# Alienware R3 and windows 10 update question



## wilson44512 (Mar 25, 2006)

last year i tried to do the update and at 30% it did a restart. and it crashed. i even lost everything and had to reinstall windows 7. does any one know if this issue was fixed. and the install will work now? and now for some reason i cant even get windows to update? but last night it finally did. But all it found was the Windows 10 upgrade? And now in the device manager i get *Yellow Exclamation Point on the Sm bus controller and univirsal serial usb controllers?. And when i try to upgrade the drivers i get this *

*







*


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## crjdriver (Jan 2, 2001)

You get that msg because you did not install the chipset driver. 
When you install windows, it is done in the following order;
1 Install the os
2 Update to the latest service pack
3 Install chipset/mb driver
4 Install sound, nic/lan driver
5 Install video driver
6 If all is well, activate windows and make a backup image of your system drive. If you ever need a clean install in the future, it takes all of 5min or so to restore the image.
7 Do windows update and install ALL critical updates. Repeat until there are no more updates to install.


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## crjdriver (Jan 2, 2001)

Next issue; win10 update/upgrade. The very first thing you do when deciding whether to install an os, is to check for support for ALL of your hardware. Go to the support page for your system and see if win10 drivers are available. If there are no win10 drivers listed, then win10 is not a supported os.

The next thing you do prior to installing any os OR making any hardware software changes, is to make a backup image of your system as it is now. If you do not like the new os or if it does not work correctly, it is a simple matter to restore the image. You are right back where you started.

Last thing before installing any os. Download ALL of the drivers you need ie chipset driver, sound driver, nic/lan driver, wireless driver, video driver, etc. In addition, download any utilities you need ie ccleaner, burning software, etc. Put all of these on a flash drive, external drive, etc. It makes the install go much easier when you have all of the drivers, patches, utilities, etc in one place AND you do not have to go looking for them.


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## wilson44512 (Mar 25, 2006)

i cant get windows to update? is there another way to get the drivers?


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## crjdriver (Jan 2, 2001)

As explained above. Go to the support page for your system and download them. I checked and there are a LOT of R3s listed so you need to use the exact and full model#
If you post the full model# here, I can look for you.


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## crjdriver (Jan 2, 2001)

BTW it is _always_ preferable to use the mfg's drivers rather than a generic windows driver. 
Windows drivers are not designed for any type of performance nor do they have any custom settings/options that a mfg driver would have. Windows drivers are designed for one thing; stability.


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## wilson44512 (Mar 25, 2006)

all i know is Aurora-R3?


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## crjdriver (Jan 2, 2001)

OK you omitted the aurora part in your first post. I will check and see what I find. 
OK, first thing I see right off is that win10 is NOT a supported os. Here is the link to the support page. As you can see, win7 is the only supported os;
http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/alienware-aurora-r3/drivers

Download the relevant drivers from the link above.


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## crjdriver (Jan 2, 2001)

BTW just because win10 is not listed, does not mean it will not work. It means it was never tested and found to work AND the mfg does not want to put time/money into writing drivers for a system that is now 5yrs old. When you install an unsupported os, you are in effect a beta tester; might work and it might not work. With a desktop, you are more likely to be able to find drivers on a hardware vendor's site ie realtek sound/lan, intel for chipset, etc however it does require some work on your part to find ALL of the drivers you will need and again no guarantee that it will work; you are the beta tester.

FWIW I have win10 running on one of the systems here [asus 790fx chipset board] no win10 support is listed however everything works fine. This was however a clean install of win10 enterprise rather than an in-place upgrade.


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## wilson44512 (Mar 25, 2006)

thanks very much i went to dell support and it scaned my pc and found 3 files that was missing and installed them and it fixed the missing _sm bus controller_ & _universal serial_ bus (_usb_) controller. then when to microsoft and a update patch. and now it says i have 28 updates to download. so now its downloading them. and we will see what happens.. ill get back to ya if it all works out. and again Thanks


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## crjdriver (Jan 2, 2001)

You are welcome. The missing files were probably .inf type or the chipset files.


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