Alienware/Dell driver problems on m17xR1

Alright so I have an m17x. I did a fresh install of Win 7 on a brand new hard drive. It works great except for two things:

1. Everytime I restart the computer, I have to uninstall the nvidia network driver and reinstall it to get the internet working.

2. When every I play games, ever so often my screen will just black out. Then come on and say the Driver for your video cards has stopped working and recovered. It does it the most while I'm playing Torchlight.

This is very frustrating so if someone here has any knowledge of what causes this besides Dell being less than "quality", your healp would be appreciated.

 

1. Do NOT install the Ethernet drivers from NVIDIA, that will kill your wifi and internet will work only through Ethernet. The solution, leave Windows to install the default Ethernet drivers, they works fine.

2. Go to the system BIOS, advanced/graphics and disable PCIe Gen 2. That will let you use the newer NVIDIA drivers without issues. Or just install the 197.84 from dells site.

 

Did you get the drivers you are using from Dell Support or somewhere else? Interesting timing of m17x driver issues on two new but separate threads... http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/655001-m17x-all-network-stuff-stopped-working.html

 

i got my drivers from dell support. tyranus ill do that bios setting switch and let you know how it works. also, how do i use the default windows wifi?

 

Install the Wifi driver of your choice, depending on your Wifi card.

Just deselect the Ethernet driver when installing the chipset driver.
Or if you already did, go to Control Panel > Uninstall a program > Choose nVidia Drivers and uninstall ONLY the Ethernet driver.

Reboot and Windows will install default drivers for it.

 

the problem im having now after disabling support for pcie gen2 is it wont let me install the newest nidia drivers. it wont update through device manager either.

This is just becoming more and more frustrating. I cannot games that run the hl2 engine or else my computer just bugs out completely.

Is there anyway to install nvidia drivers for the 2 nvidia 260ms i have in my computer? Nvidia keeps telling me to go to a company called compal.

 

Hello, NortheastBread,
Download the 296.10 drivers from nvidia.com, making sure you choose windows 7 x64 but don't install them just yet.

Download these files i just finished, they'll help you install the drivers for the 260M:
nVIDIA GTX 260M INF

Uninstall your current nvidia display driver in safe mode, don't use driver sweeper on your system and reboot.

Double click the drivers you just downloaded from nvidia and let them extract, when the installation begins just CANCEL it.

Now extract the files i just gave you and put them in C:\NVIDIA\DisplayDriver\296.10\WinVista_Win7_64\International\Display.Driver replacing the orininal files.

Go back to the International folder and run setup.exe

Reboot when prompted.

Don't forget to reenable SLi in nVIDIA Control Panel and reboot your system once more.

 

I followed what you said but it keeps failing when trying to install the graphics driver.

 

Do this...

When installing the Nvidia drivers, select to install everything, except the PhysX sorftware. For some weird reason if I install the PhysX sofware along with the display drivers, the display drivers will not install.

Then go to Nvidia website and download the individual installer for the PhysX software. Thats what I do, if not, I can't install Nvidia drivers.

 

I actually figured it out from a different thread on here. This video fixed my issue:

[Solved] Install NVIDIA 295.73 drivers on an Alienware M17x Laptop - YouTube

 

Seems a bit complicated, compared to just "copy-paste" the .inf file. But whatever works for you is ok. Congratulations !