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M9700/M9750 Sound Crackle/Video Skip Problems...

Poll Results: Sound Crackle/Video lag/Game lag

This is a multiple choice poll
  • 8% (1)
    Yes my m9700 has some of these problems
  • 8% (1)
    Yes my m9700 has the exact same problems
  • 8% (1)
    Yes my m9750 has some of these problems
  • 0% (0)
    Yes my m9750 has the exact same problems
  • 8% (1)
    My m9700/m9750 had these (some or all) and they have been resolved to my satisfaction
  • 41% (5)
    I have never experienced any of these problems with my m9700/m9750
  • 16% (2)
    I have spoken with Tech Support (either by phone, e-mail, or AW support forums)
  • 8% (1)
    I like the skipping and lagging and don't care if the problem gets fixed...
12 Total Votes  
post #1 of 21
9/4/07 at 12:53pm
Thread Starter 
I own an m9700 - one of the first ones out. I love this machine. For the first 9 months, it performed flawlessly. Lately I have been having a recurring problem which I have not been able to get resolved.

Before I go any further, this is not a 'complaint' or "I hate AW - they should give me my money back" thread. I am wanting to use the collective experience and wisdom/knowledge of the people on this forum to figure out the true scope of m97xx users who are experiencing similar issues as well as any things that might have fixed the problem. If you are having other issues besides what is being discussed on this topic, DO NOT POST THEM HERE unless you feel they are related to this specific issue.

Basically, the issue is this - I am experiencing the following
1. Crackling sound - very intermitiant and absolutely not predictable, but is worse on battery power
2. Skipping video - everything from Dvd's to youtube to locally stored video files of every format and bandwidth - is worse on battery power
3. Game performance issues with Half-life, Battlefield 2142, Supreme commander, BF 2, Doom 3 and many others. (as a side note, in the beginning, all of these games ran flawlessly with ZERO dropped frames, lags or skips, now none of the work flawlessly) This is also a very random occurance, but very annoying.

I have spoken to tech support and have done everything you can think of including removing, swapping, and reseating everything except the cpu. I have disabled all wireless, reformated and with no other programs running still experienced the same issues - very randomly.

If you take a look a the AW customer support forums, they are full of posts with very similar problems. Of course, this does not paint a true picture of the issue, because we all know that no one ever posts unless they have a problem.

So, All that being said - is this a small number of us who are experiencing this problem? Have any of you gotten this resolved? Do any of you who have connections with AW know if they are working or already have a solution???

Thanks as always for your help!
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post #2 of 21
9/4/07 at 2:06pm
u should defrag your harddrive....
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post #3 of 21
9/4/07 at 3:07pm
Does it happen all the time, or just after use for a while?

Have you monitored cpu temps?

I had some issues with fps in games after a while, applied AS5 and it went away. The temps started climbing again recently, so I reapplied AS5 and it's working fine again.

Also, how much memory do you have?
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post #4 of 21
9/4/07 at 3:28pm
Maybe reformat the harddrive?
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post #5 of 21
9/4/07 at 11:20pm
Thread Starter 
ignore this post - I hit enter too soon...
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post #6 of 21
9/4/07 at 11:21pm
did u want something willyB
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post #7 of 21
9/4/07 at 11:24pm
Thread Starter 
littlefrankus -
I defragment my harddrive every other week

HH -
I have 2 gigs of ram - sometimes, I can game for hours with zero problems. Others, I boot the machine and it does it - the sound will skip with only one application (either media player or itunes) running. When the sound starts skipping, it is impossible to game. Sometimes it starts in the middle of something, other times its' fine, other times it's when I boot up. CPU temps are all normal
I haven't done the artic silver yet, I was holding off because I didn't want to take everything apart, but I pretty much have taken the maching apart testing different things - so I will be applying AS5 within the next few weeks, but I don't think that it is going to help...

tate -
I have reformated 3 times - no help

Has anyone looked at the mobile system forums on the AW tech support forums? There are several threads with the exact same issues...
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post #8 of 21
9/5/07 at 12:37am
I would try a registry cleaner. If that didn't work, I would try to find out what software do the faults have in common, like directX 9, and reinstall.
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post #9 of 21
9/5/07 at 12:50am
If you've reformatted and it's still present, it's not software. Could be bios settings but there aren't many choices there... You loaded the cpu driver, chipset driver etc., and everything after the reformat I assume...

I can't think of any hardware issues other than heat threshholds for stuttering other than memory issues so the system uses the hd a lot.

Have you monitored the temps?

Also, have you run any memory tests?

EDIT: Nevermind, just saw your post above.

I had crackling with my creative X-Fi sound card, but disabling the wireless fixed that...
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post #10 of 21
9/16/07 at 1:01pm
The problem with the audio crackling and video skipping is because of the older VIA RAID/SATA driver(known issues).
try updating to the most recent Driver. I had this same issue and the new driver resolved my problem.

XP/Vista
http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx...0&SubCatID=117
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post #11 of 21
9/17/07 at 11:56am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by rive0108 View Post
The problem with the audio crackling and video skipping is because of the older VIA RAID/SATA driver(known issues). try updating to the most recent Driver. I had this same issue and the new driver resolved my problem. XP/Vista http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx...0&SubCatID=117
I am dl'ing this driver now - hopefully this will fix the problem. I have my doubts about this fixing the problem however, because when I received my m9700 initially back in '06, I didn't have any of these problems. They only developed later. Did a windows update cause this? Why hasn't AW been advising people to update these drivers? Has anyone else used this update to fix a similar problem?
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post #12 of 21
9/17/07 at 7:17pm
Actually alienware did advise to update the driver-

You may notice that when playing audio files sound files from the hard drive or other removable media, such as CDs or DVDs, the sound will skip every 5 to 10 seconds.
While playing a music using Windows Media Player you will observe that the HDD/ODD drive activity indicator light will turn on every time the computer skips (See Image 1).


Image 1

In order to fix this, please do the following:
[i]Go into the Device Manager: Click on the Start Button, then right click on My Computer and select Properties. (See Image 2)



Image 2

On the left side there is a list of options called Tasks, and there one of the links on it is called Device Manager. Select it and when the User Account Control asks you for confirmation, click on Continue (See Image 3)


Image 3


On the Device Manager go to Storage Controllers and double click on VIA VT6421 RAID Controller (See Images 4 and 5)


Image 4


Image 5

Go to the Driver tab and check your Driver Version. By default it should report to have driver version 5.1.2600.540. Click on the Update Driver button (See image 6)


Image 6

Select the Browse my computer for driver software option (See Image 7)


Image 7

Then choose the Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer option (See Image 8)


Image 8

The computer will show two results. Select the one that has the driver version 5.1.2600.510. After that select Next to continue (See Images 9, 10 and 11)


Image 9


Image 10


Image 11

Once the installation is completed you are required to restart the computer (See Image 12)


Image 12

Thank you for your inquiry,
The Alienware Technical Support Team
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post #13 of 21
9/17/07 at 7:24pm
Then again....This was primariliy a vista issue with the initial harddrive controller VIA driver,but had since been resolved with a driver update. XP really didnt have this issue. hmmm...let us know if your audio/video issues are resolved with the driver update.
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post #14 of 21
9/17/07 at 10:27pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the awesome post rive0108, the problem is that I don't even have the VIA drivers installed on my machine period. I have nvidia nforce drivers on my machine... I could have sworn that these were the drivers that came on my AW drivers disk...
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post #15 of 21
9/17/07 at 10:35pm
nForce driver for RAID/SATA-

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce4...a32_15.00.html
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post #16 of 21
9/17/07 at 10:43pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by rive0108 View Post
thanks for the link rive0108, but I checked out the AW site and they list the VIA drivers as what my machine should have. Since I had to reformat as soon as I got my machine because AW forgot to set the RAID up, I'm wondering if I have been using the wrong RAID drivers this entire time (which would suck) Would everyone that has an m9700 with xp check to see what thier SCSI/Raid controller drivers are - either VIA or the Nvidia. Hopefully, I am getting close to figuring this entire disaster out.
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post #17 of 21
9/18/07 at 4:04am
Ok i have an m9750 and i am having the sound stuttering issues! But here is the thing when i got it i downgraded to xp and have been running it as such since! I have had the machine for months and it just started on my external speakers. Before this only used to be an issue on my built-in speakers. Here is the thing on the AW site it says there is a raid driver that i have to install during the install of windows. And i havent put on the bios that is supposedly meant for xp.
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post #18 of 21
9/18/07 at 7:55am
I'm not using RAID in my m9700.

The NVIDIA nForce4 Serial ATA Controller shows up under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers.

Under SCSI and RAID controllers, the Nvidia nForce4 RAID controller is listed, as is an SCSE/RAID Host Controller that doesn't have a driver.

Driver details under the NVIDIA RAID controller is:

NVIDIA nForce 4 Serial ATA RAID Controller

Driver Provider: NVIDIA Corporation
Driver Date: 4/24/2006
Driver Version: 5.10.2600.666
Digital Signer: Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility Publ
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post #19 of 21
9/18/07 at 9:43am
this is the driver listed for my m9750 can i still use the nvidia one instead?
Intel Matrix RAID Controller Driver 7.0.0.1020 For Models: Area-51 m9750 (17.0" LCD)

Intel Matrix RAID controller driver for Windows XP (F6 Diskette). This driver is not required if you have an Alienware Recovery CD/DVD, only to be used with a Windows XP OEM CD/DVD. An external USB Floppy Drive is needed.Note: copy the contents of this zip file to the root directory of a floppy distteke. Use your USB floppy drive for the Windows installation and press the F6 key when prompted.


File Size: 195 KB File Date: 2/12/2007 Platform(s): Windows XP, Windows XP Media Center
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post #20 of 21
9/18/07 at 12:45pm
First time in this forum.

I just recently purchased a used m9700 and I'm still trying to get a feel for it. It's running really slow (read that as "it's not running any faster than my previous laptop that I've had for three years).

The only reason I'm bringing it up in this post is that when I bought it, I reloaded the Alienware Respawn disc with Windows MCE to eliminate any viruses, hacked programs, etc.

I looked at my SCSI controller and it's listed as A347SCSI Controller from Microsoft.

I've updated every driver from AW that I could find. Anybody else getting this??
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