Question Strange Problem involving Geforce 880M / HDMI audio

Barretto24

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Aug 24, 2015
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I have an Alienware M17xR3 on Windows 10 (64 bit) I have had the laptop since 2011. Where I suffered a whole load of problems. I have recently taken it to my local laptop repair shop where he put in a new motherboard and upgraded the graphics card to Nvidia GeForce 880M upgrading the memory from 4gb to 8gb and 16GB Ram.

Before I started getting problems, the laptop had switchable graphics and HDMI sound. Since getting it back the switchable graphics and the HDMI audio are disabled in Bios. He told me that he had been on the phone to dell countless times trying to figure out why it was disabled. Dell told him there was no work around so he gave me a USB dongle for sound and mic and some speakers (that really are terrible! Lol)

I play a lot of PS4 and like to have my laptop screen through the TV ect so I use the HDMI In port on this laptop a lot. Reading online found some helpful tips so I decided to shutdown the laptop and boot into Bios. I changed the HDMI sound to Enabled. Saved and rebooted. Low and behold I have sound coming out of my Laptop internal speakers (hurrah!) BUT another problem arose. I get no picture on the laptop screen. I am otherwise greated with a full screen of pure colour (so far it's been light blue, blue and green)

Obviously the sound works but is there a work around or a fix for the graphics card throwing a hissy fit when I enable the HDMI audio in bios?

Thanks everyone in advance
Mike

(sorry for the long winded post was trying to be as detailed as I could be)
 
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Lutfij

Titan
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After you got the motherboard on the laptop replaced, did you make sure you're on the latest laptop BIOS? Often times you're left working with the first release of the BIOS. It'd be a good idea to double check and see if your BIOS is concurrent.
 

Barretto24

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Aug 24, 2015
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After you got the motherboard on the laptop replaced, did you make sure you're on the latest laptop BIOS? Often times you're left working with the first release of the BIOS. It'd be a good idea to double check and see if your BIOS is concurrent.


I checked it and I am running the latest bios from Dell - A12 from August 2012! Dell stopped supporting the laptop after Windows 7 does not list anything after Win7. Any suggestions my friend?
 
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Dell stopped supporting the laptop after Windows 7 does not list anything after Win7. Any suggestions my friend?

Then you really ought not to be trying to run Windows 10 on it, especially as it's a laptop. You're likely to get all manner of problems if Dell has not released Win 10 drivers for it.

Save yourself a bunch of hassle and buy a new laptop with Win 10 preinstalled.
 

Barretto24

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Aug 24, 2015
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Dell stopped supporting the laptop after Windows 7 does not list anything after Win7. Any suggestions my friend?

Then you really ought not to be trying to run Windows 10 on it, especially as it's a laptop. You're likely to get all manner of problems if Dell has not released Win 10 drivers for it.

Save yourself a bunch of hassle and buy a new laptop with Win 10 preinstalled.

Thank you for your input but that isn't an option. Spent a lot of money on this bad boy. It works fine but currently having to use a dongle plugged in for audio which is not ideal. Rather find a work around if possible. Plenty of people have used unsupported drivers in the past and received no problems. Dell is renowned for not supporting any of their hardware a year on from their release.
 
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Barretto24

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Aug 24, 2015
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Have no clue. He ordered it from America, The graphics card came from China. I know exactly what is causing the issue. It's the Nvidia Geforce 880m. But having spent a huge wad of cash on the repair (Motherboard went carput after Raid crashed) I haven't the funds to replace it again. If there is no work around I'll have to put up with using audio through dongle to headphones (It gets in the way tho lol) or Audio through my Bluetooth Wireless speaker (Only downside when playing PS4 through laptop is that it doesn't recognise the speaker) it's just a pain as this laptop had fantastic internal speakers (The fact that the test shows that the speakers work but the graphics card doesn't like it)

Thanks guys, if anyone can come up with a free fix please let me know.
 
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