Help! AW18 + 980m SLI not detected in bios after driver crash

Okay you guys are my last beacon of hope, I have a clients AW18 with Dual 980m in SLI with a 4940MX and all that jazz, running bios A10 and cards are running custom vBios from SVL7.

Everything was working fine until my client reported that his computer crashed AFTER gaming during internet browsing, so the GPU's were not under stress at the moment of the crash. The crash itself was the display driver crashing (I found out thru the Windows logs) the client itself only saw the screen flash light blue (Not a BSOD) after which the computer crashed. Upon rebooting he found that both cards weren't being detected by the bios (Or windows for that matter) the bios simply only shows the Haswell IGP (Intel graphics) and the 2 GFX slots in the bios say there's nothing detected.

Bios is obviously made 900 series ready, EUFI, Windows 8.1, Legacy disabled ect. User didn't have temp issues or throttling. No CPU overclocking, perhaps slight OC on the GPU's (Unsure) but since the crash wasn't during any load on the GPU's I suspect OC has nothing to do with it. Also voltages were never touched during OC.

The client has had the 980m's build in by Clevo in Germany, they refuse warrenty after the vBios has been flashed I've been told. I haven't contacted them yet as I'd like to try resolve it myself first since in my opinion the most knowledgeable/experienced people in regards to AW18 + 980m are Mr.Fox and such on here!

Sorry if I drag on too much, simply want to draw out the entire situation for people trying to help out with finding out what's wrong.


Things I've done.
-Reset CMOS and all that default stuff : Didn't help at all
-Take out GPU's, reset CMOS/Bios -> boot without GPU's > 5 beeps > boot again > shut down > insert GPU's > reboot : Didn't help at all

I'm out of idea's here. I have a M18x R2 at my disposal and the backups of the old vBios of each card.

Any help on this matter will be immensely appreciated!

 

Hey Brother @CorePax have you tried to see if the GPUs are detected in the M18xR2? If they are not detected in any machine, then they definitely died or somehow got messed up in the Alienware 18... would be really odd to see both die at once, but could be something about the machine itself that toasted them.

If they work in the M18xR2, then you know the 18 has another problem. If they do NOT work in the M18xR2 (i.e. not visible in the BIOS) then the vendor should honor the warranty. If the cards won't boot, there is no way they will be able to figure out if the vBIOS is stock or modded. It's really sucky when vendors try to shirk their responsibility and use a vBIOS mod as a lame excuse to not take care of a customer.

 

Thanks, That is the first thing I'm planning on doing tonight when I have the time.

However, what bothers me is the fact that when the user switched to Legacy mode on accident (With the 980m's) he got 8 beeps. And I needed to fix it by removing the cards ect. After doing so the laptop wouldn't see both cards either. I fixed that by doing what I described in my first post, removing gpu's, cmos ect that thing. That then fixed it.

 

Perhaps I misunderstood or misread your post. I thought nothing you have tried could make the GPUs visible again. So, after removing the 980M cards, setting the BIOS back to UEFI without Legacy Option ROM, reboot the system on IGFX, then shutting everything down and putting the putting the GPUs back in they became visible again? If so, that is normal and attributable to Alienware having a BIOS compatibility problem with Maxwell GPUs.

 

Ah sorry I didn't clearly explain myself, that scenario I just described occurred a couple of weeks back, So my initial thought on the matter yesterday was that I could fix it the same way again. However that didn't help. Therefore I'm now thinking something else is causing the problem. I'll know for sure when I test each card in the R2. Still, if you have any suggestions, do let me know.

-Thanks

 

corePax

When I first inserted my 980s into my pc it crashed while I was OCing. I did everything you did, without success. The final thing I did was wipe drive and start again. I reinstalled win8.1 and it worked. Cards showed in bios, device manager etc. what I learned was win8.1 sucks and it crashes way more than win7.

 

I'm failing to see how a driver on windows affects the 980m's visibility in the bios, is there a direct connection between these two? I've been testing the cards the entire time with the HDD caddy removed from the chassis. If you could get back to me on this, I'll be able to drop in a empty HDD install Windows 8 and see if gives. (Hopefully before I have to resort to diagnosing these cards in a secondary computer as time isn't on my side lately)

 

At the time of my problems I was using Nvida driver 347.12. I learned later that the driver caused problems with SLI from others on this forum. Black screens, etc. I wiped my hdd to make sure all Nvida traces were gone. Not saying that's your problem, but what your going through sounds like what I went through and that's how I solved it.

 

Having fragments of the driver left behind will not cause the bios to not read the cards in BIOS, those 2 are not related or connected at all. @CorePax you need to test those cards in another system which will tell the whole story. What you have already tried should have been the fix and the only scenario left would be blind flashing the BIOS to an earlier state which should completely wipe the BIOS chips memory, but that is absolute last resort. So test those cards in another system that supports 980m

 

First test the two 980M in the M18XR2(if ok) ---> then find an old card like a 780M and insert in the Alienware 18 to estabilize the bios behavior(if ok) ___> After that test the 980M again in 18 one at time ... post results.

 

Absolutely true, but absolutely can't do it. One of the many cripple-tactics Alienware implemented with the 17 Ranger and 18 Viking is destroying our ability (and their own ability) to adequately maintain the product. Blind flash does not work. Without an unlocked BIOS, vBIOS crisis recovery flashing does not work. You need an Alienware M18xR2 to enjoy the best computing experience Alienware has ever offered. With Maxwell compatibility issues, even that has ended prematurely. If Alienware does not fix that (and I doubt they will) they are leaving us with no option except to scratch the Alienware brand name off the list of viable options for enthusiasts. If NVIDIA does something with 980M's successor that eliminates the compatibility issues we are experiencing with Maxwell at this time, the M18xR2 might make a strong comeback from a premature death sentence. Unless they give us the ability to unlock the Ranger and Viking system BIOS, these two products cannot be taken seriously by performance enthusiasts. Ordinary gamers that don't do much overclocking or hardware upgrading should be OK with the Haswell semi-beasts.

 

Fox,
The latest refreshes have soldered cards. There is noway they are going to release anything new for last years hardware that ship has sailed, thus why I already moved on. They went with completely locked bios with the 2013/14 models and then full bga with the 2015 models along with scrapping the 18 in the process.

I need to get a warranty replacement for my bad 980m but have no real motivation to do so because of the headache Dell caused.

 

Yup... déjà vu Brother Mike. I moved on for the same reason. The latest product line cannot be taken seriously. If I had any confidence that they were going to do the right thing for M17xR4, M18xR2, Alienware 17 and Alienware 18 owners I would not have spent the extra ~$2,200 on a second-hand barebones Clevo to fulfill my upgrade objectives. Given that the 17 and 18 have never had their issues fixed, in spite of having ample feedback from customers and more than plenty of time to get it done, it would be foolish to hold onto hope at this point, almost two year post-release.

A legacy remains... only memories of awesomeness are with us now. * Taps plays on bugle in the background*

 

@Mr. Fox: What would you suggest if the Alienware M18xR2 sees the cards? What would be advisable to do in the alienware 18 to see the cards?

 

It works!

After spending approximately 8-10 hours progressing ****-all I got 1 card working, the secondary 980m in the primary slot after swapping them for at least 5-6 times. I ****ed around some more, a combination of cmos resets, placing 680m's in the system and trying to cause a wreck on purpose by setting everything to Legacy and hoping the system would complain. Eventually, I got the other card working in the M18x R2 after which I quickly installed it back into the Viking again and closed up the system.

I can honestly say I have done nothing of major technical impact, basically you **** around with the cards until they work again. I have never seen such a horrible compatibility, Ever.

After being picked up by it's owner, he right away told me he's putting it up for sale. So if any of you have an interest in a 4940/Dual980m system with the rest maxed out, let me know.

Finally I'd like to thank everyone who contributed to this thread and made suggestions!

Thanks!

 

What is the price?

 

I just asked the owner how much he would want for the laptop, but fact is that Alienware doesn't sell these systems in my country (Never had) therefor the price is already quite high, combine that with the fact that the Euro is at an all time low of 1.11$ and it's basically insane to export it. You have something like $6500 (Asking price)

 

It is very expensive for Russia (1$ = 63₽). For 6500$, you can buy three of these Alienware 18.

 

Well darn it

It died again , second 980m isn't showing any signs of life. Also having 6 beeps on startup (video)

 

If want to know if the 980M card is really dead or not, try to install on compatible Clevo system. They are meant to work on it and dont presume the board is dead before testing.

 

As I see he flash mod vbios I already told you what that could cause problem, if still dosent work you must to try resoldeer vbios chip and hope it will work

 

Alright I need some more input from you guys, The cards are back in the system and it seems like they are somewhat stable. They are visible in the vbios right away, even after driver crashes that would previously render 1 or 2 cards undetectable.

Now here's the thing, windows sees the cars. As goes for the nVidia control panel, SLI is enabled and seems to be working fine. However the displaydriver keeps crashing constantly during slight usage and the system even crashed 2 times giving me 6 beeps (gpu fault) , this however still kept both cards visible and detected in windows and the bios.

Any ideas what the problem could be? Temps seem fine.

 

Additional info,

After a system restart the nvidia control panel is gone, however in the device manager both cards are still there : both reporting a problem : code 43

 

Good that they are showing up in the BIOS and Device Manager. The code 43, or code 20, is often a driver installation problem. If you have not already tried it, run DDU in Safe Mode to strip out everything (files and registry keys) and then install a driver with the necessary INF mod.

 

Hi There, So I am not sure what happened with this thread and if you guys managed to fix the issue or not but same thing happened to me. Last week I put a GTX 980M in my Alienware 18 and everything was fine and solid ecept some driver issues which i got fixed. However last night my computer crashed and upon rebooting I realized it switched to my integrated graphic and after that no matter what I did I couldn't get the system to recognize or switch to 980m.

 

I've got some bad news for you then, I got the card running again but not good. Kept crashing and whatnot while the other card was running fine. Eventually I returned the defect card and bought a new one. Please see this thread as to what I did to make them show up again. But if it starts acting up again it's probably dead...