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Alienware M9700 Laptops; Anyone Own One?

L

Lionheart

SOH-CM-2014
Hey all,

I remember a while back, someone here owned, collected, and repaired M9700 laptops. I 'think' it may have been DJScoo, but I am not sure.

I have a question on how to get FS2004 Display sliders working in it. For some reason, the nVidia control panel seems to be managing all the game settings, so all the sliders in FS9 are locked at zero.

The laptop is a dual HD, dual GC unit with the GC's running in SLI mode. The HD's are not in RAID mode, with the secondary being E: drive where I have FS9 located.

Many thanks for any input.


Bill
 
Not me, but I do remember that thread...may have been Kilo Delta?

hope you find what you're looking for. :ernae:
 
Hey Bill, have you tried nHancer to override the nVidia control panel settings ?
 
Yep..I've a bunch of Alienware laptops. Not running FS on any of them at the minute so can't check. The m9700 has older gen Nvidia 7900GS video cards and runs better on older drivers (DX9 only).
Never heard of Nvidia Control panel disabling all in game settings for FS9/FSX....you absolutely positive that's where the problem lies?:ques: :)
 
Hey KD,

I am not positive, but most everything is pointing to that. I can only figure that is why the sliders are locked.

I tried all updates, latest nVidia drivers, DX9.0c and deleting the FS9 config file. Nothing has worked so far.

Love this thing. I can see why you are infatuated with them. I wish I could afford the M17x...!


Full,

I'll test that out.
 
For m9700 support try www.notebookforums.com ...They've a thread listing all the latest drivers/bios updates for the m9750...not sure if they've the same for the m9700. It should run FS9 reasonably well (depending on the rest of the computer specs). My latest m9700 is stripped at the moment awaiting a rebuild,having sold my older version. The rest of my Alienware laptop collection include 2x m9750's,2x Sentia 223, Sentia 3400 and 3x Area 51 766. I've a few mates with the M17x and they're a fantastic machine.....pricey though.
 
kilo delta said:
For m9700 support try www.notebookforums.com ...They've a thread listing all the latest drivers/bios updates for the m9750...not sure if they've the same for the m9700. It should run FS9 reasonably well (depending on the rest of the computer specs).
Click to expand...

Roger that. I am presently joined up at forums.notebookreview which have a great Alienware section and a huge drivers sticky. The laptop does run FS9 at super speed, but its at zero settings on the sliders, mips at max blur. Grim....

I also signed up at the nVidia forums. No word there yet. I also asked to sign up at the Alienware forums, but I believe they only take in 'new customers', no second hand customers.


kilo delta said:
I've a few mates with the M17x and they're a fantastic machine.....pricey though.
Click to expand...

I hear this from everyone. They sound like a very exotic machine.


Sounds like a nice collection! Man... Have fun with them. My other laptop is an hp DV6000 special edition in white, which I mainly got for its GC and the white/silver paint scheme which reminded me of Apple, lol.. Slowest computer around.
 
Also, ...be sure to clean out the fans on the m9700 regularly as it runs hot out of the box...much higher than the Intel powered m9750. Easy to access them ,just remove the 4 screws on the bottom panel (largest panel). :)
 
kilo delta said:
Also, ...be sure to clean out the fans on the m9700 regularly as it runs hot out of the box...much higher than the Intel powered m9750. Easy to access them ,just remove the 4 screws on the bottom panel (largest panel). :)
Click to expand...

Already done! I even scraped the chips clean and put on fresh Thermal Paste. Cleaned the fans with an old toothbrush. Compressed air wouldnt budge the dust.

Amazing little units. Mine is silver. What color are yours? I love this tote bag. Looks like something Doctor Jackson wheres 'off world' in Stargate SG1, lol...
 
Lionheart said:
Already done! I even scraped the chips clean and put on fresh Thermal Paste. Cleaned the fans with an old toothbrush. Compressed air wouldnt budge the dust.

Amazing little units. Mine is silver. What color are yours? I love this tote bag. Looks like something Doctor Jackson wheres 'off world' in Stargate SG1, lol...
Click to expand...

I've a new old stock barebones unit in silver...never been used. I got a bunch of spare fans,HDD cages,batteries etc too. I have a pair of 7900GS 512mb cards, memory,hdd's,bluray optical drive in stock with an AMD chip winging it's way to me courtesy of ebay. Previous m9700 was bright green. From memory...the bad guys in Die Hard 4 had silver m9700's too! :d
Have you got the Alienware backback too? :)

Congrats on your latest acquisition,:ernae:
 
Awesome. You are an official Alienware parts store, lol.. I know where to go first.

Yep, got the backpack. Aliens and pockets all over it. I almost got all the original boxes as well, but the guy that sold it to me wanted to lower the price on the 'free' shipping, and trashed the boxes for a smaller shipping box. bummed me out.

But... I have one! Mint looking condition. It had one scratch and it turns out it was a scuff that rubbed off. I am really thankful. I just need to figure out why the system is not allowing me to adjust the settings in FS9. Then it is basically ready.


Oh, I also installed two 500 Gig 7400 RPM HD's. There was one 120 Gig in it. That had to go. Luckily it has the Respawn package, which prints the entire original HD data right onto the new HD. Nice bit of technology...
 
Hey KD,

Running WinXP, but I think this is SP2, dont know.

Also, I have all the latest drivers that I know of. Downloaded DX 9.0c the other day, all the new beta drivers from nVidia. I woke up in the early night and tried the Alienware graphics drivers, thinking maybe they being a gaming computer manufacturer, maybe they had something interesting. That didnt work.

I also tried deleting FS2004 from E drive and installed it to C drive. Nothing....

I am going to try your Dell driver right now. Hopefully that will do it.


I went through the nVidia control panel with a fine tooth comb, looking for a magic 'lock' button. Nothing. I also turned off Power Mizer in the control panel, power settings.

Is there a 'Gaming mode' button in the software anywhere in these?



Bill
 
TK,

I just tried that driver. It refused to install stating the hardware wasnt compatible with the driver. I think that driver was for a single GC setup. Not sure.

Thanks though for the heads up.



Bill
 
Lionheart said:
TK,

I just tried that driver. It refused to install stating the hardware wasnt compatible with the driver. I think that driver was for a single GC setup. Not sure.

Thanks though for the heads up.



Bill
Click to expand...

It worked fine for me on my old m9700.:confused:
Are you sure your laptop is running dual Nvidia 7900gs cards
Can you install and run the following program just to be certain? :) ...

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/
 
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