I finally get my laptop back after a 2 week wait. THEY DIDN"T FIX IT! The even damaged part of the outer body. Right around the right hinge on the screen, it was cracked and broke off when I got it. There is also a long and deep (you can put your thumb nail in it, aprox. 6 inches in length.) scratch on the top. Needless to say I was quite PISSED. So i kicked, I screamed and I calmed down and started calling alienware. Come to find out they ran their diagnostics and then only cleaned it and sent it back. Gee thanks! I would normally have some appreciation for that if I would've gotten it back in BETTER condition, not WORSE!
So I play around with them for a while trying to narrow down the blue screen errors. I hear them say the magic words "we need to reinstall windows" again. I bite my tongue and do it, it crashes while doing a full reinstall (not respawn, but a full install). Call them, run ram diagnostics. Nothing, run them on the individual cards, nothing. Then, one person (I wish I would've recorded his name) had a briliant idea, reinstall windows with only one ram card. I would like to point out I've never had a full install of windows work yet without a blue screen error! It reinstalls just fine with one card, allbeit slow. So, I finish updating and so on, start running games and testing. I tried the individual cards in different slots. Neither card produced a blue screen or significant performance differences. They seem fine and alienware techs agreed with me. So we tried individual slots, got no blue screens but an interesting performance difference. While face the screen, when we ran ram in the right slot, it ran slower, obviously slower showing significant differences in bench marks (doom 3 ran 5+fps slower in the right slot then it did in the left and often took alot longer to load. Infact, it seemed to run almost as fast as if I had the full gig of ram in it with only the left card in.). Also, there was a physicall difference. By that I mean the ram in the left slot often ran hotter, like it was doing more work. I ran both sticks for a while and got a blue screen, so the full reinstall of windows didn't fix it, and I also noted after playing doom 3 for about 5 minutes the left stick was very hot to the touch, and the right stick was barely warm. We switched the sticks to make sure with the same results. Alienware agreed to take it back, considering replacing both ram and slots (probably the motherboard.) and fixing the body. Finally, possible resolution!
I'm happy that we are finally getting some where, but this previous performance is totally unexcuseable. Why couldn't they figure this out while they had it! I'm happy that things might finally turn around and it will be back to working order, but why did it have to go this far? Why did I have to get it back before anyone figured anything out? I was completely happy with this system initially, and had great experiences up untill the blue screen issues started, then they almost felt reluctant to help me at times. I love the computer, I'll love it more when it is working again, but I'm beggining to doubt that I will be a repeat customer. I've become that unimpressed with them.
PS. ANY AND EVERYONE THAT SAID IT SOUNDED LIKE A RAM ISSUE, YOU WHERE RIGHT! Consider getting a job at alienware.
So I play around with them for a while trying to narrow down the blue screen errors. I hear them say the magic words "we need to reinstall windows" again. I bite my tongue and do it, it crashes while doing a full reinstall (not respawn, but a full install). Call them, run ram diagnostics. Nothing, run them on the individual cards, nothing. Then, one person (I wish I would've recorded his name) had a briliant idea, reinstall windows with only one ram card. I would like to point out I've never had a full install of windows work yet without a blue screen error! It reinstalls just fine with one card, allbeit slow. So, I finish updating and so on, start running games and testing. I tried the individual cards in different slots. Neither card produced a blue screen or significant performance differences. They seem fine and alienware techs agreed with me. So we tried individual slots, got no blue screens but an interesting performance difference. While face the screen, when we ran ram in the right slot, it ran slower, obviously slower showing significant differences in bench marks (doom 3 ran 5+fps slower in the right slot then it did in the left and often took alot longer to load. Infact, it seemed to run almost as fast as if I had the full gig of ram in it with only the left card in.). Also, there was a physicall difference. By that I mean the ram in the left slot often ran hotter, like it was doing more work. I ran both sticks for a while and got a blue screen, so the full reinstall of windows didn't fix it, and I also noted after playing doom 3 for about 5 minutes the left stick was very hot to the touch, and the right stick was barely warm. We switched the sticks to make sure with the same results. Alienware agreed to take it back, considering replacing both ram and slots (probably the motherboard.) and fixing the body. Finally, possible resolution!
I'm happy that we are finally getting some where, but this previous performance is totally unexcuseable. Why couldn't they figure this out while they had it! I'm happy that things might finally turn around and it will be back to working order, but why did it have to go this far? Why did I have to get it back before anyone figured anything out? I was completely happy with this system initially, and had great experiences up untill the blue screen issues started, then they almost felt reluctant to help me at times. I love the computer, I'll love it more when it is working again, but I'm beggining to doubt that I will be a repeat customer. I've become that unimpressed with them.
PS. ANY AND EVERYONE THAT SAID IT SOUNDED LIKE A RAM ISSUE, YOU WHERE RIGHT! Consider getting a job at alienware.
