Let me start at the beginning. First off I have only had this pc since June.
Starting about the beginning of Sept. I started getting a graphics bug. It had started out usually at the loading screen of games like EverQuest when first logging in. Things stretch out all crazy like a waterpainting that's gotten wet. It only happened at first to the viewable area of the games. The UI windows were fine the whole time. If it started up in full screen mode and I toggled to windowed it fixed it sort of. The immediate problems would go away and everything would look normal. Sometimes lasted 3 seconds sometimes 10 hours. I'd get no warning when this was gonna start up. Also worked other way around, if I got it in windowed mode swithcing to full screen would temporarily fix it.
I had no problems in any other game online or off. No problems in any other program. The only other thing I had seen happen is that when booting up my pc at the windows xp screen and the splash screens before and after it while logging in, some of the pixels were um.. wrong. Like there would be blue or red pixels lit up randomly in what should be a solid black area. Not many and not all the time either.
I hadn't done anything prior to these bugs that would've or could've caused it. I hadn't installed anything different or new and hadn't changed any options. It just began happening randomly.
Since this began I had tried adjusting all my graphics options on desktop, vid card, in several games, etc. Nothing happened. Well, I mean if I changed everything to black and white it all changed to black and white or if I changed resolution it changed. But the buggy part was still there no matter what I did.
I had installed newest nvidia drivers hoping that would fix it and nothing changed.
I reinstalled lastest DirectX and that didn't do anything either.
Even rolled back to old restore point and still had same thing happening.
I contacted several friends I know that work with computers or own computer store etc. No one seemed to have any answers. All I got is either they didn't know or they'd give me a list of 100 things it could possibly be. Neither helped me.
I'm horribly frustrated. Paid over 3k for this pc and nothing.
Fans are working. Have fans and alienice liquid cooling thing.
Friend told me that there seems to be a lot of people having issues with the nvidia 7xxx series cards. So tried some of the reported fixes too like using beta drivers and stuff.
None of that worked. Finally went back to all the original Alienware drivers from the site. Still the same problems persisted.
Well, I went to the Alienware forums. Once there I discovered I needed to create a "support account". Fine, then I posted a fairly long post explaining my problems complete with screenshots. Upon hitting submit I got redirected to a page that informed me that my post needed to be "approved" and so forth. Which was kinda ridiculous. Three days later my post finally shows up along with a response telling me the usual dribble to try new drivers and blah blah. So, I respond explaining I have tried new drivers, went back to old drivers, tried updating directx, etc. I hit submit, "You post has been sent for approval." BLAH.
http://support.alienware.com/Forum_Pages/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=538650
Days later, I get another response, does this happen only in EverQuest, EverQuest2? I repsond, "Your post has been sent for approval..." sonofabish.
WEEKS LATER, after several back and forth posts I get "Please give us a call so we can replace that graphics card for you." I'm thinking YAY finally.
So, I call... Idiot 1 answers. May I get your account number please. Ok, fine I give it to him. Minute goes by, "Just be a second I'm pulling up your account info now." Another minute goes by, "Still pulling up your info, seem to be having some problems sorry for the wait should be any second now." Couple mins later, "Sorry, my computer seems to be slow today, still retrieving your info, please hold on a minute." <hold music> Five minutes later, ok I have your info now. What seems to be the problem? WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE PROBLEM??? WTF I spend 2 weeks going to support forums and you all don't even look at them to see what's wrong?!? /sigh. So, after I explain everything again he tells me, "First thing I need you to do is hang up with me and open your computer and clean all the fans with a can of compressed air." W T F. FINE. I hang up, do that, and about 30 mins later I call back, yeah I cleaned the fans. THREE AND A HALF HOURS ON HOLD, TRANSFERRED FIVE TIMES. Still everyone having issues pulling up account info and NONE of them have gone to the forum to read the posts yet. Oscar transfers me to Rodney, he transfers me to A.C. who tells me I've been transferred to the wrong dept. and sends me to Mack who tells me still wrong dept. and sends me to Jason, then onto John. At this point I'm pissed. Takes a lot to really piss me off but once I'm pissed that's it. So, now I'm talking to idiot number 7 at this point. I'm like look. I've called 3x, been transferred more times than I can count, have a two week old message thred on support forums that NO ONE has even bothered to look at yet. Problem is my graphics card is broken and needs to be replaced.
Well, after a bunch more crap I'm given 3 options. Option 1, send old card back wait with NO pc for new one. No onboard graphics on mother board and my old card from old pc is agp this has no agp slot. So, this is not an option. Option 2, give them credit card info as a security deposit. Well that's no option right there cause I have no credit card. After I go through this whole "You don't have a credit card?" thing (like I'm from another planet cause I don't have a credit card) that option is gone. Option 3, only other option, use a debit card and they will charge me $370+ and send card. When they receive old card back they will refund me. I'm like look, I don't have $370 laying around. I survive off disability and the little bit of money I make from making websites for a few people. They're like, oh well I am sorry those are the only options we have. So I tell them fine you'll have to put all that info to the side and wait till I get money. They give me a referrence number for when I call back. This was all on Wed. or Thurs. Sept. 27th / 28th.
At this point the problems had gotten MUCH worse over time. I was completely unable to login to any 3d type game or program. Was having issues in all programs now. Tons of red, blue and green pixels lit up on all screens. On the rare occassion I was able to actually get any program running the entire pc would freeze up to the point where I could not shutdown or even ctrl alt del and ended up having to pull the plug out of the wall. And after about 10 mins of being on my entire screen starts flashing black.
So, late Sunday 10/1 I call back...very late like 4am ish. My bank was just showing enough money to clear the infamous securtiy deposit without jeopardizing normal bills. At this point I'm told that the new graphics card will be "sent out on Monday the second by 2 day Fed Ex and should arrive on Thursday." um... ok That's not 2 days... Anyhow, Thursday comes and goes. FRIDAY, Fed Ex arrives! YAY!...?!?...or not?!?!?
Sent me the wrong damn grafics card.
The one I got, while likely better, was nearly 3x the actual size and physically came nowhere close to even fitting in my pc.
So, back on the phone I go again. "Oh, it would appear in this particular case that there must have been a mistake on our end." No, um..."kidding" Sherlock...really? and all this time I thought I personally chose to receive the wrong gd card and cause this issue to enter week 4 or 5 or whatever.
So, they say, "Well, in this particular instance we can send you the correct card. First I need to get your credit card information again for the security deposit..." No f'n way! At this point, I'm through even trying to be patient or nice. After more transfers I get this guy on and the usual "what's your account number, name, phone, address, email" as if it had all changed in the last 5 mins. "What seems to be the problem?" WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE PROBLEM??? You dont' really want to know.
Well, anyhows, the end result is that I'm told Alienware is sending the correct card and it "should" be here on Monday Oct. 9 definetly. In the meantime the old card broke completely finally. Ten times I asked this guy, are you sure? Explaining again what had happened with the last so called two day shipment. He assured me that his computer showed it would be here on Monday.
They swore after asking 10x that the new card would be here...
Monday came and went. Called Alienware up again and asked WTF is going on? They transferred me a couple more times, put me on hold. Well, come to find out, the part HAS NOT SHIPPED YET! I'm like OMG why not? They DON'T KNOW!!! I have to "email they're shipping dept. and ask them why this part has not shipped".
I was told that the shpping department's email address was emailed to me and it was NOT and has not been still and I don't expect I ever will get it.
I may drive the entire pc to their doorstep and call my bank and have charges reversed. This is total crap. Is this because Dell bought Alienware? Is it because they're in Miami? Have they always been this way?
I just can't believe it. You should take back their "award winning customer service" award and smack em in the head with it.
edited by kellie to remove masked profanity
Starting about the beginning of Sept. I started getting a graphics bug. It had started out usually at the loading screen of games like EverQuest when first logging in. Things stretch out all crazy like a waterpainting that's gotten wet. It only happened at first to the viewable area of the games. The UI windows were fine the whole time. If it started up in full screen mode and I toggled to windowed it fixed it sort of. The immediate problems would go away and everything would look normal. Sometimes lasted 3 seconds sometimes 10 hours. I'd get no warning when this was gonna start up. Also worked other way around, if I got it in windowed mode swithcing to full screen would temporarily fix it.
I had no problems in any other game online or off. No problems in any other program. The only other thing I had seen happen is that when booting up my pc at the windows xp screen and the splash screens before and after it while logging in, some of the pixels were um.. wrong. Like there would be blue or red pixels lit up randomly in what should be a solid black area. Not many and not all the time either.
I hadn't done anything prior to these bugs that would've or could've caused it. I hadn't installed anything different or new and hadn't changed any options. It just began happening randomly.
Since this began I had tried adjusting all my graphics options on desktop, vid card, in several games, etc. Nothing happened. Well, I mean if I changed everything to black and white it all changed to black and white or if I changed resolution it changed. But the buggy part was still there no matter what I did.
I had installed newest nvidia drivers hoping that would fix it and nothing changed.
I reinstalled lastest DirectX and that didn't do anything either.
Even rolled back to old restore point and still had same thing happening.
I contacted several friends I know that work with computers or own computer store etc. No one seemed to have any answers. All I got is either they didn't know or they'd give me a list of 100 things it could possibly be. Neither helped me.
I'm horribly frustrated. Paid over 3k for this pc and nothing.
Fans are working. Have fans and alienice liquid cooling thing.
Friend told me that there seems to be a lot of people having issues with the nvidia 7xxx series cards. So tried some of the reported fixes too like using beta drivers and stuff.
None of that worked. Finally went back to all the original Alienware drivers from the site. Still the same problems persisted.
Well, I went to the Alienware forums. Once there I discovered I needed to create a "support account". Fine, then I posted a fairly long post explaining my problems complete with screenshots. Upon hitting submit I got redirected to a page that informed me that my post needed to be "approved" and so forth. Which was kinda ridiculous. Three days later my post finally shows up along with a response telling me the usual dribble to try new drivers and blah blah. So, I respond explaining I have tried new drivers, went back to old drivers, tried updating directx, etc. I hit submit, "You post has been sent for approval." BLAH.
http://support.alienware.com/Forum_Pages/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=538650
Days later, I get another response, does this happen only in EverQuest, EverQuest2? I repsond, "Your post has been sent for approval..." sonofabish.
WEEKS LATER, after several back and forth posts I get "Please give us a call so we can replace that graphics card for you." I'm thinking YAY finally.
So, I call... Idiot 1 answers. May I get your account number please. Ok, fine I give it to him. Minute goes by, "Just be a second I'm pulling up your account info now." Another minute goes by, "Still pulling up your info, seem to be having some problems sorry for the wait should be any second now." Couple mins later, "Sorry, my computer seems to be slow today, still retrieving your info, please hold on a minute." <hold music> Five minutes later, ok I have your info now. What seems to be the problem? WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE PROBLEM??? WTF I spend 2 weeks going to support forums and you all don't even look at them to see what's wrong?!? /sigh. So, after I explain everything again he tells me, "First thing I need you to do is hang up with me and open your computer and clean all the fans with a can of compressed air." W T F. FINE. I hang up, do that, and about 30 mins later I call back, yeah I cleaned the fans. THREE AND A HALF HOURS ON HOLD, TRANSFERRED FIVE TIMES. Still everyone having issues pulling up account info and NONE of them have gone to the forum to read the posts yet. Oscar transfers me to Rodney, he transfers me to A.C. who tells me I've been transferred to the wrong dept. and sends me to Mack who tells me still wrong dept. and sends me to Jason, then onto John. At this point I'm pissed. Takes a lot to really piss me off but once I'm pissed that's it. So, now I'm talking to idiot number 7 at this point. I'm like look. I've called 3x, been transferred more times than I can count, have a two week old message thred on support forums that NO ONE has even bothered to look at yet. Problem is my graphics card is broken and needs to be replaced.
Well, after a bunch more crap I'm given 3 options. Option 1, send old card back wait with NO pc for new one. No onboard graphics on mother board and my old card from old pc is agp this has no agp slot. So, this is not an option. Option 2, give them credit card info as a security deposit. Well that's no option right there cause I have no credit card. After I go through this whole "You don't have a credit card?" thing (like I'm from another planet cause I don't have a credit card) that option is gone. Option 3, only other option, use a debit card and they will charge me $370+ and send card. When they receive old card back they will refund me. I'm like look, I don't have $370 laying around. I survive off disability and the little bit of money I make from making websites for a few people. They're like, oh well I am sorry those are the only options we have. So I tell them fine you'll have to put all that info to the side and wait till I get money. They give me a referrence number for when I call back. This was all on Wed. or Thurs. Sept. 27th / 28th.
At this point the problems had gotten MUCH worse over time. I was completely unable to login to any 3d type game or program. Was having issues in all programs now. Tons of red, blue and green pixels lit up on all screens. On the rare occassion I was able to actually get any program running the entire pc would freeze up to the point where I could not shutdown or even ctrl alt del and ended up having to pull the plug out of the wall. And after about 10 mins of being on my entire screen starts flashing black.
So, late Sunday 10/1 I call back...very late like 4am ish. My bank was just showing enough money to clear the infamous securtiy deposit without jeopardizing normal bills. At this point I'm told that the new graphics card will be "sent out on Monday the second by 2 day Fed Ex and should arrive on Thursday." um... ok That's not 2 days... Anyhow, Thursday comes and goes. FRIDAY, Fed Ex arrives! YAY!...?!?...or not?!?!?
Sent me the wrong damn grafics card.
The one I got, while likely better, was nearly 3x the actual size and physically came nowhere close to even fitting in my pc.
So, back on the phone I go again. "Oh, it would appear in this particular case that there must have been a mistake on our end." No, um..."kidding" Sherlock...really? and all this time I thought I personally chose to receive the wrong gd card and cause this issue to enter week 4 or 5 or whatever.
So, they say, "Well, in this particular instance we can send you the correct card. First I need to get your credit card information again for the security deposit..." No f'n way! At this point, I'm through even trying to be patient or nice. After more transfers I get this guy on and the usual "what's your account number, name, phone, address, email" as if it had all changed in the last 5 mins. "What seems to be the problem?" WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE PROBLEM??? You dont' really want to know.
Well, anyhows, the end result is that I'm told Alienware is sending the correct card and it "should" be here on Monday Oct. 9 definetly. In the meantime the old card broke completely finally. Ten times I asked this guy, are you sure? Explaining again what had happened with the last so called two day shipment. He assured me that his computer showed it would be here on Monday.
They swore after asking 10x that the new card would be here...
Monday came and went. Called Alienware up again and asked WTF is going on? They transferred me a couple more times, put me on hold. Well, come to find out, the part HAS NOT SHIPPED YET! I'm like OMG why not? They DON'T KNOW!!! I have to "email they're shipping dept. and ask them why this part has not shipped".
I was told that the shpping department's email address was emailed to me and it was NOT and has not been still and I don't expect I ever will get it.
I may drive the entire pc to their doorstep and call my bank and have charges reversed. This is total crap. Is this because Dell bought Alienware? Is it because they're in Miami? Have they always been this way?
I just can't believe it. You should take back their "award winning customer service" award and smack em in the head with it.
edited by kellie to remove masked profanity
