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Trying to breathe life into a *real* R1 m17X...


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...and I'm having trouble finding proper references to disassembly.

This past week, my wife's 2009 (April order, delivery was much later in the year likely due to the dell acquisition) m17x R1 keeled over. It had some video strangeness that I chalked it up to old drivers and was planning to give it a good cleaning and tune-up this weekend. Mistimed. :-( I'm not an overclocker or serious hardware hacker, just a generalist geek that can follow instructions and do minor repairs.

All the hardware references I can easily find are clearly post-acquisition "R1" with the beveled front and not the original, flat-front like this one... and the latter one clearly is a better design for cleaning and servicability. The main system fan isn't modular in this model, etc.

I've slurped the data from the drive, took that+empty drive bay+RAM+GPUs out and cleaned, patched it all back together and no joy. I've clearly screwed the pooch somewhere along the way, and was hoping someone here might have a pointer for a hardware guide for this puppy.

Original spec from order:

Area-51® m17x

Video/Graphics Card: Dual 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 8700M GT – SLI Enabled

Display: 17" WideUXGA 1920 x 1200 LCD (1200p) with Clearview Technology

Keyboard Options: AlienFX® Illuminated Keyboard – Exclusive Design

AlienFX®: Alienware® AlienFX® System Lighting - Lime

Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T9300 2.5GHz (6MB Cache 800MHz FSB)

Operating System (Office software not included): Windows Vista® Ultimate (64-bit Edition) with Service Pack 1

Memory: 8GB Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 667MHz – 2 x 4096MB

Requires Windows Vista 64-bit Edition

Notebook Tuners and Remotes: Internal Digital/Analog (ATSC) MiniCard TV Tuner

System Drive: Single Drive Configuration - 320GB 7,200RPM (16MB Cache) w/ Free Fall Protection

Optical Drives : 8x Dual Layer Burner (DVD±RW, CD-RW) w/ LightScribe Technology

Wireless: Internal Intel® Wireless 4965 a/b/g/Draft-N Mini-Card

Sound Card : Internal High-Definition Audio with surround sound

Warranty: 2-Year AlienCare Onsite Service and 24/7 Toll-Free Phone Support

Power: Additional AC Adapter - Alienware® m17x 230 Watt Auto-switch AC Adapter

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Did you try calling Dell/AW? I would explain that they since they have service manuals up for their recent and current models, it doesn't seem like there should be any reason not to have the old one. Maybe they can mail you the hard copy if nothing else.

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  • Founder

i think this is what you are looking for ;)

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0By8u_sp4RHRYc2UwTE5QR1VYYVE

edit : ok, i saw that this doc also exists in the first link i provided.

This is the M17x-R1 area 51, maybe with slight modifications, you can however use this guide to disassemble yours, as i did without any problems on a computer of a friend.

Edited by Michael
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