Modified NV 197.52 driver for M17xR1 only

Ok R1 owners... ( only for R1 owners with a 260/280M GPU)

What this is:
A simple modified Dell/NVIDIA 197.52 INF.
197.52 is the Dell NV 285M GTX M17xR2 driver. The driver INF required the 9400M G info in order to be compatible with the 17xR1.

Testing done:
None (aside from the basics). I made the change late last night and will not have time to check/test/game with this driver until later tonight or after the holiday.

I did a quick install test under a clean Win7 install to confirm the modded NV driver would install and SLI was active. Install completed without issue and rebooting the system, SLI was enabled and active.

FN+F7 GPU switching is enabled and functional. Disconnecting AC power does not place the system into integrated only mode. This must be done manually when moving to DC. This can be done by clicking on the NV System tray icon.

Resume from sleep functional - no issues.

No further testing has been conducted.

Install:
1. Download 197.52 from the M17xR2 driver page. ( Drivers and Downloads)

2. Extract the driver - you can launch it, when you see the NV install screen, select Cancel.
3. Copy over the attached INF file and replace the existing INF file. This directory:

c:\dell\drivers\R268075

4. Uninstall your existing NV driver via Programs & Features Control panel
5. Boot the system into safe mode
6. Use CCleaner registry scan to remove any left over registry entries from the previous NV driver uninstall.
7. Boot the system and run the 197.52 driver installer, setup.exe.

Have fun and sorry for not having the time to test this - work comes first

NOTE:
Be aware, this is not a verde driver. It is an older driver and as such, the SLI profiles are out of date. You may run into compatibility issues with newer titles. Nothing I can do about that.

Also, since this is a modded driver, if there are issues they will most likely be a result of modding the driver.

 

i just installed the modified 197.52, lets see the results

thanks!

 

yesterday, the computer not works too bad... but today the ie works super slowly and games have less fps...

i dont recomment this drivers

 

Not sure how this would play into IE running slow. Thanks for the feedback. No game testing on my end yet.

Only reason why I put this together was to give R1 owners an alternative to using the recent NV Verde drivers. As I said before, if it works then great - if it has poor performance, well... deep six and revert back to whatever you had before.

Kade? Interested in your results when you have the time.

 

Sorry about that, I'll just install 'em later today and do a series of tests on my amazingly long list of games. Ha. Ha. Will certainly post results in the coming day.

 

thanks anyway batboy

 

Thanks again for your hardwork, BatBoy.

I got the drivers running. I can report that the resume from sleep function is running properly. No other errors or crashes to report.

In game performance is about the same as the P06 beta drivers, which is fine for most games; games have been listed below and I find the general performance across these games to be the same. I've never had too much of an issue with performance, even if a driver's a couple of FPS slower than the other. These machines are plenty overkill for a majority of games so no issues to report. The primary GPU-eaters like Crysis, Stalker, and Metro 2033 seem to be running about the same, so no complaints.

I did not do any benchmark tests, but given that I scored higher with the P06 drivers in comparison to the Verde series, I am going to assume that I'd score slightly better with these; doesn't make a squat of difference to my situation seeing as I use the laptop for gaming and not synthetic benching.

Games tested (I actually played these games) -- Resident Evil 5; Lost Planet; S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky; Crysis; Crysis Warhead; Front Mission; Batman Arkham Asylum; Mass Effect 1 & 2; Transformers War for Cybertron; Fallout 3; GTA IV Episodes from Liberty City.

 

Hello again,

Thank you BB, I had some issues when I updated to the newest drivers released on the dell site and then tried to use the ones from nvidia, still more issues of black screen game freezes etc, been using these drivers that you passed our way and no problems since.

Thanks a bunch.

 

Wow - thats great news. As long as you aren't seeing issues with BSODs, resume errors from sleep, game problems, etc., then NICE!

Glad to hear it.

--------------------------------

Also a big thanks for the test report Kade!

 

incredible that we need to use modified drivers to get our systems to work properly
anyways thank you for the absolutely awesome driver

 

Well, when can give up on the R1s once BatBoy's done with his system. Until then, we have some good hope. Lawl.

 

Yeah it's a good thing we have Batboy

 

BatBoy is our Dark Knight in contrast to a sloppy Dell support that has forsaken us in pursuit of more customers with their R2s and R3s.

Bat Boy support for Dellienware Laptops -- "Whenever Dell support will horribly fail, Bat Boy--our saviour--we shall hail!"

 

LOL guys - now I am laughing. Thanks for the thought.

 

our hero =D

 

I haven't had any random crashes since installing this driver. Thank you BatBoy!

 

Does any of you experience that you computer won't go to sleep?

 

Heh its true, I've been lucky enough to have the same system as BB from my xps into my alienware and thanks to him I have kept my mind more or less.

Just wanted to give a heads up the ONLY problem I've had is I have a second screen hooked up via HDMI cable, sometimes if I have a video up and running on my main screen and I drag it to my second one it gives a minor vid driver crash.

But it recovers fairly fast so its honestly not a big deal, thought I'd tell you all the same.

 

Thanks for the heads-up. I very rarely ever connect my system to an external display so I never test this aspect.

Oh well - as long as it works.

 

Well, just had my motherboard and both 260m's replaced last night so I decided I would redo my system.

I installed these and so far have not noticed any issues (was too tired to do much else then get things installed).

I will run it through some tests tonight and see whats up

D.

 

I am going to install these tonight, as I am having some issues and the latest drivers are not cutting it anymore.

I am a little shocked, as I got my R1 less than a year ago, and feel like Dell really doesn't care about me, since I was stupid enough to buy a system at the end of it's life cycle. <sigh> I should have done more research.

Well we shall see, and I hope I get the same good results that you all are getting.

 

Ello!
Anyone out there know how I can get SLI to work in Black Ops using this driver. The driver works awesomely and is stable but I have no knowledge how to edit/change SLI settings to get it to work in the game......
Thanks!

 

I second this.
When batboy used to keep up his blog
( Alienware M17x - 'All Powerful' )
I would pick up his modded sli batch file to add sli profiles for all the newer games.

SO... if batboy does not want to update this anymore... maybe he (or someone else) could teach me how to pull the sli profiles from the newer drivers and I will do what I can???

D.

edit.. I did just find this... wonder if this will work for us
http://www.evga.com/articles/00463/

 

LOL @ debaucher. Yeah, I wish I had the time - can't keep up anymore. NV changed the way SLI profiles were installed/maintained (used to be an .xml file). Its kind of the same but a bit more cumbersome to access and tweak. I haven't really looked at it in quite some time.

The EVGA link you included looks very interesting - post back results if you try it.

@SumKallMeTIM -
Glad your driver issue is sorted. Try the EVGA link above - might work and get you up and running with BlackOps in SLI.

 

About getting SLi for Call of Duty Black Ops.

I believe Nhancer is compatible with BatBoy's modified drivers.

So I went with the following:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...ell-xps-m1730-owners-lounge-part-3-a-380.html

The guy modified Magnus' profile with some 'bits' from the Modern Warfare 2 profile, which seems logical.

Worth giving a shot if other options don't work.

 

Ok, I tried sli tool from the evga link I provided with these drivers and I can say that they do NOT work.

I am on a fresh install so only have wow installed at the moment, but when starting it up I get a constant flashing/scrolling issue that would not go away.

I had to uninstall the drivers, clean with ccleaner then reinstall to get things back to "normal".

According to my wife (text) the system just shut down due to an "unknown error" but I won't be able to see what until late tonight.

Oh the fun

D.

Well I am a gluton for punishment... just found these
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=185811
Gonna try them tonight and see if it adds sli profiles correctly

 

This is a dumb question, as I'm not tech savy in the least when it comes to computers, but couldn't you just *add* a profile for a game through the nvidia controll panel?

 

Roah27... yes it is possible but I have never had any luck in doing so if I start from scratch and try on my own.
If I follow the instructions posted by someone else I can get it to work, but most people don't bother since their systems will run the latest nvidia drivers without issues (thus have the latest sli profiles).

I did not get to try the last post I listed yesterday so I may try it tonight.

If not, I may break down and try (again) to create some sli profiles (if I can get this "random shutdown" issue resolved (might need a 4th call to dell)

 

BATBOY!! ur the man!! my R1 was crashing 3-4 times a day after i updated my drivers.....work with tech support and no love saw this thread and said what the hell!! gave it a shot and BOAYAAA!! havnt crashed in over a week!! thanks !!

 

Thanks for the hard work,Batboy,i never had the time to deal with this..

 

Out of interest are there are any advantages/disadvantages to this modified to the dell beta P06 driver that I have using for the last ** months?

 

Welp, I did this, and got some interesting feedback for you.
After installing in Safe mode, I restarted and once in windows enable SLI, therefore had to restart again.
On this restart... I received this,

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 116
BCP1: FFFFFA8005CBF4E0
BCP2: FFFFF8800FFB0400
BCP3: 0000000000000000
BCP4: 000000000000000D
OS Version: 6_1_7600
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 768_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\123110-30123-01.dmp
C:\Users\Pocket\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-45427-0.sysdata.xml
( I can send whomever those files above if needed)
------
Yhup the blue screen of death... so at first... needless to say, I was not very happy.

Now I am on the restart after that... and things seem to be running smoothly.
So... Thank you... But man was that scary for a sec...


ALSO:

When using CPUID Hardware Monitor, it no longer tells me the temperature of my Video cards, which I do not like.

 

Hi All,
My M17x was freezing after installing Windows 7, so I tried this mod last night.
However, after the login screen, I get the black screen with a working mouse cursor. I waited a few minutes until the disk stopped spinning and still no change.
Any idea on what migth be wrong please ?

Thanks
Smakwam

 

^^ What cards? Try these nVIDIA beta ones and post here your experience,i've been using them since their release(4th Jan) and almost no issues(i say almost because there might be small ones that i haven't encountered) i already tried a lot(gaming,HDMI/VGA ports,.pdf flash videos etc.) and everything went well.
Should give some credit to BatBoy for his effort on these ones,close to nobody does this today for the community.
Good luck

 

Oh, yay! New drivers! I didn't know those came out... can't wait to try them. Every new set of nividia drivers offers a ray of hope, although it is most likely misplaced and destined to be in vain. I'm downloading those beta drivers right now and will post with results- as I'm an avid video game player, it shouldn't take long for me to experience a crash.


Tons of props to Batboy nonetheless. Having had this machine for a little over a year now, and continue to suffer from hard freezes and the like, I greatly appreciate any help the community has to offer in absence of Dell's support. Unfortunately, though, as the same case with the 197.84 drivers I still experience crashes with this modified driver. Although, it is considerably less than any other late driver I've tried.

Thanks!

 

might want to see this -

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/545215-nvidia-266-35-beta-driver.html

 

Okay, here it is:

Last night I played for a little over two hours straight (WoW). The game ran quite smoothly, aside from a little jolt here or there as if it were about to freeze (very uncommon). I was really expecting to for my computer to lockup within the first 30-40 minutes. This was a pleasant surprise.

I woke up this morning, quite confident that perhaps my problems were long gone with this machine. Not 6 minutes into a game and I was greeted by the beloved, loud, grating noise of a *beautiful* m17x hardfreeze. This is just rediculous.

Could I be simply installing these drivers wrong? I'd uninstall the drivers from the controll panel, boot up in safe mode and use Driver Sweeper. After rebooting a second time I'd install new drivers. Is that correct? One problem that occurs to me is everytime I uninstall drivers, Windows 7 automatically begins installing a set of old drivers on it's own after rebooting the first time. I'm using Windows 7 Home Premium and cannot seem to turn that feature off. Could this be an underlying cause?

 

It's VERY important to remove every trace of the old ones you had installed.
Try this order:
1. Uninstall previous drivers.
2. Run DriverSweeper and clean nVIDIA display drivers
3. Reboot into SafeMode and run CCleaner(or your favorite registry cleaner) and clean your registry.
4. Reboot again and install those beta 266.35

Good luck

 

First: thanks for the reply. I greatly appreciate any help I can get. Any tips or tricks pertaining this all-too popular problem is a big help.

Anyways, I did everything you said and my OS still took the liberty of installing new video card drivers for my 280m's before I could even BEGIN cleaning my registry after the first reboot. The only difference this time is that more things came up on the registry cleaner than when I do it when I'm not in safe mode. Well, that, and the fact that the drivers that were automatically installed are different than usual; usually it's some variant of a 195.xx version, but this time it's... 257.38. When I'd find the 195 drivers under add/remove, the date would go back to sometime in '09- yet these are *today's* date. Does this mean anything?

I'm going to roll with these drivers right now and see how fast I crash. I really wish I could find away to turn that automatic-driver-installation feature off. Perhaps that's really part of my problem...

 

Well, that just means you've yet to disable Windows Auto Hardware Detection/Driver install.

Do a google search and you'll find numerous guides on how to do this. I've written it (how to properly install/update the display driver on the 17xR1) up more times than I can count here as well.

You also need to be booting into safe mode and using CCleaner there - not on a normal boot - do it in safe mode. once done, reboot normally and then install your driver.

very briefly here:

1. Verify both Hybrid Graphics and Integrated Graphics are enabled in the BIOS.
2. Verify Windows Hardware Detection/Auto Driver Install has been disabled
3. From a normal boot, uninstall the Display Driver (do not uninstall PhysX or the NV Chipset drivers - only select the DISPLAY DRIVER checkbox)
4. Boot into SAFE MODE (F8 @ BIOS)
5. Run CCleaner Registry and remove all items found - back them up if you feel nervous
6. Reboot the system (normal start up this time not safe mode)
7. Windows will report that the Standard VGA Adapter driver has loaded - one GPU will report the driver could not be loaded - this is fine. reboot again just to be sure all is well.
8. Once at the desktop, run the driver installer and when complete, reboot
9. Once back at the desktop, enable SLI if not enabled and reboot

DONE

 

I guess i need to try these new drivers out too. Batboy's is great and has stopped the hard freezes, but it still does soft freezes quite often, they only last a min or two. if these drivers don't work, what do you think the odds are of me getting a replacement from dell? i still am under the waranty i bought, it's not complete care but it's second best.

 

i'm totally against windows automatic driver install. follow BatBoy's advice and you'll be fine.

 

Batboy: Thanks for laying out the steps I need to take to do a proper driver install. Unfortunately, step 2 is quite impossible for a Windows 7 Home Premium user. I've already searched extensively on the subject and there is no plausible way to disable that feature on this particular OS. There's no "Groupwork" option I can use, turning off the automatic update feature doesn't do anything, and I even came across some strange CMD command to disable driver signing- and that doesn't work either. I just tried something new, though, but I know it probably wont work.

After deleting these drivers and used Driversweeper, I rebooted my laptop in safemode. Right when I got into windows, I opened up taskmanager and went to processes. I ended the *two* processes pertaining to the driver installation for my two 280m's (I believe they were called "drvinstall"). The taskbar then gave me a message saying that the driver installation was incomplete, but when I went to add/remove to check I found that there were still new nVidia drivers and controll panel. I cleaned the registry, rebooted and installed those brand new drivers again. I'll see if that worked- but I'm confident to be experiencing a lockup soon. Playing games and constantly expecting that loud noise and my screen to freeze is no fun .

Again, thanks for the help guys.

 

Not sure why you cant disable it - I have no issue - Windows 7 Home or Premium or Ultimate or whatever. its all the same.

Disable Automatic Driver Installation in Windows 7 and Vista | Worldstart Computer Help

Choose NO and NEVER.

 

Yep, that was the first thing I tried. Windows still installs new drivers before I can even get my taskmanager up.

 

Make sure you are logged in with an account that has admin rights. This is the process I use to disable W7's auto driver install and have never had an issue with the changes sticking.

 

Shouldn't this user initially have admin rights when I got the laptop? I haven't added any other users or the like since I've had it.

So, when you take and uninstall a driver and reboot your system, you don't see that little icon hidden in your lower right toolbar (what appears to be a picture of an archaic computer tower and a green light) that state's it's installing new drivers? Is there anyway I can double check to make sure I have admin rights?

 

Of course - let me clarify, no matter what, it will install the STANDARD VGA driver - which is fine. What you do not want it to do is to install the Microsoft Update reference NV driver. I mentioned it would install the Standard VGA driver in my instruction post.

 

I'm sorry, I didn't see that. All I know is how to play video and maybe fix a few basic problems here and there so I got a quick question now.

When you say "Standard VGA drivers" do you mean when it automatically installs a set of 257.xx drivers that come with that nVidia display controll panel and physx along with the drivers? When it automatically installs those drivers, it wants me to reboot the system as if I just installed any kind of new drivers. Like I said before, untill recently it would atomatically install these 195.xx drivers- but the result was the same.

If the answer to that is in your first post don't waste your time answering, I'm checking that right now!

Edit: Ok so when it does that and I reboot when prompted, I see a whole new set of driver stuff under Driversweeper that apparently I overwright now by installing the new drivers I want, right? Bah- I just don't get any of this anymore...

 

Just print out my post and follow the instructions.

Pre-req's:

1. Have CCleaner installed. Download here:
Piriform - Download CCleaner, Defraggler, Recuva, Speccy - Millions of users worldwide!

Skip DriverSweeper - its not needed (notice I didn't mention it in my post? ).