m6400 Covet - Random World of Warcraft Crashes

Hello everyone,

I have a new m6400 Covet (WUXGA RGB-LED | T9600 (2x2.80GHz) | 4GB DDR3 | 320GB HDD | Quadro FX 3700M 1GB (WDDM 1.1) | Windows 7 64bit) and I'm having an annoying crashing problem when I play WoW.

It seems completely random and I already have a coolermaster laptop cooler underneath it so I don't think its a heat problem. It can happen within 15 mins of playing or sometimes I can go 3 hours without issue.

The screen just goes black and I can't get it to come back without forcing a hard reset

I have the large version brick PSU also so assume power delivery is ok.

This happens both in the Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit (which the laptop came with despite asking for 64bit) and also the current Windows 7 RC1 x64.

I've tried a number of different driver versions including the ones from Dell, Windows (Windows 7 provided) NVidia and laptop2go. None fix the problem and many give me the dim screen problem which seems to be related to my having the RGB LED screen. Sorry I don't recall exactly which driver versions I have tried.

I appreciate the Quadro is not NVidia's gaming card range, but thats no reason it should crash right? When its working it plays pefectly fine, and the WoW graphics engine is hardly new or taxing on most half decent computers.

Any suggestions or comments welcome.

Thanks,
Lozman.

 

From my experience with past dell laptops... I think your VRAM is screwed. Altough WoW is not graphic intensive, it still manages to push GPUs pretty far just for pumping more fps.

I suggest you call Dell and run some diagnostics.

It might not be the video card, but the on board ram. Either way, it's not a driver problem, it's most likely a hardware problem.

 

i have the exact same problem. my m6400 has been replaced twice.


running vista64 with 3700m, 8gigs of ram, rgbled e2e, 2.53 quad


not sure if it's heat related or a driver issue. running bios A04 and the latest video drivers from dell. windows has been wiped out and manually reinstalled.

 

normally this would be a plausible explanation, but i dont think this is the issue. the wow engine is very old, and does not tax current video cards much... especially the 3700m. in most places, my fps is capped at 60fps when vsync is turned on. it is extremely smooth when it does not crash.

 

Hi Blacky,

Thanks for your comments.

hmm I'm not convinced its a hardware issue, especially now following Bluemonkeys comments.

I'm also convinced it isn't a heat problem, since its random and can happen after a few minutes or not at all for several hours. I also run the laptop on a decent laptop cooler at all times with the fan on maximum. I've also tried running WoW at a lower resolution with the graphics settings on minimum and its still happens.

One thing I will say, is it hasn't happened for the last two days since I ran NV GPU Pro and a) disabled Nvidia PowerMizer, and b) "Fixed memory clock problem". I must admit I don't know what either of these things actually do, so it may be complete luck/coincidence that it hasn't happened yet so far, but it might be worth trying. (I'll report back again if it happens again following this).

Can anyone give more insight into what these settings in NV GPU Pro do, or post a link to somewhere where this info has already been posted? In the meantime I'll do a search and post it myself if I find it.

Thanks,
Lozman.

 

Bah It just crashed again, and I wasn't even playing WoW.

I was simply fooling around with Google Earth 5.

 

I have the same problem with Warcraft 3 and then I tried playing it with only battery power and never crashed since. One game I plugged the brick during midgame because I was low on power and 5 minutes after, I got a black screen and had to reset.

Try doing that and see if it works for you. That would confirm it.

 

Have you had them swap out your video card??

 

A friend of mine reportet similar issues with a desktop Radeon 4870...
that seems quite freaky to me...!

 

lozman,

Are you in the US? If so, can you please send me a private message? Our engineers are interested in engaging and providing a solution to this problem.