Given up on running Verde 26X.XX Drivers on my M17x.

Any time I installed any of them, I get frozen screens, black screens and plain ol BSODs. I've tried everything noted on the forum and no joy. Wondering if anyone has successfully gotten them installed when previously having these issues and what you did to correct it.

 

i used to haf the same problem with 2xx series drivers. But the latest WHQL driver worked for me without any problem, i simply uninstalled the P06 beta driver from dell, restart to safe mode, use ccleaner to clean registry, then restart n install the new driver.

 

I have tried every driver and the only stable one I found was the 197.16. A lot of people experiencing driver issues it seems like. And I have the exact same model as you do, the GTX 280m sli was such a pain to find drivers to, would get BSOD every 5 mins with the 2xx drivers.

 

Have the exacts problems as the OP.
Hopefully, 265.XX will fix those.
Now I'm running 197.16 and can't play games like fallout new vegas due to the lack of sli profile.
This sucks.

 

I have tried every Verde release and experienced random crashes each time. I was about to give up on the current 266.58 drivers when I decided to turn off "PCIE Gen 2" in the bios. Since doing this I have not had a single crash, even while running in hybrid mode. I haven't noticed any major changes in gameplay either (I haven't benchmarked anything though). I can only presume that nVidia has set something with their verde drivers which is overloading the already dell restricted (forced 8x on a 16x bus) PCIE bus.

I use my M17x at least 6-8 hours a day at uni so I imagine I should have seen something by now... or I might just be very lucky. Either way give it a try... if it doesn't work for you then at least the dell P06 drivers are sure to work.
__________________________________________________________
Alienware M17xR1
A06 BIOS - P8700 - Single 260M GTX - 4GB DDR3 1333MHz - 512GB Raid 0 - DVDRW

 

We are stuck with P06, and the bad thing is any new SLI profiles will work with P06.

 

Cant you update your profiles manually. I have never tried up but have seen a link for it a few times while browsing the nvidia website.

 

Nope. Verde drivers use different sli profiles.
But then, I've been running the 266.58 whql drivers perfectly fine.

 

Don't want to spoil any dream of having stable drivers but this is the first impression you get. They are better then the previous nVidia releases for our m17x but still you'll get(hope not but this is what i thaught when they were released) random freezes while simply browsing the net or playing movies.

 

Yes , katalin is right. Problems come when you expect the least. I really hope that we will get 100% new stable drivers , but that is unlikely..
We are forsaken even though we paid so much money hoping we would get optimal performance on games.
Either way i'm screwed , my warranty has expired and i haven't been able to get a replacement here. Totally dissapointed with Nvidia and Dell (especially Dell).

 

Not really first impression since I've been using those drivers since they came out (almost a month).
I haven't got a single freeze while gaming or surfing or anything.
All I had to do was, like i said in the other threads, change the power management to prefer maximum performance.
to be honest, if i changed the settings to default back though, I'm sure I will get those random freezes.

 

Well, I've had decent luck running most games with these drivers, but YouTube gives me the black screen of death fairly often. This, plus a complete replacement of my motherboard and graphics cards in my R1 have at least got games working generally speaking. The HMDI port is still broken though.

 

ever since my last nvflash vbios.
i have yet getting any of those BSOD & random freezes.... for 3 days (utubing alot,
play alot of full-HD clips with SplashPro - Nvidia pureVideo HW accelerated turned on ,
playing DeadSpace2 veryhigh 1920x1200 smoothly with nvidiaInspector custom SLI profiles)

What i did was :

I flashed my bios from GTX 280m (p06) to GTX 285m
(thanks nRabbits)

after successed flash the vbios => reset my computer,
get back to windows screen => let the windows7 itself updating the driver
it looking for the drivers and installing from the taskbar,
then asked if i want to restart to finish.

later updated the InternetExplorer to IE9 beta 64bit and install the flashplayer 64bit for it.
"flashplayer10_2_p3_64bit_activex_111710.exe"

its working perfectly fine. the temperature is the same as before in full load.
youtubing for many hours, even more stable than the 280m with p06.

and the game bejeweled 3 recognized the gtx 285m card (it won't support HW accelerated with Gtx280m p06)



in the pic u can see im using 260.99
undervolt + OC the QX9300 (enough for everyday use with nice temp)

 

Do you have a guide for flash GTX280 to GTX 285?

 

Its pretty easy..
Download nvflash 5.95 (google it)
Download the bios of GTX 285m (unzip and put it in the same folder with nvflash)

press "windows button + R" and input : "cmd", from there "CD" to the folder that contained both nvflash.exe and the GTX285m.rom

Backup your GTX280m's bios :
use the nvflash to backup your bios, input this command in DOS window.

nvflash --save GTX280m.rom

(if you want to change the memory clock to 1020, use NiBiTor.v5.9 to edit the bios.)
now get ready to flash your bios, you have to force it to 285m with this command :

nvflash -4 -5 -6 -i 0 gtx285m.rom
(input YES, y ... to flash your 1st card)

nvflash -4 -5 -6 -i 1 gtx285m.rom
(input YES, y ... to flash your 2nd card, they can use same rom)

Restart your computer and wait for it to install new driver (if you previously installed 260.99 or higher it will automatic choose the best or latest one)

p.s :
if you get BSOD/freezes while utubing/web-browsing, i recommended install the latest 64bit flashplayer for ie9 64bit beta. (there's still a chance this wont work)

 

The hybrid must disable during this procedure,well?What is the beneficts of this upgrade?

 

I'm not sure about flashing the vbios with the 285 one , but i'm really interested on what Scyphoz said earlier about disabling the PCIE Gen 2 in the BIOS , i'm really looking forward to see if it has fixed freezes/Bsod's

 

Trying it now... =P Going to install 266.58 with hybrid and integrated off. See if it crashes. Then I will try turning off Gen 2.

 

I have had an M17x for just over a year now with two GTX260 GPU's. It has been freezing up on me just the same as other people here. I tried Dell tech support but they were suggesting that because I had upgraded to Windows 7Pro this could be the problem. Well, this I find very hard to believe.

Anyway, yesterday I was checking out what services I had running and discovered that the Windows Firewall service was still active. This shouldn't have been the case because I have Norton protection which has it's own firewall, and two firewall apps can conflict causing issues. I have disabled the Windows Firewall service by setting it to start manually. It's probably too early to say, but not glitches as yet. I normally found running Google's Chrome internet explorer would trigger the problem fairly soon.

With random freezing problems only time can tell if a solution has actually worked, but the two firewall services problem is something worth checking anyway.

Yarc.

 

Oh well, I'm still getting random freezing. No idea what the problem is. If I use the integrated GPU no problems at all, so I wonder what it is about the SLI GPU's?

 

Try turning off PCI-E Gen 2 in the system BIOS. The majority of people who have had freezes with the Verde range of drivers have found this fixes the crashes they were having.

A link to a forum post where this fix has been discussed in detail can be found at: "Finally a fix for Nvidia Verde drivers BSoD's and freezes in M17x R1"

 

Thanks for that! I have disabled PCI GEN 2 and so far so good. With some small testing have noted only a small drop in fps, which others have mentioned on this forum. Not enough to make any real difference in my opinion. I wonder why Dell did not suggest this setting? Anyway, am hoping my M17x will carry on working, but it looks promising.

Cheers.

 

It should stay like that, no drivers will be able to bypass this function and most important there's no interest even if it was a way, so from this point of view you're on the safe side

The insignificant loss is a good trade against full stability IMO.

Glad you're happy

 

I have had the same issues on my mx17, however I do not have any graphics options in the advanced tab of my bios. I tried flashing the new A08 bios from the dell support page, but it too has no graphics options. I am not sure if this has anything to do with it but I have the integrated Intel hd graphics card as opposed to the nvidia.

 

Which exact model do you have? The pre Dell?
This only applies to the (Dell) Alienware M17x.

 

I've only heard of this fix working with the M17x R1 thanatos84. As Katalin_2003 asked, model? Pre-dell?

 

Can someone tell me how to do this? I have a Phoenix SecureCore BIOS on my Clevo W86CU and i cant seem to find where to diable the PCIE Gen2.
Ty in advance