Alienware M17x R1 Video Freeze issue

Laptop currently has A05 BIOS and the latest NVIDIA drivers as far as I know and after about 30-1 hour of playing WoW the video freezes on the screen with the graphics still showing for about 5 seconds then the screen goes black gray or orange just a random flat color on the screen and the computer has to be forced off in order to work again....... Is this a faulty mobo/video card or drivers/software issue? I am trying to keep an eye on GPU temps and they look like they are only going to 65C

 

Howdies chiefs,

BIOS A03 works better and is recommended.

Also you should try a different driver. That could be your problem. Try uninstalling that driver and using a different one. Perhaps older version if your using the latest. A lot of peeps seem to have trouble with the newer drivers. So they are all reverting back to older drivers that functioned properly and without the troubles your experiencing. So just do the usual. Uninstall Nvidia drivers, run driver sweeper and CC cleaner in safe mode. Boot back into normal OS mode and install a different Nvidia driver.

See how that goes and if it happens again try the whole process again with a few more drivers. If still no good then it could be hardware, gpus or mobo or even the LCD invertor. If so then give dell a buzz and sort out some hardware replacement fixes.

Cheers.

 

Thanks for the good advice where do I find the specific or older NVIDIA drivers? The ones I have now I just got from the Dell Support site and typed in my service tag #. Also is the A03 BIOS on the Dell support site?

 

Yeh you can get a few drivers on the dell support site. The Bios is also there.

For more drivers you can just dl them from Nvidia.com
There are heaps of drivers there. betas and whql ones. Literally heaps to choose from. If you can remember the old driver you were using with no problems then that is a good place to start as well. Just to see if it is the driver causing issues or another problem like hardware perhaps.

Dell - Support

Dell - Support

Dell - Support

Drivers - Download NVIDIA Drivers

NVIDIA Driver Downloads - Advanced Search

Cheers

 

Thanks reborn you are very helpful. Also wanted to add I have the 4870 single configuration not sure if that matters with all of this.... I just flashed back to A03 should I just use this and see if it resolves the issue before I try the NVIDIA driver stuff?

 

I just realized I forgot to tell you I had the ATI 4870 in the first place and I just went to their site and theres no individual drivers just the Catalyst download suite thingy which I have the latest one

 

Woops that was my fault I said NVIDIA without even thinking about who made my video car I get ATi and Nvidia mixed together

 

Oh woops my bad.

Ignore all my nvidia links sorry about that.

You will need to try AMD ati mobility drivers instead. The same process can be used though to uninstall and driver sweep clean etc.

Dell - Support

ATI Catalyst? Mobility Display Driver

http://downloads.guru3d.com/ATI-Catalyst-10.9-for-Win-7|Vista-%2864-bit%29-download-2620.html

Cheers.

 

No worries It happens to the best of us.

 

Also another trick Dell likes to tell users when troubleshooting. Is to shutdown the notebook. Take out the battery. Then hold down the Alienhead (on button) for 30 secs to 1 min. Release put back in the battery and boot up again.

If things are more serious then you can also take out the CMOS battery as well as the other normal battery then hold the Alienhead down. The CMOS battery is under the bottom plate. Just unscrew the 2 screws under the battery compartment then lift the bottom plate off and it is the round coin size looking battery.


Another thing you can try if your still having troubles is the diagnostic test. Restart your notebook or boot it up if its off. Keep hitting F12 after you see the Alienhead splash screen at the start to load up the boot menu. Then select Diagnostic. Run the tests in there and see if you get any hardware error msgs or beeps.

Cheers.

 

I don't see any different versions of the ATI 4870 drivers everything is the same one Version: 8.635... Looks like I am still getting lockups/freezes when playing WoW with A03 BIOS

 

Going to run the hardware diagnostics now and do the battery reset thing I want to get this all out of the way so I can tell Dell when I call them. Thanks for all the steps this will save me time with them beating around the bush hopefully.

 

No worries. Yeh good luck with contacting Dell.
Only one other thing you could try is to uninstall the driver and then reinstall it fresh again. See how that goes then call dell.

Also worst case scenario would also involve formatting and resinstalling the OS again just to see if it fixes things.


Cheers.

 

Already reformatted I guess my main thing is wondering about this is if its the entire motherboard that causes this or simply replacing the video card would fix it? Is this a known issue? What usually ends up being the resolution?

 

Hey theres chiefs,

Yeh usually GPUs and motherboard would be replaced. In some instances fans and heatsinks as well. Depending really who you get on the phone. Some like to cover all sort of bases and just throw in different parts to get changed. That normally happens when they can't pin point the exact hardware defect or which ever part is causing you trouble. Your screen invertor or entire screen may also need changing. See as you got the colour thing.

Also if it is much more serious then they will want to do a CAR job. That usually won't happen until after a couple of techs are sent to your place to try and remedy the problem. The CAR job is where they take your notebook away for a week or 2 and try to fix it at their tech depot center or at one of the techs houses.

Cheers.

 

I had a similar problem with mine, except using Nvidia cards. After 5-30 minutes the graphics would freeze similar to how you describe.

Seems like it's the motherboard (as an identical failure in different card types seems very unlikely). Unfortunately for me, it seems like the replacement motherboard I received today was defective so I can't say if that fixed it.

 

appears to be fixed with older ATi drivers for the 4870 have not had a freeze since. thanks for the help

 

The 8.763 driver Dell released also applies to the M17xR1 4870 - you can use this driver with your system. See post#1 -
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...5870-gpus-5870-vbios-discussion-non-beta.html

reminder, the VBIOS update in that post is only for the 5870 GPU.

 

I have the Duel GTX 280 in SLI, and have already done everything here that people have described.

However, Dell support insits I use the A05 Bios, which ended up messing up Win 7 and causing a full reinstall, and putting all my drivers back on.

Any suggestions for getting them to send me new parts? Or a new system, as I am fed up with this one. Less than a year, and I am on my second system(the first one showed up was broken out of the box and never booted. I had to replace the HD, motherboard and I drew the line at video cards, so they sent a new one.)

So 6 months later I am still getting crashes, and now they had me do a chkdsk, took almost 4 hours to run, and now I am going to have to run mem test on each individual memory module.

I guess I don't mind doing some checking, but this is silly, I work all day and on my few hours of down time I trouble shoot my almost brand new machine.

Has anyone had any luck with replacing these components, or is it just a way for Dell to hope I give up? The techs I talk with are a mixed bag, one gave me his direct extension, and another was so snippy I asked for his manager as we had not even talked for more than 3 minutes and he was insulting me. <sigh> I just want it to work.

 

Going through same thing rmcolosimo

 

Yeah.. I did the memory stick test, surprise no issues.

So now they are going to send out a tech to replace one, both?, of my video cards.

So I guess I will see how this goes. Oh and the blue screen crashes are back, about 1 a day now. <sigh>

 

Have you tried the P06 beta Dell graphics card drivers? I have tried all the released drivers since and all have resulted in BSOD and hard lockups. This seems to be the most recent but stable driver for me

Drivers and Downloads

If you do install, it is best to completely wipe the old driver off your system first.

 

As I know, in BIOS, under graphic option, disable something like power management(maybe it was last option under graphic settings, I forgot the name, cos I've got a R2 now ). It does fix freeze issue sometimes.

 

So this driver works with SLI, as well as single video cards?

Thanks.

 

Thanks these drivers work for me no freezing anymore in WoW!

 

Well I tried those Beta drivers and one entire night of no problems. Of course dell says they are sending a tech to replace the cards now..<sigh>

We shall see..

 

Beta drivers are no good for me. I hope it is only the problem of software not the hardware.

 

did you choose the hybrid mode for the video card?