Jimma

Are you sure that the unknown device is the webcam? I'm running Windows 10 on my M17X R4 and the webcam started working after I turned it on by pressing Fn+F9. What is its hardware ID?

The GPU uses a standardized MXM socket so it should work with your laptop. Have you uninstalled previous drivers and installed the latest NVIDIA driver package from their website? Also be sure to check your temps and make sure your power adapter is powerful enough. What card were you previously using?

As long as it is an MXM 3.0 compatible card, it should theoretically work. Just make sure that you have a big enough power supply to power it. Also make sure that it will physically fit and that your heatsink lines up with the chip. Fyi, some laptops designed last decade had the VBIOS stored in the BIOS chip on the motherboard rather than the GPU itself, complicating the possibility of performing an upgrade. You might also be interested in modding your BIOS for overclocking and modding your INI files.

If you aren't familiar with soldering you could use a standard ATX power supply by shorting pin 16 (the green PS_ON wire) to a black ground wire on the 24 pin connector with a wire, paperclip, or safety pin.

Are there any plans to release a modded A12 or A13 BIOS? Does anyone know of a tutorial or some good information on how to create your own modded BIOS file from an existing locked BIOS file?

I'd recommend an Alfa AWUS036H with at least a 7dBi panel antenna. It's cheap and high powered. If you're going to use omni-directional antennas like what your current WiFi adapter is using, be sure to orient them correctly. Imagine the radiation pattern of an omni-directional antenna looking like a doughnut when it is pointing straight upwards - the frequencies radiate out of the sides better than through the top, so you don't want to aim the antennas as if you were pointing with your index finger. Another tip I have would be to buy a better WiFi router with external antennas, preferably one capable of running either TomatoUSB, DD-WRT, or OpenWRT router firmwares. If you want to go really long distances, you can buy a parabolic grid antenna, but that isn't practical for indoors. Yagi WiFi antennas are good by design, but all of them being sold aren't correctly manufactured - the elements aren't spaced correctly, aren't the correct lengths, and aren't made of decent materials. If you want a good yagi antenna, you'd pretty much have to build it yourself.

I'm also disappointed that I couldn't get Shadowplay working on my laptop either. I have a 650m. For some people with unsupported graphics cards they are able to get Shadowplay working by creating a shortcut to the Geforce Experience executable, and adding -shadowplay after the target of the shortcut.

I bought a used Alienware M11xR3, and for the life of me cannot get my WiFi to work. This can't only be a driver issue, because I've tried over 5 different mini PCI-E WiFi cards in both Windows and Linux, and none of them work. I even tried my Alfa USB WiFi adapter. For some reason, the hardware shows up in device manager, but the drivers are never able to install. The WiFi switch is enabled, and so is the WiFi in the BIOS. Does anybody have any idea what the problem could be?

Nvidia usually comes out with new performance boosting gpu drivers after new releases of games. I'd expect your card to be powerful in comparison for quite some time; just keep an eye out for driver updates. I like to update to the betas.

I'd recommend Sleeping Dogs. The combat is fun and unique, the story line is good in my opinion, and the Hong Kong setting and culture keeps it interesting.