why does my laptop crash after I install my graphics driver?

I allowed a friend to use my computer for a while, I wasnt using it so I didnt mind, something happened and the computer crashed, I thought it was just a virus that crahsed it, so I reformated it, loaded everything back ujp and after a couple of days of no use, it would crash for no reason, so I reformated ity again, and the same thing happened again, so I started to narrow it down to why it was crashing, after 7 times of refomating it I couldnt figure it out, so alienware took a look at it, they reasure it was 100% not a software problem, its a hardware problem, my laptop is out of warranty also, so my question is, is it really a hardware problem making it crash or something else? The computer works fine without installing the graphics driver, but as soon as I install it, it crashes, I looked at the specs of my computer online and I have a amd 5870, I would allow amd to find my driver, threw there driver finder software and download the "correct" driver, itll say 5xxx downloading, so am I downloading the wrong driver or is the graphics card destroyed and thats why its crashing, I dont think its the motherboard, because if I dont install the driver evertyhing is working, so im just wondering what could it be crashing after everytime I would instal the driver for the graphics card?

 

You might (and most probably) have installed one of the faulty AMD drivers that do not work correctly with Alienware systems - they BSOD on reboot.

Download and install 12.1 from here (there have been no reported issues with this as far as I know);
ATI Catalyst? Mobility Display Driver

You may have to do a complete driver install i.e. CCleaner and Driver Sweeper to clear out any/all old driver remnants.

 

My R2 has the exact same issue. I had to download the Dell CCC and manually go into Device Manager and locate the latest ATI drivers and target the extracted INF drive files and install it like that.

 

1) Download and install ATI drivers from dell.com/drivers

2) Use the direction to flash your vbios (this needed to use drivers from ATI directly. OR else it will crash) The direction is floating around in the forum

3) After successful flash, download and install drivers directly from ATI. Remember that any form of 11.11 has BSOD for crossfire machines. The new 12.2 preview drivers are working fine ATM for my R2 with dual 5870s. 12.1 has some BSOD issue with sleep mode with my R2. Haven't tried sleep mode with 12.2 just yet.

 

There's a vbios flash for AMD Radeons????

 

there was a few months back - however I doubt you will need to flash since you have a newer machine. Look through the forums to find out more but if my memory serves me right it was way back when 10.8 was released i.e do not flash if your current driver is earlier than 10.8.

I may be wrong on the ATI driver number so check out the forums to make sure.

 

He was referring to the mobility 5870 vBIOS, Dell released to fix some issues on the M17x R2.

@Tsunade: That's the way to go. Install Dell's first and reference drivers on top of them

 

yes. and with the flash you can overclock VIA BIOS. so my gpu z shows default clock as 20% overclocked clock. I can also up the voltages.

And as far as I am aware, you HAVE TO flash the vbios before getting drivers straight from AMD. I dont think this changed since his card is probably old anyway. not sure if i had a faulty card to begin with, but my cards were bricked literally right after i rebooted after installing the drivers from AMD without flashing the vbios. could have been coincidence..

the vbios file is located at dell.com/drivers just use the direction/guide CAREFULLY.

technically the flashing should be very safe, but there are chances.. you know...

 

I don't see any any Vbios here....

Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States]

all are video drivers.

 

nayilalien, read my post above. Dellienware is refering to the AMD 5870 in the M17x R2

 

Here is the link to the Dell vBIOS for the AMD Radeon 5870M that will allow the installation of AMD reference drivers...

[Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States - AMD 5870 vBIOS]

Here is the link for the Dell 5870 driver that must be installed before flashing the above vBIOS...

[Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States - AMD 5870 Driver]

In order for this vBIOS update to work, the Dell video driver must be installed first. Otherwise, the vBIOS will not recognize the video cards and will not install. Once the vBIOS flash is complete, uninstall the Dell Catalyst package, reboot into safe mode, run DriverSweeper, reboot into safe mode again and run CCleaner, then reboot into normal Windows mode. Now, check in Device Manager to confirm that the Windows Standard VGA driver is installed, and you should then be able to install an uncorrupted Catalyst 12.2 package.

If Device Manager is still identifying the AMD 5870 cards, this is an indication that part of the old driver is still installed and somehow escaped deletion. We don't want any of the old files lurking on your HDD. If necessary, open the Device Manager properties for each video card and manually install the Windows Standard VGA driver before installing the Catalyst 12.2 package. This is important because if you have any remnants of the old Catalyst package left on your system the new installation will be corrupted. The new drivers might install correctly, but CCC will either completely fail to launch or the obsolete version of CCC will still be resident. AMD drivers never uninstall properly without taking draconian steps to eradicate them. AMD video cards can be buggy and make your system very unstable if mixed versions of driver component versions are present. This is even more crucial on the 5870M video cards than it is on the 6970M/6990M.

 

Well the AMD reference driver works, but you don't install CCC as it causes the insta-BSOD. I honestly don't want to flash my vBIOS just to get new CCC up and running (risking bricking my cards and ending up have to RMA to Dell).

Weird part is that has happened to ALL my ATI desktop cards; 2400 PRO, 2600 PRO, 3870 512 MB, 4870 512 MB, 4890 1 GB, 5850 1 GB, 6950 2 GB.

 

Just check the MD5 of the downloaded file and you should be fine

 

i literally flashed like 8 times because i was playing around with overclocking.

with dual cards that is 16 times.. but yes I agree that there is this mystic feeling of failing... and it was prob CCC because I was installing the whole package.

 

That's why i always choose to flash in DOS. Doing so, many OS issues are eliminated.

 

Katalin is providing good advice to flash in DOS... that is almost always the best approach.

I never experienced any issues with my AMD 5870M video cards that are similar to those described. The Dell vBIOS flash never presented a problem for me and the results were basically flawless. My current R2 has 4870 CF. While I have not had 5870M video cards in an R2 since around June, and I have not tried the latest drivers, I never experienced any problems using reference drivers up through that point in time. The drivers AMD had out in June were pretty solid. It's good to hear that R2 owners with the AMD 5870 CF are having nice results with Catalyst 12.2.

I actually experienced more issues with the 6970M CF in the first M18x than I did with the 5870M CF, and with 6970M cards I had better results installing drivers in Device Manager directly and completely skipping the CCC installation. I did not even run the Catalyst setup. Just opened Device Manager properties for the video cards and HDMI Audio Device and browsed to the extracted driver folders. That process worked great and I enabled CrossFire permanently in the registry, and used RadeonPro to do what CCC should have done, but never did well. A similar process (see link to CrossFire Guide in my signature) would most likely work fine on the 5870M CF, but I would still recommend flashing Dell's vBIOS if that has not been done.

@Tsunade - I agree with your sentiments and would not flash only to use CCC, (can use the work around described above) but I think there was more behind Dell's reasons for the vBIOS update. Have you checked the vBIOS version on your 5870 cards? (I am just wondering if the person you purchased the system from may have already taken care of that.)

In case anyone has not read the technical details for the 5870M vBIOS update, here they are...

 

That’s the reason why it never worked I didn’t install the vbios after I installed the graphics driver, that’s why it always crashed, thanks, everythings working now

 

I took BatBoy's Nebula red M17xR2 off his hands.

Honestly I haven't really bothered with doing the CCC update as I have the latest driver installed anyway, but I've just NEVER had this issue ever with Nvidia. Every single Nvidia driver released I have used have always been headache free. ATI seems to intentionally write drivers to frustrate end users.