Official M17xR1 GPU drivers

Hello

This may well be beating a dead horse but i got to ask how come, when i search for updates after placing my service tag at the official Dell Support page for my M17XR1, Dual2Core T9800 2,9 GHz, GTX 260 SLI, the latest nvidia driver is the 257.38 that is over a year old?

They have made it hard-mode to download and implement drivers straight from the nvidia page to this system "cant find compatible hardware" etc.
You have to get a modded inf file and replace the original files to make newer drivers compatible but i have had some issues with this and i guess it is not optimal regarding the system warranty and stuff.

Have Dell stopped making drivers and given up on the M17xR1? Or is it another place i can download official compatible drivers to this system?

Thx in advance

 

Hi, Thoto!
I had the same issues as you regarding my 260m when i had it, but i found that just changing the INF file would solve your problem.

Http://www.laptopvideo2go.com is the website to visit,
find the appropriate driver-version and therefrom download the according INF file. Overwrite, and you should be all good to go!

(Remember to get the mobile drivers)

(Worked very well for me!)

- Scott.

 

Unfortunately this is what happens with all OEMs not just Dell and the M17x.
Running non Dell drivers won't void your warranty and they're also worse.
These new nVIDIA drivers don't seem to be better for anybody but they're good.

 

Thank u both for the answers.

It is a shame this OEM (Alienware/Dell/Nvidia) make it harder for the consumers, most people have no idea what a inf file even is (i learned all about this from katalin in a different thread, thanks again mate ). But i had to delete the modded 285.64 driver i installed cause of some CPU issues (lag/slowdowns), that i cant explain why happened. Maby some missmatch occurred between other drivers or the chipset or BIOS versions, dunno. I had to reroll back to the 280.xx driver that works well on my system. The 280.xx driver is unfortunately not optimal for some new games but i guess i just have to accept that.

Is it somewhere i should look for this modded files when newer nvidia drivers arrive, or is it just a random search thru these forum threads and see if anybody have made and uploaded a modded file regarding the driver?

And, does these driver complications only concern laptops with SLI?

 

CPU problems? Wierd.

Did you first of all, uninstall your old driver, and then sweepe in safe-mod with DriverSweeper ?

Then, what driver did you try ? WHQL 258.38 for mobile cards, or the "fully-specced" one?


I had no issues with single GTX 260m on 285.38, (Beta driver), also made the performance in Battlefield 3, way better.

Edit:
Don't forget to get the right INF file for the right driver version!

- Scott.

 

Ye, i think i did all the right steps (a couple of restarts in safe mode, manually uninstalling drivers, ccleaner etc), before i installed the new driver in regular mode (with apparently the right INF file).

I see u had a single GTX 260m card and it worked fine, mabye it is my SLI that complicates some things.

The CPU was working at 100% if i opened one single program like firefox or steam, no other processes was running according to the task manager. It was clearly some GPU issues cause the problem was gone if i changed to the integrated 9400 card. I still got this problem to some degree but often it goes away if i swith to stealth mode (integrated graphics card), and back again.

If this problem continues, will it help if i run a dxdiag, save info and attach it here or do it contain irrelevant info regarding this problem?
One thing i found strange last time i did this was that it said DirectX version 11 and my cards is only compatible with DirectX 10? Must be something to do with the new drivers that confuses things, i guess the 280/285 drivers is made for Diectx11 but i dont know if this could be a part of my problem.

(sry for wall of text)

 

Yes, your cards are not compatible with DX11, but if the driver detects that, it should just run in DX10 mode.


You could give us the information, yes, the fact that its SLI should not affect the installation at all.
What you could do, is to pull out your secondary card, and then install the drivers and see if everything works fine with 1 GPU.

Then, plug the other one in, enable SLI and see what happens.

Try with the latest WHQL (Mobile version!!) available from Nvidia,
if that doesent work, try the 285.38 (The one i tried.)


- Scott.