tried the cmos wipe method (which I came across first) a bunch of times to no avail. This method worked the second attempt. But when it worked the pc just kept beeping, didn't restart, and next time I turned it on it was all sweet... so if this method doesn't work, keep trying with slight variations until it does! Edit: changed a setting amd it's beeping at me again. Guide above not working tjis time... either beeps 5 or 8 yimes. I'll post my solution if I can get this working again. Amazed that this thing doesnt auto reset cmos on boot failure :s Edit edit: further to this I got it working, but had to remove the cmos, and battery etc, hold power 45 secs, put all bk together except battery then power on whilst holding fn. This gave me 5 beeps... so I turned off and on again and it was all good... fun! I'm trying to disable the intel graphics fyi.

It's the wow engine. My 6 year old 4870HD runs this game better than any of the newer cards Iyou've had since. I've fixed some problems in the past by going back to older graphic card drivers... I've tried overclocking (but don't recommend it, this game is very sensitive to OC'ing). Disabling shadows always helped me a fair bit, and doing the obvious things that everyone recommends, i.e. going back through all your addons and unchecking 1 by 1 to see if there's any difference. The other thing you can do is run a repair, which sometimes tidies up the game. It's ridiculously large (15gig-ish) so this can help a fair bit. One of my pet peeves with wow has always been how badly it runs for how crappy the graphics are... The textures and models look like early PS2 games, but blizz has added loads of new effects around these which can be pretty graphic intense... Firelands for example was a bit like that, blooms and such.

I spent a fair bit of time weighing this up too. At the time I purchased my m17x I was also looking at the MSI (which are wayyy cheaper in the US) and the Sager (which you can't get a hold of in Aus). The postage was not too bad, I managed to find a mob that would send it over for about $100... There was no tax from the US, however GST is still payable. Which meant that the $2100 Alienware PC I had priced up became 2180, then the GST was another 218, so $2398... And insurance on the postage was extra... Not to mention the transit times, and having to worry about sending it back. I priced up the same laptop from Dell in Australia for $2700. I then jumped on the live chat and spoke to a service rep. She managed to get the price down to 2600, and threw in 36 months mcafee (which is horrrrrible btw). So i'd definitely say it's not worth importing a PC from the US, to Aus(tralia), unless you've got your heart set on a MSI (which are about 400 more than the Alienware here) or a Sager.

Has anyone figured out whether we get a game or software, free, when we pre-install steam on our m17xr4's? I've read about other people getting portal 2 and such for free, but these threads were all from a while ago... If you have, can you let me know how you claimed it? Cheers

I was concerned about that fusion... Thanks for clarification... I was going to say, if that's the case then It'll be crazily fast once i upgrade (full reset takes me about 40 secs). I couldn't get my SSD to function properly as my primary unless I removed the other drive. Tried manually changing the boot order and a bunch of other things but it'd just hang during POST with two drives, and the SSD in slot 1. Works fine with it in secondary slot though and will save tears.

My apologies, after reading this topic a little further the second method is the one I should be following... I got a little bit confused because I thought a A5 downgrade was necessary, whereas A11 doesn't require a downgrade, just a reflash of the new one, provided I use the second method.

I seem to have the same problem as darkwill... I have a m17xr4 with A11 which i've been trying to hard enable the 7970m on (some work software keeps defaulting to the 4000 even when I set it up to use the 7970m on max performance) so I need to wind the bios back to this version, to install a hacked bios over the top of, to tweak. I follow the instructions, and when I turn on whilst holding Home the PC resets once or twice and then just beeps, for ages. Then eventually I manually turn it on and it's still A11. So I guess A11 isn't downgradeable?