Alienware m18xr2 gtx980m help

@Prema @j95 @Mr. Fox sorry for calling you guys out but from what I've herd and read you guys are the ones I need to talk to. Anyone else that's willing to help I would really appreciate this also.

So first off I have windows 7 on a alienware m18xr2 and recently installed a gtx980m with the a11 unlocked bios. Running Mr fox 345.20 drivers. And everything is running somewhat smoothly. But I am unable to run any other driver or upgrade my drivers at all or when I start up it loads just past windows boot and screen goes black and flashes colours once in awhile. I can hear the windows boot up screen and even log in.

When I try to upgrade drivers I've used newer modded and nvidia ones that are supposed to support my m18x

When I install I use and follow @j95 instructions. And tried latest driver on the premateam website. Do I require prema vbios? I have the stock vbios atm it says
DELL 84.04.2f.06.39
Have I not set up my a11 unlocked bios properly? Not really sure what else to do. Any help would be appreciated.
If more info is needed ask I can send what ever is needed

 

Hi Bro. I have not owned an Alienware for like 2 years now, so I do not know what currently works for drivers and what does not. 980M has many unresolved issues in the M18xR2 relating to UEFI/GOP and LVDS, and that was one of the reasons I decided to abandon/sell them and move to Clevo. @Raidriar might be able to provide some guidance, but I do not want to provide any wrong or misleading information to you.

 

Hey thanks for the reply @Mr. Fox a lot of the threads I was reading were fairly old but you guys seemed to be the ones doing a lot of the legwork that I saw. Hope I can figure it out. If not I can stick with the old drivers I got from one of your old threads for now.

 

You're welcome. I am hoping @Raidriar can provide more current information for you. If you are not much on gaming, using those antique drivers is totally fine. But, they might not work well with newer games. I wish you the best with your investigation.

 

Yeah @Mr. Fox I do use it for gaming somewhat. That was the main reason I upgraded to a 980m from my old 660m. I was reading on a bunch of @j95 driver mods that they require @Prema v2 vbios for newer drivers. I don't suppose you know where to possibly get any of those. Or happen to know your last setup before you decidea to move on.

 

I don't remember any specifics of the 980M vBIOS as related to the M18xR2. I only remember that the Alienware 18 had a special @Prema master/slave vBIOS mod that has something to do with the fans. But, I am pretty sure that @Raidriar or @KKthebeast might be able to provide more current information for you.

 

It should work and have a picture with stock vBIOS (just throttle a lot).

Edit: I haven't seen version 84.04.2F.06.39, maybe make a backup for us to see what MXM board you got there.

 

1. There is no need to mod INF any longer, strangely enough NVIDIA added support for the M18x R2 natively.

2. The Dell VBIOS will throttle like crazy, use a Clevo vBIOS or @Prema vBIOS. Only the Alienware 18 needs to have the Dell vBIOS.

For preliminary testing, I would boot into safe mode, run DDU, and install the latest driver from nvidia’s website. If you continue to have black screens whenever you reach the login screen, it’s more likely to be a hardware fault. An incompatible vBIOS would typically cause no POST, messed up colors on the BIOS screen, or severe throttling, or a combination. If your colors look fine in the BIOS, and with fresh drivers you can’t boot into windows normally, there is some fault in the hardware as windows tried to initialize hardware accelerated graphics, but it results in a black screen either due to die damage on the core, or a power MOSFET shorted out that cannot supply the right power needs to the core.

 

Then use DDU to wipe everything and install the latest drivers from nvidia's website. throttling can be fixed by booting to the BIOS, switching to the iGFX, getting into windows, shutting down, then switching into PEG again.

 

@Prema Here are the vbios setting i have hopefully this is what you need.

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/191921/191921

I realize i messed up my bios numbers in the first post

 

and @Raidriar the exact method i have done to test again is

1.reboot to safe mode
2.DDU clean and restart to safe mode
3.install nvidia driver 387.98 custom/clean install.
4.reboot
5.bios => windows splash screen => black screen on login with sound
6. reboot

7. restart from begining with 390.77 drivers instead with same outcome
8. revert back to Mr.fox modded 345.20 driver
9. reboot and works fine.

also is there a way to add attachements to this? i have pictures of bios, nvidia control center and nvidia driver in device manager.

 

Then I have no idea. It's very strange that all these people lately have been having 980M install issues, mine went in without a problem with both Clevo and Dell cards/vBIOS.

 

@Raidriar are you using the a11 unlocked bios by swick ? Or standard bios? I'm not sure why mine is being this way, and why the old drivers work and not the new. Is there maybe a bios setup I missed or something. When I installed card at first I did this as far as I can remember
1. Flash system bios to a11 unlocked by swick
2 powered off installed card ect.
3 powered on installed old modded driver.
4 restart and it worked

and at @Prema i came across this site and drivers by @j95

https://www.techinferno.com/index.p...t-upgrades-driver-support-modded-inf/&page=66

saying your vbios are required for drivers. is there a way i can get those for my 980m? ive tried your site and the TechInferno site but with no luck at finding them or which i would need, thanks in advance.

 

Hey I think I can help you in this case:

First install Mr.fox modded 345.20 driver then ask Prema about his modded 980M Clevo vBIOS 2.0 (nom gsync version), get it and flash both cards if SLI, this is needed if want to install newer Nvidia drivers, otherwise you get a black screen. Hope it helps.

See my signature.

 

Hey thanks for the input, I was somewhat leaning toward the vbios being the problem just from reading another old forum. Hopefully I can get my hands on them

@Prema could I get the vbios off of you that I require for my aw m18xr2 gtx980m?
If you point me in the right direction I've got no problem donating or anything like that, I did read you are hesitant on giving this out now due to some people.

 

ok so ive just done pretty much everything i can think of to try and get updated drivers to work, ive tried multiple Drivers and ive DDu'ed everytime, ive tried the drivers thru windows support, tried messing around with bios setting in the a11 unlocked bios. Ive contacted nvidia support and they havent been able to help at all. im at my wits end here this is driving me nuts i cant figure out why the older driver is working flawlessly after install and nothing else works. @Prema the only thing i havent tried is your vbios. i know you and your team is probably way past this m18xr2 thing but if you have any info or something i may be missing it would be greatly appreciated

is it possible that flashing to a different stock vbios might help? dell to clevo or visa versa?

 

Without Prema's vBIOS you're missing a major piece of your upgrade task and I doubt any other default VBIOS will do the trick in this case.

 

Alright, thanks @Tulius im really at a loss here this has been driving me up the wall for like a week and a half. i guess all i can do is hope @Prema answeres me at some point.

 

I've tried a few other solutions with no real success, I'm curious is it possible it's failing because of my power supply? I'm running the original 230w power supply which is not working correctly anymore, it does power my laptop but I get a plugged in not charging and the adapter in bios is "unknown" is it possible that when I update drivers it's causing it to die because it is needing more power? I know in the plugged in not charging state it reduce's performance. Just a thought.

 

You need to use the 330 Watts power brick.

 

Yeah for two 980's I would think you'd definitely need the 330W brick.

 

Alright so I got an update here now, I only have 1 980m and upgraded to a 330w power supply now the old drivers 345.20 no longer work and with updated drivers running in peg after windows logo I get a white screen and in sg the screen turns off

 

Also do I need to be running this in some sort of uefi mode I have windows 7 running legacy I beleive

 

Im not sur if i can help you
But try to do uefi enabled and legacy enabled too
I havent the same pb but maybe similar and i solved mine hope that Will solve for tou

 

@Raidriar hey man if you got a chance or time would you be able to answer a few questions? And possibly help me out with this?

 

1. Run DDU in safe mode
2. Install both 980Ms
3. Reboot into BIOS, set video mode to PEG (you need my BIOS or Swick's BIOS to do this). Make sure you are using a 330W PSU
4. Install latest drivers from nvidia
5. reboot into BIOS, set graphics mode to IGFX, save, exit, get into windows (make sure intel hd 4000 drivers are installed)
6. let windows load everything, then reboot into BIOS, set graphics mode back into PEG, save, and reboot into windows. enjoy.

*You can do this in win 7, 8, or 10
*You don't need Pure UEFI mode
* don't use SG mode with two 980M graphics cards installed

 

@Raidriar I'm going to do this and reseat my 980m is there also any good way to test or something I should be looking for on the card to test or see if it's faulty? Just curious because when I plugged in the 330w power from 240w my setup stopped working on the old drivers and just boots t a white screen after windows logo

 

Not really. If you install fresh drivers and you get weird colors after the windows logo, it's usually a hardware fault.

 

Hey @Raidriar I took apart my comp and I took out graphics card there is some thermal paste spilling off the die to surrounding area could that be causing problems? And is it safe to clean surrounding area with iso or something similar?

 

Unless you used something conductive like liquid metal thermal paste or arctic silver 5, don't worry about it. thermal paste is not typically electrically conductive.

 

First of all sorry for reposting info

OK so here I go hope I cover all of this

I have a alienware m18xr2

I've recently done a gpu upgrade from a gtx660m to a gtx980m

I'm running windows 7 64bit with swicks a11 unlocked bios

1. So what I did is start comp in safe mode
2. Run DDU to clean up drivers
3. Installed 980m gpu
4. Fired up comp and installed driver 345.20 modified for a m18xr2
5. Restarted and it worked on my old 240w power supply.

Now here's where I am stumped my 240w power supply no logger registers in bios so comp is running in low performance mode I believe as if computer is running on battery.

I recently got a 330w dell power adapter and tried to use it with my computer but when I boot with it plugged in the gpu no longer works. It boots past bios and windows logo than has screen arifacts and than screen goes black and I can hear windows login sounds.

If I update my drivers for the gpu it doesn't work with 240w or 330w psu it boots to windows logo than artifacts and screen goes black

To confirm if tried booting in SG and PEG

Once in awhile in SG it will boot on integrated graphics past black screen if I leave it long enough I look in device manager and it says windows has stopped the device due to a error. 43 I believe.

Now I'm confused why I can run it with no problems with the old drivers and 240w partially working but any change and it artifacts..

I've also tried booting on battery logging in than plugging in the 330w power supply and it will crash the gpu and restart computer.

I'm at a loss

 

I am going to say that the card is failing.

 

Thanks everybody for helping me with this and troubleshooting. I am leaning towards the card being screwed even tho I don't see anything physically wrong with it but seems whenever it get more power than my screwed up 240w it dies.

And I recently found out my card came with a 3 month warranty so I think I'm going to return it and buy a new one.

But one last thing it like to try is plugging it into the second slot. (One on the right side) but when I do the computer doesn't recognize it. Any ideas on how to get it to detect it. I've looked in bios after installing it on right slot and it doesn't show and when I boot in peg it goes right to integrated graphics.

I'd just like to test to see if my left slot is maybe faulty. Even tho it ran my 660m with no problems but that card does require less power.

Anyways thanks everyone for all the help.

 

Maybe the GPU is flashed with Prema v1 vbios. That alone cannot accept later driver versions. I cannot remember the exact version, but if you can boot with only the GPU in primary slot (secndary doesn't boot if none is in primary).

Grab vbios from dell site for AW 18. Extract contents and locate the file for the primary card.

Then of drivers fail to install or you still have artifacts, the gpu is busted.

I beleive if the 330w psu is ok, it must show up in bios, no matter the case.

 

So if the m18x won't detect a card in the second pcie slot if ones not in the primary would I be able to use the 660m in the primary and my 980m in secondary and see if it's detected and possibly if it will run off of the 980m with new drivers for testing? Be a shame to send this 980m off and get a new one just to find out the primary slot has something wrong with it or something.

 

Same thing is happening to me. Really weird display issues.

Sometimes it works perfectly fine, sometimes it doesnt. Issues occur with windoes updates or restarts.

Ive had error 43 in my 2nd sli card. 680m sli.

Ive done multiple different drivers clean installs everything. The computer would work for a day or two then boom more driver issues. Error 43 comes back often. Sometimes drivers just get wonky and crash.

Alot of the times the pc works perfect on battery power in sli, the second you plug in the power. Boom more errors and driver crashes.

There actually was a bios update released in april 2018 that fixed it. But only for a week. Now my drivers crash on boot with power plugged in. no error 43 for sli. It was running fine playing games. Restarted, games started crashing drivers and recovering but letting me play now its doing the same thing lol. NO ATRIFACTS NO COLORS. Working card

It has to do with windows. The pc is pefectly fine

 

Im honestly more than willing to bet its that vbios one of the users are talking about. Ive tried everything, read every forum. I even thought about vbios but never tried it. Thats the last step. Ps another symptom is driver install crashes/saying its unrecognized.

Try that bios update from dell though. That instantly got it working for nearly over a week. That bios update fixes the errors caused by the windows updates. Their website says its critical to the system

 

Ran a chkdsk and the systems up and running fine. Ill keep you posted. Willing to bet issue will return

 

I noticed my m18xr2s alienhead doesnt light up at all when the laptops not going to function.

I need to start it on battery only. Shutdown from desktop. Pull battery and drain it.
I can then plug everything back in and it will work temporarily. Alienhead lights up when off and plugged in.

The issue keeps recurring and drivers randomly crash. So bios update fixed error 43 completely. Now i just cant get stable drivers. It seems to even effect the alienhead light from turning on.
Laptop also takes way too long to boot with a ssd.

I read online that microsoft wasnt pushing updates to alienware systems, but the only systems that wernt listed was the m18x.

Help!!

 

@Radriar i have alienware 18 860 sli so i just need to buy 2 980m sli and use UEFI on bios and everything will be fine right?

 

No need for UEFI in bios a12, you can use legacy as well

 

@Raidriar Do we still need the unlocked A11 BIOS to run a single 980M? I'm waiting to be able to download from Tech Inferno, have my card already though.

 

980m working on m18xR2

Some notes for posterity...

Without the unlocked BIOS there are some reasonably big problems:

• If the laptop is not in UEFI mode (or if you disable it to flash the bios... oops) then the laptop will beep 8 times on boot and refuse to start. For stock BIOS you have to pull the GPU and use the cpu's built-in IGFX to fix it. Unlocked BIOS does not have this issue.
• 980m throttled constantly (every 5 seconds under load) for voltage reasons... which didn't make sense. The fix is to switch to mess with the PEG setting which you can't do from stock BIOS.

Some other notes:

• There is a very recent BIOS update (A14) from Dell that includes the Intel spectre/meltdown patch. You can flash it then return to the unlocked BIOS but please note that the patch does come with a performance penalty. I don't notice it for every day things but some benchmarks do (1-8% difference in the handful that I ran).
• Card had clevo prema v2 vbios prior to messing with anything. It does not fix the above issues.
• Latest nvidia drivers without INF modification.
• Better experience than mobile 1060 for multiplayer games even though fps is slightly lower. Optimus (which is required for m18xR2 with a 1060) adds frame lag and the occasional stutter. I would still probably choose the 1060 for single player games where beauty matters more than quick... (assuming you don't hit the I/D button when you don't have the time to reset your bios because of the fun 8 beeps - 980m can run PEG whereas 1060 only runs in SG mode and I/D button switches to PEG)

Sorry for the necro but it took me far too long to learn what I just gathered into one post.