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    Notebook up, not sure where to go from here.

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by rudewarrior, Nov 30, 2010.

  1. rudewarrior

    rudewarrior Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hi everyone,

    I have:

    M17xR2
    Intel i7 2.60 GHz
    8 Gb RAM
    Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
    2 x 4780 GPU

    I started noticing a few days ago that the games I were playing were taking a big FPS hit. These are games from 2003, so you really notice it. I started fiddling with the drivers. I had the 8.763 driver, so I went to the 10.11 driver and back, to no avail. Xfire on and off to no avail. Sometime during fiddling around, I turned Xfire on through CCC. Crash to black screen. When booting, it would get to the Windows startup screen and either go blank, or go to the check disk and count down to 1, then go to a blank screen. Pressing keys didn't help. I tried booting into safe mode, it would scroll all the loading files, hit "please wait" and just sit. It had a second hard drive, so I installed windows on it and I got the computer to boot up. I can navigate into the first hard drive, so I guess it is okay, I just don't know how to get past the dark screen to boot into the first hard drive installation to start troubleshooting. Where should I go from here?

    Thanx in advance.
     
    rudewarrior, Nov 30, 2010
    #1
  2. faiz23

    faiz23 Macbook FTW

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    go into safe mode and right click on both video cards and uninstall them both and when given the option remove the driver files as well. Then you can go back into windows it should boot and remove catalyst install manager and application profiles from control panel and reboot and then reinstall latest 10.11 drivers or stock dell beta drivers.

    http://forum.notebookreview.com/6916341-post172.html

    edit: just read safe mode is no go as well...have you tried revert back to last known settings or it might be a hosed system and easier just to backup all your files and start with a clean install then wasting time and effort trying to fix the windows installation.
     
    faiz23, Nov 30, 2010
    #2
  3. rudewarrior

    rudewarrior Notebook Enthusiast

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    I guess really that is what I am wondering.

    Should I bother with jerking around with it? Or should I just reinstall from the get go? I can't get into safe mode on the drive that I want to use. So should I continue to try and jerk with it, or just reinstall?

    When my video cards started acting funky, I backed up everything. Good time to do it, too, huh?
     
    rudewarrior, Dec 1, 2010
    #3