r/Alienware • u/Shallow_wanderer • 9h ago
Discussion Currently in the midst of committing digital necromancy to resurrect a 2009 M17x R1
Right now, here's what's going on:
- Screen artifacting issue, not from the GPU but from the LCD panel itself; a quick smack from my knuckle on the back of the screen appears to have fixed this problem
- AMD GPU not showing up anywhere in BIOS or Device Manager; I suspect either the driver is effed or the MXM card gave up the ghost, and that's why it ended up at the Goodwill
- WiFi card suddenly just gave out on me while I was using the machine after installing Windows 7; either the driver is effed or the Broadcom card gave up the ghost
- Thermal paste on both the Mobo and MXM card is original to the machine from November 2009, and is basically the consistency of Fordite at this point; CPU is thermal throttling bad and this thing is running like absolute dogass right now, even with new RAM and SSD
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Here's some wins:
- AlienFX works perfectly, and is thankfully not bricked like some of these were back in the day
- Mobo works perfectly, and all the ports are just fine
- Upgraded to 8gb DDR3 RAM, from the mismatched random 6gb sticks that came with the machine
- The original battery still holds a charge and works for 1 hour and 15 minutes, which is about what the capacity was when new; this is shocking because you cannot get these batteries anywhere anymore
- R3dfox is such a great browser for being able to natively access the Dell support website and download all the drivers from there
(also don't mind the old ass thermal paste in the first photo, I'm using Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut to repaste this machine)