Help needed - m17x R4 - Black screen in windows / graphics card issue

Hi,

A few days ago i loaded up my laptop and the screen flickered but seemed to be ok. Then while scrolling through a website the screen flickered and then went black.

When the screen went black the keyboard lights reamin on but pressing keys didn't seem to do anything, it was like the computer had crashed. Even the reset / power button did not work.

I have restartedt the computer and the screen came back on for the bios and alienware screen, the windows loading screen came on fine but as soon as it loaded windows screen went black again.

Rebooted again into safe mode and everything works fine.

Noted that there was a windows update the day before.

restarted in non safe mode and same issue

Thought it might be graphics card driver but could not update in safe mode.

I formatted the hard drive and installed a fresh version of windows but still the same issue.

Found out that if disable the AMD Radeon HD 7970M card ain safe mode it boots up fine outside of safe mode.

I have tried to update the drivers in windows but during the installation it seems to activate the graphics card and black screen of death returns.

I have done the hardware check in bios and no errors come up.

Is it just the drivers? can you install drivers outside of windows?

OR is the graphics card dead

Things seem to be running fine without it enabled, i do not plan to use the laptop for gaming but will it cause issues down the line ? i will want to plug into larger screens/TV's, general web use/ office and some photoshop usage.

Also scanned in support assit and all ok.

Running windows 10 home

16 gb ram, 256 ssd 512gb second drive

Any help will be appricated



if you need any additional info just let me know

 

How to Enable Windows Installer in Safe Mode

1) Open up Notepad then copy/paste the below text in the notepad (without the first word that says CODE):

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Network\MSIServer]
@="Service"



[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Minimal\MSIServer]
@="Service"

2) Save the file as: Enable Windows Installer in Safe Mode.reg (not the .TXT extension)

3) Double click on the file to merge it with your registry

4) Now you can go into safe mode and try to install the driver in Safe mod

It's also a good idea to watch this video:

 

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Tried the above, with also using a driver clean/ uninstall before hand and got the following message on the amd driver software:
error 99 - installer cannot continue to be installedmas the driver is not digitally signed

tried using windows to install the best driver they could find, installed correctly but then restarted windows in normal mode and still black screen

 

@Alex hart The GPU is sadly dying. AMD HD 6xxx and HD 7xxx cards used cheap solder to solder the silicon to the "underchip" before soldering to the PCB. Only solution is to buy a new card. You can make the card working temporarily by simply putting it into the oven @ 200c for 10-15minutes.

 

that doesnt sound great, it is possible/ easy to upgrade or is it a whole new motherboard? please forgive my ignorance

any recommendations? not looking to need a heavy duty one as not looking to use for games

 

Nothing of the sort, the notebook has a MXM slot, meaning the GPU's are seperate. You can probably get away with something cheap like a 660M or a 760M, however it might require a heatsink mod, @Raidriar probably knows more about that since I'm not that much into Alienware

 

I have a spare dell gtx 680M I can sell you, preflashed with svl7 throttle free vBIOS.

7970M most likely is dying, but @Danishblunt reasons are wrong. 6xxx series had poor solder quality yes, could easily be fixed with heat gun or oven with some flux. 7970M suffers from core failure, some of the transistors dying inside the core, no way to fix without a core swap. I’m curious if you had early or late revision 7970M. If that’s an early card, amazing it lasted this long

 

You cannot fix a HD 6xxx card with a heatgun. Also the HD 7xxx series with this kind of failure can also be "fixed" by shoving it into the oven, I've done it to 3 myself.


Here Luis explains whats going on and why it "works".

 

Thanks fo your message, how much would you want for th graphics card?

What’s the best way to find out if new or old version?

Cheers

 

I will message you about the card. 7970M easy way to tell, pull the card out and check the sticker on the back if it says 015.017 up to 015.021, that is old revision. 0.15.022 is the latest Dell 7970M revision

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