Alienware m17x r1 display turns off at login

hi guys, i have alienware m17x r1 system bought on the 26/12/09, so after the dell takeover.
i bought the laptop second hand and it came with harddrive, so no alienrespawn so i can't go back to factory settings.
however my problem comes when installing the nvidia geforce GTX280M driver. Im using this order to install the drivers:

HTML:

http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kcs/document?&docid=439198

i am using drivers from the dell website for alienware m17x r1 which can be found here:
Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United Kingdom]
I am running a 64bit windows 7.
I originally had the A07 BIOS and i had no problems installing the mcp79 chipset and ricoh media drivers. However when i install the nvidia graphics drivers and restart my computer, the screen completely turns off, including the backlight. There is absolutly no responsiveness, ive tried hitting the caps lock at this stage and the caps lock light does not switch on. Sometimes it goes into a blue screen and reboots, sometimes it just sits there and does nothing.
I have also tried using older drivers, namely flashin A03 and using older mcp79 and nvidia graphics drivers for the A03 BIOS.
A have also tried with the A02 BIOS set up with even older drivers.
Also, when there are no drivers windows does detect all 3 of my graphics cards (integrated nvidia geforce 9400m and 2 discrete gtx280M in SLI) and installs vga drivers for them.

If anyone has any ideas to get my 2 discrete graphics cards working id greatly appreciate it.

 

Hello, wmwstress, welcome to NBR.
What you encounter is a known "issue".
Assuming you start fresh, take a look at this thread, i provided the necessary steps (post #32) to install newer display drivers on this system (M17x), follow all of them:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...nvidia-beta-drivers-290-53-a.html#post8192962

Fell free to check these threads along with the forum rules when you get a chance:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ion-how-search-forum-read-before-posting.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...m17x-r1-r2-owners-lounge-thread-part-1-a.html

 

thanks for the reply katalin_2003

I tried those steps in the link your provided on a fresh windows 7 home premium with an A07 BIOS. However i get a similar problem. The screen cuts out after log in and there is no responsiveness. PCIe Gen2 is disabled in the BIOS. Hybrid and Integrated graphics are Enabled.
The only difference is the laptop cuts out after the windows 7 log-on tune while with other drivers it cut out before.
Im sure that it is a driver problem however after so many failed attempts im beginning to think, maybe some kind of hardware error??

EDIT: i'd also like to add that with evey driver, when i disable hybrid graphics in the BIOS, the laptop boots fine in the integrated graphics and it comes up fine in the device manager however once the graphics drivers are installed my wifi connection starts bugging, sometimes it connects other times it just doesnt detect anything. However in safe mode the wifi runs as normal. This problem only occurs when i install any nvidia graphics drivers and try and boot normally on the integrated graphics card only.

 

wmestress, have you ever had the 280 sli working? Or is this a new problem?

 

Since i recieved the machine i have had them working once with an A07 BIOS and the nvidia geforce drivers from dell support website. However on that website there is also an update for the nvidia drivers which i installed. Then i turned hybrid graphics back on and both discrete graphics cards were working. I can confirm this becuase the correct parameters came up on CPU-Z and the chess game worked with accelerated graphics. However on restarteing the machine the screen cut out again after log-on.

UPDATE: After reading further down the thread katalin linked in the previous post i noticed that it was mentioned that all of the graphics setting were set to Disabled in the BIOS. So i went into safe mode and uninstalled the drivers and ran driver sweeper. Then i went into the BIOS and Disabled all the settings under Advanced>Graphics Settings. Then i reinstalled the drivers following the same guide. However the machine still cut out around log in. After going back into safe mode i noticed that in device manager under display drivers the two Geforce GTX280M had "correctly" installed drivers, but obviously there is some kind of issue. Hope that helps in nailing the problem.

 

BUMP! im truly out of ideas, almost conviced its a hardware problem although it doesnt seem like one however there are no drivers that seem to work

 

I tried with the 197.84 drivers with all settings disabled in the BIOS under advanced>graphics settings. Ive provided a dump file which may possible give a bit more insight to the problem.

View attachment dump.zip

 

Sorry dude. That sounds like your GPU is dead.

I had a similar issue with my M17x's GPU. The integrated Intel graphics would be fine but whenever the AMD 6870M GPU would try to kick in, I would just get a blank screen.

Safe mode, no problems. When I try to boot up in Normal mode, I get as far as the Windows splash screen and then nada. I even reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled everything to eliminate software as being the issue.

I sent the M17x for repair and hopefully get it back soon with a working GPU!