Finally a fix for Nvidia Verde drivers BSoD's and freezes in M17x R1?

Gotcha. I offered the link because I was looking through that thread myself earlier today, and I found a lot of good stuff to keep for future use (hope I don't need it, but better have and not need)

The HOW TO: Clean Windows 7 Install (Driver Install Order) Guide for Alienware Systems thread was posted as of FEB this year, so I would say that despite the one month difference, it's pretty much so up-to-date...

 

Appreciate the info folks, going to do the reformat in a little bit. Thanks again!

 

How did that reformat go? Fix any of the issues you were having?

 

After having Dell replace my 280m GPUs and my R1 still crashed after 2 days, I also switched off PCIE 2 and 2 days so far it has been stable

Will update to the latest GPU drivers shorly

Cheers to all

 

thx for all the info guys. I was about to buy a new laptop. You saved me!!

 

I have a question, do the 267.67 Nvidia verde drivers bring back the DPC latency problem, or has that fix been included in the 200 version drivers, and all I would have to do is turn off PCI Gen 2.0 and most likely no crashes would occur that came from that issue?

 

Guessing you're referring to the 267.76 driver and the DPC latency spikes associated with GPU clock rate changes? Been included in Nvidia drivers for a while now and haven't seen any spikes on dpclat on these new drivers.

Actually been running the 267.76 drivers with BIOS A07 and PCI Express Gen 2.0 on and had no crashed since the drivers were released. No flash issues, no game crashes. Might just be lucky at the mo.

 

This sounded interesting to me so I thought I would check it out the performance with the latest nVidia drivers (270.51 beta) with PCIE Gen 2 on. Everything seems to be working ok... but when I checked GPU-Z it was telling me it was still running as PCIE 1.1.

I double checked to make sure PCIE Gen 2 was on then ran Rift to try and work up the GPU (single 260M) into PCIE 2.0 mode like it used to pre-A07 bios but nothing I did would get it to switch running at PCIE 1.1

GPU-Z states that the card supports "PCIE 2.0 16x" but is running at "PCIE 1.1 8x" and wont change. Is anyone else finding this with their GPU and the A07 bios?

 

Mine says 2.0

 

Are you still running A06 as your sig says or have you upgraded to A07?

Mine used to say 2.0 with A06 but doesn't seem to change now with A07.

 

Under A07 bios and 270.51 drivers here, and it says 8x 2.0

 

I have A07 but after upgrade, BIOS reports A06 still, I guess because it's not a real BIOS update but some patch as I read.

 

Cheers guys, I'll double check mine a bit more to see what happens.

@alex: Dell have an official A07 bios out now which is basically that patch with the updated number. Download it if your interested.

 

I did it the 1st time when it was just a patch, then did it again when it was released as A07, same thing, when I go into BIOS it says A06.

By the way, after this BIOS update my computer won't start if I have usb devices plugged in (mouse/keyboard), I had to disable USB emulation in BIOS (which means you can't use the external keyboard during POST).

 

Try turning your BIOS to default settings before flashing.
Had this happening with other systems and that fixed it.

 

So I'm having the same issue as everyone else with an R1. With vista, I was getting the BSOD, when I switched to 7 the bsod stopped, but I got the blank screen lockups or just flat out crash and lock (no bsod). I've been pouring through this and other forums looking for a solution.

I tried disabling the pci gen2, which did work, but damn am I getting performance drops. From what I was reading it wouldn't be that much. In WoW, for example, at all settings max (multi sample to 1, 4x filtering, vsynch on) I'm getting about 37-40fps in places like northrend and stranglethorn with it disabled, and 60 fps steady with it on. In Bad Company 2, I can run at 1440x900 on high in multiplayer smootly, off it's unplayable, even on low

My rig has the P8600 cpu, at 3.0ghz (bios oc cpu and memory fsb to 1333 which helped more than I thought it would), 4gigs of ram and dual 260Ms sli

Should I be getting that kind of drop, or is there something else that could be going on. Also, this never happened when I first got this (pretty much at launch). I've read about ppl going to older drivers as another solution. Which would I go to and would the drop from using an outdated driver be worth the gain from pci gen2? Personally, it's a big difference having it on and off in several games, but of course, being noob bait during a driver crash, or wiping my raid in wow is completely out of the question.

*edit*
guess I should've mentioned, I'm currently using the driver from the dell website, tried the beta driver linked too, but it seemed to have worse performance in WoW, which is my biggest game. (kinda sad this 7 year old game is beating down my 2 grand system)

 

I've been running the 267.76 (and now the 270.61) drivers from Nvidia for a few weeks with PCI Gen 2.0 enabled, had one in-game crash the entire time.

Think these have been the most stable Verde drivers for the GTX2x0M cards. Give them a try. With my SLI GTX280Ms, I can run BF:BC2 close to max @ 1920x1200 with 50-60fps.

 

Just finished installing the 270.61, we'll see how it goes. There any reason to install the 3d vision drivers? I did anyway, but I doubt I'll ever be getting shutter glasses or the screen to use them.

edit#
Well, got my first lockup. After playing WoW for about an hour, I switched toons and all of a sudden, freeze. I am running it in dx11, so maybe it was that, I'll switch back to dx9 and report

edit#
tried playing wow again, driver crashed and recovered multiple times in a row, may try the 267.76, but I'm thinking I've tried that one before, pci gen2 off again, and of course, a loss of fps

 

The loss of perfofrmance with PCI Gen 2 off is not really that noticeable. At least not for me.. Anyway i'll stick with 267.76 for now...

 

As I did post above: There is a performance loss when disabling PCI Gen2, but under DirectX9 it's only about 3 Percent. From my perspective 3 percent of higher perfomance can't compete with the value of a stable system.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...vers-bsods-freezes-m17x-r1-3.html#post7212964

 

Still only had 1 crash with the last two driver versions with PCI Gen 2.0 enabled, none so far with 270.61. Played many hours of AvP, BF:BC2, Borderlands, L4D2 including a long LAN session on the weekend, no crashes.

 

I just flashed my m17x R1 bios to the a07, and downloaded the newest drivers, 270.61. Everything worked great until I tried to install the new drivers.

Safe mode, driver sweeper, cleaned out the nvidia display and chipset, reboot to safe mode again, ran crapcleaner and cleaned out the registry, reboot again to safemode and did the have disk method.

I had the inf file replaced with the modded one. Everything seemed to go fine. It finished, I rebooted and, after windows starts to load, my computer would switch to a black screen. I could hear the "windows sound", in the background.

No crashes, or lockups...just...black! Tried fnf7 to switch modes but, that didn't help either. Tried doing the whole process over again but, in safe mode and trying to reinstall the verde drivers, it would tell me that the proper updated drivers are already installed. This was after I recleaned them out?!

Finally had to reboot again to safe mode, went to Dell, and downloaded their drivers and just used their executable, and now everything is working.

I swear I NEVER have any damn luck installing drivers from laptopvideo2go. I really wish I knew what I do wrong each time. This is even after reading through their faqs for installing.

 

Boot to Windows normally after cleaning your opd drivers.

 

So, after driversweeper in safe mode, reboot to normal mode? You know, I've never tried that. Always assumed that if you tried to reboot into normal mode, with the video drivers removed, that it just wouldn't work? Figured it would crash without the drivers to run to cards? Does it just default to the vga graphics?

Just to ask, why would it then work, updating to the verde drivers when in normal windows mode?

 

Indeed you have to reinstal in normal mode: when running in safe mode, windows doesn't load the videos drivers, you just run on integrated graphics (this is why when a discrete gpu dies, you still can open a safe mode session).

Furthermore, since you are using hybrid-sli, you need to have your discrete card enabled for the driver to instal correctly.

You uninstal in normal mode, clean in safe mode, and install the new drivers in normal mode (Windows will install standard vga drivers on session startup anyway).

Oh and by the way, you don't need any .inf file for a verde driver to work on the M17x.

 

Thanks for the info. I'll give that a try.

 

The clean install option on the new Verde drivers is actually pretty damn good.

 

I used it a couple of times... only to find out you get better results with the good old sweeper/cleaner method. I only noticed because i'm crushing on Primegrid (boinc) though, the workunites would take longer for no reason. Clean instal with sweeper/cleaner and back to normal speed

 

257.38 is the driver version I'm showing when I check my system through the nVidia control panel but, when I go to the main windows control panel to add/remove programs, I'm showing the 270.61's being installed???

Since I didn't have any luck, so I thought, installing the '61's originally, I was gonna do another reinstl but...now I'm not sure what's up.

Any idea why I'd have conflicting driver editions being shown?

 

is Dell EVER going to come out with a fix for this issue??

 

Unfortunately, I highly doubt it. They don't make any money from the R1's and R2's. They've moved onto focusing on the M14x and M18x, with a small amount of support left for the R3 while its still bringing in money.

Though I'd love for Dell to prove me wrong

 

Hi, Scyphoz. May I know whether there is a resolution to avoid the Black screen for M17x R1 with 280M SLI except turn off the PCIE Gen2 in BIOS?

I have reported this problem to DELL in China, but seems they don't have any idea for it.

BTW, I found an interesting thing for M17x R1.

According to the file from Internet, Q9000 is 45W, Monitor is 21W, Single 280M is 75W, 280M SLI should be 150W, ST HDD 500G is 11W, RAM is 3W, Others equipment is around 20W.

Thus, total is 250W at least, but the adapter from DELL is 240W. Seems the adapter can't provide the enough capacity for M17x R1 if the workstation need to run at full capacity.

 

The 240W rating is a safe rating but they can go as high as 290W, yes, tested!

 

Thanks a lot.

But how to resolve the BSoD and freezes for M17x except turn of PCIE Gen2 in BIOS?

 

Have you tried the latest Nvidia release?

 

I'm starting to be fed up with all the BSODs...

I have turned PCIEgen2 off, but several times a week (sometimes a day) I get a blue screen when switching integrated <=> discrete. Nvlddkm.sys is listed as the culprit each thime this happens.

Am I alone in this?

I have had this issue with every driver release for some time now, and yes I always do a clean installation of graphics drivers, I recently installed Windows Seven, I had this under Vista also...

 

I found that at some point in the mid 270.xx releases my M17x went from being able to swap between discrete and integrated when PCIE Gen 2 was off to crashing on each attempt to swap them.

I later tried turning on PCIE Gen 2 and found that it fixed the crashing issue I had when swapping between integrated and discrete graphics. I also have not had a crash on my M17x since turning PCIE Gen 2 back on with later 27x.xx drivers (from 275.xx up I believe... just before nvidia managed to remove dell graphics card codes for the alienware range for a few releases).

I don't want to advocate turning PCIE Gen 2 back on seeing as it fixed the BSOD issues for most people, but if you do swap between discrete and integrated graphics a lot then you could always try turning PCIE gen 2 back on with the latest drivers from nvidia a see how it goes.

 

If you are using the latest drivers as listed on the Dell site (which are vastly outdated now) I recommend getting the latest drivers direct from nVidia here: NVIDIA DRIVERS 280.26 WHQL

For most people turning off PCIE Gen 2 has been the only way to prevent BSOD issues with the M17x R1 with verde drivers. However, there have been quite a few driver releases since this issue occurred and it may have been fixed at some point but remained unnoticed with PCIE Gen 2 off.

I personally found that during the mid 27x.xx drivers my ability to swap between discrete and integrated graphics in windows (Fn + F7 etc.) began to cause BSOD when it previously did not before 27x.xx drivers. The only way I could remedy this was to turn PCIE Gen 2 back on. Since doing so I have not experienced another BSOD related to PCIE Gen 2 with any of the later 27x.xx drivers (275.xx and up).

I suggest if you want to attempt to keep PCIE gen 2 on, download the latest nVidia drivers linked above, completely uninstall your current drivers and do a clean install of the new nVidia drivers. If you still experience crashes then the only known solution is to turn PCIE Gen 2 off.

But who knows... maybe it was sneakily fixed somewhere along the way and we just hadn't spotted it yet while our PCIE Gen 2 settings are off.

 

I have been able to Fn+F7 even with PCIE Gen2 disabled....but based on your post going to enable it again and see how it goes. Currently running the 280.19 beta driver.

 

Guys, please, let's test the lastest 280.26 and report if get BSOD or freezes or something wrong. But please report the exact issue, so we can check if we are all getting the same issue.

 

I will be the first:

I got a flickering gray screen with 280.26, after just a couple of hours of being installed.

 

I turned PCIe back ON (I turned it off after installing Seven because sometimes when I launched a game or switched cards I would get a grey/creamy screen. I had never seen this before.)

My phone will be ready to take pictures of any BSOD or weird screen happening

 

Had a complete lock-up while watching a youtube video (only 1).

Haven't had any lock-ups with games so far. Dues Ex: Human Revolution's been great on this driver.

 

Same thing for me, switched pcie2 back off.

Also, if I enable integrated graphics, screen goes blank in the W7 login page and never recovers.

 

I think its fairly safe to say there hasn't been any unnoticed improvement in newer driver versions.

I've probably just been lucky with my M17x. I don't use it too much these days unless I'm traveling, but I'll keep an eye on it to see what I can find from time to time.

 

First issue to report: had a black screen while surfing the web, (I was scrolling down a page then bam, screen was off).

 

Had my first grey flickering screen while browsing the web, it took several days but it is still here

But, no BSOD so far... It's just a trade of issues lol

edit: forget I said anything, I got the grey flcikering screen and the BSOD too , there is no trade, it's just a lose-lose combo xD

 

It is now safe to say that there is no verde drivers "stable" in the M17x R1 ... thats so sad ... I would like to know what is the difference between 19x.xx drivers and 2xx.xx drivers what make them so unstable... This is all dell's fault.

 

Yeah... I think its safe to say that unless we went back to using drivers from a few years ago we will never be able to have PCIE Gen 2 enabled and have a stable laptop.

I think its a shame... but when even the R3 is now up to an A08 bios you have to wonder about Dells bios coding capabilities...

 

does this kind of issues have any weight when talking to support?

Or they are going to say "blah blah blah not our fault, blah blah blah use our 2 years old driver blah blah blah"?

I mean, this type of issues is not normal, whatever they say. Im still under warranty for almost a year so if I can fight for a better machine it would be stupid not to try.