M17x R1 Video driver problems

Ever since I updated the BIOS this afternoon to A07 i've been having video driver issues. I've tried 257.38 from Dell and 267.76 from nVidia and both give me a black screen when I boot into windows, I can see the mouse cursor and nothing else. This happens regardless of whether PCI Gen2 is enabled or disabled in the BIOS.

I'm currently using the default Win7 drivers.

Please help

 

Did you do a clean install each time? I don't have any issue with the A07 and latest drivers (PCI Gen2 off ).

 

I boot into safe mode then uninstall from Device Manager. Should I be doing anything different?

 

Also in Safe Mode run CCleaner and clean your registry for any remainders of the drivers (you'll be amazed) then reboot and install the version of your choice Should work like that.

 

Cool, I'll give it a go tomorrow

 

So, I ran CCleaner and Driver Sweeper and it didn't help :-(

One observation I did make though is since I flashed the BIOS I now takes around 15 seconds from pressing the power button for the Alien head splash screen to appear, I'm guessing this isn't normal?

 

Definitely not, if it doesn't appear within a couple of seconds, something is wrong.

I had some oddities when flashing where after flashing it got stuck on the alien head screen for almost 2 mins. It then produced an error saying my overclock had failed though I hadn't overclocked. I then force reset bios (removed battery, held power button for 30 seconds etc...), went into bios, reset to factory defaults, reset all my values and everything was fine.

 

Yup, heard somebody with these symptomes before and clearing the CMOS helped.

 

This isn't looking good :-(

I cleared the CMOS by removing the battery, holding the power button for 30 seconds then switching it on again (is that right?), reset the BIOS to defualt settings, but the problem still remains.

I also flashed back to BIOS A06 and the problem exists on that now as well, reflashed to A07 but that didn't fix anything.

Anything else to try before I engage myself into yet another painfully useless conversation with Dell technical support?

 

Can you still get it to run a diagnostic?
Also try starting the system with minimal hardware (1 stick of ram etc.) see if you get the same results.

 

What do you mean by running a diagnostic?

 

If you choose to hit F12 during boot, you can select diagnostic and perform a bios related diagnostic.The F12 diagnostic is a good overall general diagnostic.

 

Could try unplugging the main battery and then unplugging the CMOS battery ( instructions).

 

Unplugging the CMOS battery did diddly squat. Is it safe to say it's knackered?

 

I had a bios update related issue where my trakpad became erattic after flashing and re-flashing wasn't helping fix the issue.

What I ended up doing to fix the issue is make a bootable usb drive, download the A00, A01 and A07 bioses from the dell support site, copy all the files from the A07 zip download and the two rom files from A00 and A01 to the usb drive and boot it up.

Once it has booted run the following command: "phlash16 A##.ROM /s /z /mode=3 /v" (Where ## is the rom number). This is the same command as in dells A.bat batch file but with /z added which zeros out blocks before erasing them.

Start with A00. You probably get some bios config errors after it and the bios won't have as many options as usual... but should still boot so don't worry. Then repeat for A01. This will give you back the regular options. After you have done A01 move onto doing A07 and see how things go.

You will have to reset any bios settings you changed from default and set raid as active if you use it.

I don't know why it worked for me but it did and at this stage it doesn't look like it would hurt your M17x any further.

 

Apologies for being such a n00b but how do I do this? I've followed serveral guides but they all result in an error saying "BOOTMGR is missing" when I try to boot from it.

 

Read this and you should be fine:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...sh-drive-flash-aw-bios-updates-under-dos.html

Cheers

 

Ok, so i finally got around to doing this and the time to display the alienhead splash screen has decreased to around 10 seconds, is this acceptable? It's been such a long time since this machine has actually worked properly, i don't know what's normal anymore.

I'm also a little concerned about my temps, at idle cpu temps are around 58 degrees C, and doing nothing more than streaming videos can see average temps of 66 and a maximum of 80. Is this too high?

 

Do you open it up and clean the heatsinks from time to time?
If not i sugest you do so. Watch the teardown videos to help you disassemble it. Look up 'm17x teardown" on youtube.
Also a repaste is probably needed. Get your hands on a thermal paste tube (whatever brand works - no big difference, IE: mx-4) and you should be fine after doing the above.

 

I have never done that. I have no problems in doing so, but I have a Dell complete care warranty with around 2.5 years remaining and although it's not worth the paper it's written on, would tearing it down void it?

 

Then call Dell and have a tech come to your place and do it for you, stay close and make sure it's done properly. Check after he's done that everything is in working order.