Screen now flashing red...green... blue...white... black

im having the same problem now. i got 2 260m on sli. i dont even get to see the bios nor hear it boot into windows. i tried resitting both gpus, but it still does not work. only way i could get it working again is when i unplug the power cord and boot with just the battery. it forces the laptop to use integrated 9400, but when i try to enable the 260m it gives me the colors again. does this mean that my gpu is dead? if so, does anyone know if a 660m would work on a r1 motherboard?

 

Have you tried removing the 260m's starting it up on iGPU and then install them one at a time - might identify if one of them is bad?

Dunno about the 660 but a 580/675m would be a better choice if you don't want to drop the cash on a 680 - but at a minimum you would need a modded driver on that model. Ask over in the R1/R2 owners lounge

 

it seems my problem is off and on. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt. whenever i try to play a game though it crashes and i have to restart the laptop. then the colors show up.

 

Really sounds like one of then is bad. Have you tried my previous suggestion?

 

not yet. would the laptop even work with just the gpu on the right side?

i tried to reflash the bios, because on dell's diagnostics error table most of the solutions involves flashing the bios. after i reflashed the bios i dont get the colors anymore; however, i get a bsod error nvlddmkm.sys right before i see the windows log in screen. sometimes it will let me log in, but when i try to open a game the laptop freezes. i ran ccleaner to check for registry errors, and reinstalled drivers.

 

It should work without any of them, the on-board will take over. Then try them one at a time. A pain I know but it will identify if the problem lies with a specific card or is maybe something to do with SLI problems...

 

No, you should swap the heatsinks, and try the secondary gc in primary slot.

Here, follow these steps. To determine if any of the GPU's is faulty.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...sible-problems-advice-needed.html#post9109269


And this for BSOD

First thing to do, is to uninstall all Video drivers.
Then enter safe mode, and run Driver sweeper to clear all the crumbs that were left behind by the uninstaller.
Then go to Windows again, and try to install nvidia driver, don't install windows generic ones.

 

the bsod trick didnt work. im gonna try to swap the cards first thing tomorow.

kinda off topic, but preparing for the worst. would a 7970 work with a r2 mobo with 920xm in an r1 chassis and a 240 psu?.

 

Yes, it would, but you would have to do a lot of modifications, to transform R1 into R2.
-CPU
-Mobo
-CPU Heatsink
-Daughterboard
-That plastic thing between motherboard and keyboard

Maybe even something more, i can't remember all, i've read it a long time ago.

 

i finnaly found which card is bad. turns out it was the primary card (left gpu), so i swapped the right and left one and its working for now. thanks for the help.

 

Good news, well not exactly good news but at least you have a working machine Glad I could help

 

Sorry this is a 2 year late reply but I just wanted to post to share my experience with people who had the same issue.

I have the Dell XPS m1730 with GeForce 8800GTX Sli and while playing games it froze and the image got distorted and random artefacts appeared and I got a blue screen mentioning some memory parity errors. After rebooting the screen flashed red, blue, green, black and white (can't remember the exact order now). The same thing happened after rebooting several times even after a few days.

So I went around looking for potential solutions and one of the most common fixes was baking the graphics card.

So I took some time and found this video showing how to take the laptop apart and prepared the graphics card for baking. Needed to buy some torx screws, foil paper and thermal paste in preparation for this.

The graphics card was put in a preheated oven at 200 degrees for 10 minutes and left to cool to room temperature for 30 minutes. Afterwards the thermal paste was reapplied and the laptop was reassembled and by some miracle it worked!!!

It passed the FurMark video stress and stability test. It ran up to 95 degrees for 10 minutes and not a single glitch, lag or artefact appeared.

So if anyone has the same issue with this particular machine I'll drop the link to the youtube video I watched to disassemble the laptop and to reach the graphics card and the other video which actually prepared the graphics card for baking.

For disassembling the machine:

Dell XPS M1730 - Graphics Card Upgrade to 8800mGTX - PART 1 - YouTube

To prepare for baking:

Dell XPS 1730 Dual GPU failure / black screen Reflow Repair - YouTube

Good luck and hope this helps for someone experiencing the same issues.

 

I started to Notice this with my AlienWare 14 it flashed Red, Blue, Green, and Black, then it just shut down... i was able to get into safe mode but nothing was wrong... But! I found out that my Laptop hada movie disk in it... so could that have caused the screens? Dave Check your Computer for disks