Adam Noble

Right after spending all night creating a Driver map and seeing "who talks to who" in the whole driver universe I came to the conclusion that nothing should be messing around with the way OSD reads and writes its scripts.

I did a little digging before systematically uninstalling everything one by one when all of a sudden I noticed somethings strange, I use TeamViewer to interconnect all my machines at home for monitoring purposes and for access away from home, its just a fancy Remote access tool but with a good looking GUI.....ANYWAY when I started playing with the Dell display driver I noticed that Teamviewer had installed its own display driver and called it a "Secondary Display Monitor" Now I thought it may have had something to do with my Crossfire setup first but when I tried to uninstall it I received a BSOD. Only starting in safemode with Team Viewer disabled allowed me to uninstall it and wouldn't you believe....the following boot my OSD is now working fine and touch controls are back (well they all worked except the brightness controls)

So it was this Team Viewer driver that was doing something to OSD, I have not seen any changes in Either of them for months and their update logs show this too, so why they have decided to fight now is a mystery, maybe that crash I had that took my cards out of Crossfire had something to do with it, unless that is another symptom :/

Anyway thanks for the help guys, It would appear that I have wasted your time with this but at least we know this problem can happen in the older R2's with Team Viewer

Welcome to the fun guys

Right I have tried every single combination and I still come up with this error, I have tried removing OSD, Command Centre and my GPU software + Drivers then cleaned up with Driver Sweeper then installing them in different patterns, even previous versions of OSD. I have tried in both safe mode and normal mode.

As I type this I do not have OSD or Command Centre installed, I would leave it this way but My touch controls are now dead as I believe either OSD or Command Centre deals with them. Everything is up to date, BIOS, GPU although I have never flashed the VBios, didn't know you could on the 4870's and to top it off............My Restore settings are being uncooperative and only showing today's restore points ()

I am stumped for now, everything is working fine except OSD, but apparently any OSD problems are caused by GPU failed writes :/

Trying your suggestions now, like you said its a strange one :/ I have been looking over the logs and the only thing that I have done different was that after a failed shutdown my GPU's came out of corssfire, I noticed this during some GW2 so I closed down, re-enabled and and played some more. That is the only thing I have done different in almost 2 months. I will report back once I have done ALL of the above.

I am now getting this error at startup for no reason, it seems to be a problem with OSD and from what I gather from Google, caused by some sort of bad GPU driver install?

I have tried reinstalling OSD from fresh.......I have tried reinstalling my GPU drivers from fresh but no change?

Has anyone had any experience with this, with OSD down I am getting a truck load of problems ranging from touch controls to RAM leaks :/

Machine is..

M17x R2

Windows 7 64bit

ATI Xfire 4870's - Catalyst version 12.6

- Driver version 9.97

OSD version 2.5.54.0

That sound like exactly what I need I'm not bothered about paying, I have the trial activated now for Diskeeper and seeing a noticeable difference immediately and its not even finished Thanks again mw86

Hi,

I have been running my Alienware M17x R2 with the Twin drives for almost a year now and it has been great. I have a 120GB SSD containing only the OS and a secondary 1TB HDD Partitioned into 3 x 300GB partitions. One contains only Games, One contains all Media (Music, Pictures and Videos) and the third contains Windows 8 at the minute for testing.

Since instillation I have had all the recommended system settings disabled such as superfetch and Defrag but I have only now realised that these keep the SSD healthy but not the HDD. Now I know I have not made things easy in partitioning the HDD into three but I was thinking is there any way if restoring superfetch and defrag but only on the HDD? It is being bogged down by fragmented data and killing performance in some cases.

What do you suggest?

that will be fine moment its over 24 hours give em more hell! if they don't agree this time and overnight you the disks... persue the BBB to make a complaint.... but do give them 24hours and do call back as soon as it has been and get an answwer then... like I said if no say that is not acceptable and tell them you will speak to the Better Buisness Bureau if saying so still didn't help... then go through with it and make a complaint officially. They will be sure to be back to you then or they will suffer legal repurcusions. Good liuck my friend. @Adam Noble

Well i don't understand them sometimes but the job gets done, once their 24 hours was up i called and got the "we have no record of that conversation sir" so i calmly explained that was going to happen and that they would be reported for this, im not asking for free parts or a new system just the disks that SHOULD have come with my system. I explained that had previously happened and when she asked if i would like her to look into the problem i said no thanks and ended the call. The next day i went to my friends to grab a copy of his reinstall media and when i got back.......BAM i had a delivery and wouldn't you know it was my recovery disks, a mouse mat AND a money off voucher for the alienware suite (0_0) must have really spooked someone high up to have been sent a goody bad for a problem that apparently "doesn't exist"

Looks like i can finally start rebuilding my baby's brain in all honesty she was due a fresh install anyway Thanks for all you help in this guys especially the tips on how to handle it all mw86, you guys should be on the alienware payroll

Right an update, i followed your advice and everything was going fine for about 2 hours, they took my details and confirmed that my system shipped with 64bit ultimate and that the disks must be faulty if they do not run or complete any actions, they even took my address confirming from the shipping address from the initial purchase but just before anything was finished they said they ask their manager for a confirmation and then they said they would get back to me within 24 hours :S ......... What just happened?

call Dell and tell them that the dvds look fine but are not reading at all and that you were given the rong OS disk. Don't say it broke explain it's their fault and need to replace your disks asap at no cost to you. Stay calm, stick to your guns and don't take no but maintain a calm tone good luck. I'm sorry of that issue I hope you can get somewhere by doing that.

Sounds good, i have to admit once they started saying i was not going to get anything i got a little agitated, tomorrow i am going to settle down and hold my ground for as long as it takes, thanks for the tactic mw86 i will report back when i have things settled.

Thanks again.

Oh well it does......Was on the phone for like 2 hours today to dell asking if i could have replacement disks for both OS and Drivers, they asked for my service tag before saying that they do not ship systems with those disks......then after an argument they said they would ship them but i would need to pay.......then after yet another argument they are claiming that my system shipped with a 32bit version of ultimate even though Alien command centre, the program that controls one of the key features of the alienware line...THE ALIENFX...requires a 64bit platform :S

Does anyone have an alienware with a 32bit OS installed?

You would not believe it....The recovery disks that came with my R2 are both wrecked 0_0 the drivers CD was a failed write and contains nothing and the OS recovery DVD contains a 32bit version of ultimate not the 64bit needed, this means i am now stuck on a 32bit OS and cant install most of the Alienware suite :(could things get any worse ()

yeah weird may I suggest trying this in the future? Perhaps your sleep mode is acting faulty like mine and another notebook was on Windows 7. I would resume from sleep to only go to a black screen a lot of the time. Here is the fix. Enable "Hybrid Sleep" see if that in the future prevents the dim issue in the future.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4250[/ATTACH]

Awesome, i am just about to finish my secondary backup before trying to restore to an external drive and if it works i will need to implement this ASAP because that dimming issue was becoming a real PITA ()

Thanks guys

bad luck indeed :/ lucky for me my secondary HDD had a 150Gb backup partition that now houses a copy of a working....yet naked OS so i am now able to backup the defective drive before testing to see if it is a hardware or software fault :/ Either way i was due a fresh install of windows anyway AND this wraps up the screen brightness problem

Thanks for the help StamatisX, you would not believe but seconds after writing my last post i came out of Safe Mode to try the driver uninstall and my God Damn SSD failed on me it has taken me this long to get my baby back to a some what "working" state :/ tried everything to get the SSD working but from what i can see it has a Boot Config corruption that i cannot seem to fix :/ looks like its back to the drawing board

If you boot into safe mode the brightness remains at the same low level?

Now that is strange, when i boot into safe mode the brightness is as it should be Very bright and vibrant. So this means the problem lies with some sort of software error? only activated in a normal boot.

If you press Fn+F5 a couple of times to set brightness to the lowest and then press Fn+F4 to increase it all the way up does it make any difference or does it stay at the same low level?

When I use Fn+F5 to reduce the brightness it decreases in very small increments, then when I use Fn+F4 to increase it again it increases in small increments back to Max on the brightness icon but the screen is still quite dull. I have tried restarting and everything but no luck and whats even stranger is just 10 minutes ago i woke it from a Screen off standby and for a split second the brightness was maxed out like it should be and very bright but then it dropped again to the normal dull level it is now

Just when i thought i had sweet talked my R2 into a very sweet and harmonious relationship it would appear that i have something wrong with the brightness on Rig. Turned it on this morning for some updates and blogging and everything was great but then it went into sleep while went for a walk (not with the R2 of course) and upon waking it up it would appear that it will not achieve max brightness? everything shows as on max brightness, i am om max performance and everything everywhere shows as the screen brightness is maxed out

I tried some gaming later in the morning but the screen brightness was so poor i had to increase the Gamma and brightness just to see anything in the sun

Anyone got any ideas?

Great glad things are running correctly now.. our Aliens are slick when they behave... Guys if you end up utilizing the in-game monitoring upload a screenshot sometime of your endeavors so we can see how you may prefer to display the info... we can use this OSD to point out issue to service reps plus for your overclocking endeavors you can keep an eye in real-time on temps while you check your overclocks in game have fun let us now how things are going with your overclocking

I am compiling a list of benching records to put on my blog as we speak, running a few of the old classics such as Crysis and Supcom ect with some of the newer beauties available such as Skyrim, Crysis 2, ANNO's 14xx & 2070, Battlefields & COD's so plenty of screenshots and data to present once done

Followed the instructions.............AND GOT IT RUNNING () Thanks guys My problem was caused by TRIXX not properly disabling ULPS and so causing other OC'ing software to crash. Now everything is great and i can now look forward to benching my way to new hardware

Hmmm no prob guys I'll search high and low for a solution. You guys are on AMD gpus right... can you list your gpus and driver your on now @Adam Noble ? Afterburner is great for just monitoring to... i think its overclocking upon open I'll do some research I had the same issue on 5870m last year... let me see what i can find because its very useful to be able to monitor your system like this... Rivatuner works but this is implemented better in Afterburner. I'll see what I can find.

Wow thanks mw86 () Specs as follows;

Xfired ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870's (ATI M98)

Driver - Catalyst 11.11 (on both cards) according to TRIXX

OR

atiumdag 8.911.0.0 (on both cards) according to GPU-Z.

The reason for wanting to run Afterburner is exactly what you said, i want in-game and in-app stats for recording my findings especially when i move to newer specs and want to see if the old motherboard keeps up

I already have TRIXX Just been told good things about Afterburner :/

Well i downloaded MSI afterburner but it freezes my computer whenever I try to run it. I disabled ULPS, so I'm not sure what the problem could be. Sometimes it runs, but most of the time is locks my computer.

I have the exact same problem, have been looking around the net and cant find a solution so have been forced to avoid it

Unreal and Adam glad everything has worked out on the ULPS topic

Adam I think the pink blocks and discoloration is caused from you video ram being clocked too high. It's one of the common ones seen for vram... Core tends to be white specs, driver crashes, crash to desktop.

Both core and mem can be black,missing textures or black random objects not part of the game scene.

Makes sense, i am making some slight changes here and there but not seeing anymore drastic performance increases anymore so might just stop for a while lol

At the stated OC I saw GPU temps of around 61°C-68°C from 43°C Idle and CPU Temps going from 40°C Idle to around 70°C

GPU Clock - 650MHz

Memory Clock - 950MHz

VDDC - 1111

This is with the Above overclock and it seems very stable so tonight when i have finished my long due uni work i am going to bump it up again by another 0.50MHz on each and see how it handles

EDIT:

Right moving the GPU clock to 700MHz causes problems, in short it BSOD just after a GPU failure "Pink Checkered" screen lol going to move up in 0.10MHz now and find a sweet spot

Well i think it has finally allowed it to work everything is holding strong at;

GPU Clock - 650MHz

Memory Clock - 950MHz

VDDC - 1111

I have been benching using ANNO 2070 since it stresses the entire system when i play it and its going great going to move up another 0.50MHz tomorrow and bench again and see if it still works ok i can already see a big difference within ANNO so it should be noticeable in my other "Favorites"

Oh and thanks for the Regedit tip, at least i know it is disabled