Luscious Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 I can't seem to find a thread here that mentions anything about this, so I was wondering if any M18xR2 users have dealt with this problem: I cannot pinpoint the nature of the issue, but it appears the sound hardware refuses to power back up after a shutdown/reboot/hibernate. I completely lose sound (notice red x on volume icon), speakers go dead and even the headphone jack is useless. The actual sound hardware fails to show up in device manager. I first noticed this after flashing my BIOS to A08, a procedure that required a reboot. It also occurs when switching between graphics cards (Fn+F7 - also requiring reboot) or turning SLI on/off (again, reboot). I've had some luck getting the sound back by doing a sleep/wake action while on battery, hinting that it is a power issue with the sound card. That doesn't always work however. More recently, I needed to pull the battery with the notebook turned on, yank the cord (kill system), and then power back on with battery-only to bring the sound card back to life, and life back to the speakers. I'm planning on returning my unit to Dell, since phone tech support hasn't been able to come up with a fix. Very curious if other M18xR2 users are having similar issues with lost sound after a reboot??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
littleone562 Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 I believe it needs a motherboard replacement to fix. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Michael Posted November 7, 2012 Founder Share Posted November 7, 2012 Did you try to reinstall windows ? Might be a software issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luscious Posted November 7, 2012 Author Share Posted November 7, 2012 I believe it needs a motherboard replacement to fix.+1Did you try to reinstall windows ? Might be a software issue.I'll be giving that a try later, but I'm thinking along the lines of hardware. A BIOS flash or GPU switch shouldn't touch the sound hardware unless either the component connecting them (MB) has a glitch or the sound card is flaky.But I also wouldn't be surprised if it's a BIOS issue Dell is refusing to tell us. My unit shipped with A05, and while I was able to downgrade from A08 to A07, going back to A05 is not possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Brian Posted November 10, 2012 Founder Share Posted November 10, 2012 I wouldn't be surprised if it was the crappy Sound Blaster software. Uninstall it and run the Windows sound driver and see if it fixes the problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luscious Posted November 13, 2012 Author Share Posted November 13, 2012 I wouldn't be surprised if it was the crappy Sound Blaster software. Uninstall it and run the Windows sound driver and see if it fixes the problem.No go. Did a full Windows reinstall and the problem persists. Sent the unit back to Dell and is in transit as I write this. I'm hoping it's purely an isolated hardware issue, since I've yet to see other M18xR2 users complain here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Brian Posted November 13, 2012 Founder Share Posted November 13, 2012 No go. Did a full Windows reinstall and the problem persists. Sent the unit back to Dell and is in transit as I write this. I'm hoping it's purely an isolated hardware issue, since I've yet to see other M18xR2 users complain here.Sorry to hear, are you getting another? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luscious Posted November 14, 2012 Author Share Posted November 14, 2012 Sorry to hear, are you getting another?I may wait and see what the R3 brings, but I've got a Xeon Clevo hitting my desk soon to make up for the loss. No laptop is perfect - I could point fingers at other manufacturers as well for hardware screw-ups. My only real gripe with the M18x, other than the sound card issue, was the steep price tag on my particular configuration - $5400+tax is a lot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Brian Posted November 15, 2012 Founder Share Posted November 15, 2012 I may wait and see what the R3 brings, but I've got a Xeon Clevo hitting my desk soon to make up for the loss. No laptop is perfect - I could point fingers at other manufacturers as well for hardware screw-ups. My only real gripe with the M18x, other than the sound card issue, was the steep price tag on my particular configuration - $5400+tax is a lot.Personally I think the M18x-R1 is more solid overall vs M18x-R2, especially when paired with 680M SLI and much cheaper. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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