M11x - Issues with gaming lockups and crashes - Discussion thread

Im sorry to hear that. I have been using 420 1010 862 the first time i used evga. I had no issues for hours and hours when i had one crash or freeze. Im not totally sure the evga settings were correct back then (i blame windows hibernate mode and me forgetting to tick apply at windows startup), but to be sure i lowered them to 416/1000/862 settings. No freezes since.

And yes I upped the memory part a bit, because the person who found about the underclocking did the same and reported it as a fix. The card doesnt seem to heat up a lot though.

 

Hi all,

After two days with no lockups in WoW, first I want to say thank you.

So i'm gonna only two freeze since the undercloking solution have been testing on my M11xR2 but I know why.

My settings parameters on EVGA Precision are : 416/980/775.

I don't know why, but when i restart the laptop, the only parameters keep on settings up to start of the software is GPU clocks.
The shaders and memory clocks reset after each restarting of the laptop.

And I have seen two lockups after 1 hour approximatively with shaders/memory clocks by default.

When I change this 2 parameters to 980/775mhz no lockups happend.

I have played WoW on 5hours, without lockups, that's good solution for the moment.

Thanks a lot

 

would anyone have an idea of why this is occuring with the underclocking in mind?

 

Having some freezing problems with Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition.

Anyone having problems as well? I'm using the 266.58 drivers with no overclocking.

 

You might wanna elaborate a little.

Fallout 3 is known to freeze regardless of your system.

How does it freeze? Do you need to restart or can you just end the process and continue using your system? etc.

 

I've actually narrowed it down to the mods. I didn't order them correctly. But to answer your question, I could end the process without the need for a restart.

 

Cool, good to hear (that you've successfully troubleshooted). Never really had much luck with mods myself. Damn FWE >.<

Sorry to get a little off topic :/

 

Try this for Fallout 3. Go to Documents\My Games\Fallout3 and edit FALLOUT.INI

Find the line:
bUseThreadedAI=0

change it to:
bUseThreadedAI=1

and add the following line right after this one:
iNumHWThreads=2

FO3 kept freezing every few minutes until I made the above changes. It has worked for many on this forum, regardless of video driver.

Cheers,
Stain

 

Thank you very much!

 

Well, some bad news... After playing for a good several hours for 3 days, my Test Drive Unlimited 2 froze after less than 15 minutes just now. Only thing I changed was overclocking to 166 mhz in the BIOS. The freeze had all the symptoms described here... an .exe that couldn't be closed, and so forth.

I guess it's time to go into EVGA and see what can be done.

UPDATE: using the following settings, going to give Test Drive Unlimited 2 some more playtime to see if I can recreate another freeze. So far it is working fine.

 

You should be fine on 427 Clock, 1080 shader, 790 memory aswell.
Thats what ive been using for 2 weeks now.

 

If the problem started once you overclocked to 166MHz, why not just back that OC down a bit before underclocking your video card?

 

Well I had been experimenting with overclocked and non-overclocked and had no problems. I don't believe the freeze was related.

I'm going to try those clock settings with EVGA and see what happens.

 

Well, I've had the m11x for about a day and a half now. Very nice machine, however! It seems I am running into the same issue that all of you are reporting.

1. Driver you are having issues with - Stock AW (sorry info lost in reimage), 266.58, and then back to latest AW provided from website (250.37, A01)

2. Title you are having issues with - EverQuest 1

3. Describe the issue in detail - Game will freeze, Windows is still responsive. Nvidia Control Panel will not open, EVGA Precision will not open. Windows will fail to shut down and hard lock up, requiring a forced hard shut down.

4. Include in-game graphic settings - All standard settings, nothing changed.

5. Are you overclocking or using throttlestop - No

6. Confirm you did whitelist your game's .exe - Yes

7. Is this behavior happening when outputting to an external display or on the 11x display? - m11x display, no external display connected.

After all the reading it appears the fix is to downclock our GT 335M's, which is a horrible solution IMO, but I am willing to do this, to make this laptop work. I'm not exactly sure why, I should send it back for a refund

Good info that Donovan36 posted regarding his issues with EverQuest 1. I am however having no luck with 427/1080/790.

I have scaled my clocks down (again) to 416/980/775, as Tnjizz had mentioned his WoW has been playing fine for two weeks with those settings.

I have reimaged the PC from scratch, thinking there were possibly tweaks or something in the AW load that may have been causing problems.

So, to start out, with the stock AW image, nothing done except install the game through Steam. Problem exists.

I uninstalled the Nvidia Driver Suite, rebooted to safe mode, ran driversweeper on the nvidia display and physx, rebooted back to normal mode and installed 266.58. Problem still exists.

I then updated the BIOS on the m11x to A04, problem still exists.

At this point, I reimaged the PC with A04 BIOS still on, loaded Intel Chipset update, Intel Rapid Store, Intel Integrated Graphics Driver, Nvidia Driver, Audio, LAN, WLAN, Card Reader, 1394, Synaptics, Free Fall Sensor, AW OSD, AW Command Center. I did grab the latest drivers for Intel Chipset, Intel Rapid Store, Intel Integrated Graphics, and Nvidia Driver. Problem still exists.

This is where I am and now hours and hours later of monkeying around with this, working on finding the right settings to tweak the GT 335M at. I have uninstalled the Intel Integrated Graphics and Nvidia Driver (driversweeper done), and reverted back to the Intel/Nvidia Drivers from AW's website, and working on clock speeds on the GPU.

Those of you guys out there who've been dealing with this for far longer than I have, I commend your patience. I'm going to spend another week on this, and if I feel like it's just too much trouble, AW is going to have an open box sale with my laptop in it.

 

Im not sure im getting this. The workaround with EVGA is not working out for you? Or are you trying to find another solution that doesnt involving downclocking?

 

Sorry if the post wasn't clear. I am downclocking, and so far...it seems to be working. I'm just disappointed. The PC is not even 48 hours out of the box, and the solution thus far is to downclock the GPU to below spec using a 3rd party program.

It sounds like AW and Nvidia are doing little to address this aside from throwing hardware at it. I would think at the least we need a new firmware for the GPU.

 

Ah i see.
Yeah the workaround is kinda sucky. It does require much downlocking if you go with:
427 Clock, 1080 shader, 790 memory

But its still not a solution its just a workaround, worked out by the ppl at this forum.

Try posting on:
Re: M11x Games Freezing - Alienware Forum - Alienware Club - Dell Community

We have had some response there, no clever ones

 

I'll give that thread a look. I tried the 427/1080/790 and still had lockups. I'm currently getting my best results copying Tnjizz's settings of 416/980/775.

 

Interesting. Might be diff settings required for diff games.
I only play LOTRO and its old so might not require as much downclocking, know it sounds wierd

 

After reading this thread, no it doesn't sound weird at all!

EverQuest 1 is actually older than LOTRO, and the graphics are a not nearly as good looking. The good news so far. EQ1 has been running for 6 hours with those lowered GPU clocks and no crashes.

I did make one last change before I went to sleep and let it run in a heavy traffic area to test for the lockups. I uninstalled the AW recommended Nvidia driver, and installed 260.99. 266.58 seems to do something strange which was not a huge issue, but I just didn't like it. Even though the Nvidia GPU was being used, it was reporting in-game as the Intel HD Graphics. 206.99 doesn't do that.

Now, I want to bump all of those settings back up to find out the highest it can actually be played at reliably.

 

True, not so wierd
I tried Lineage2 aswell, which is extremely ugly And it crashed after....20mins tops, Everytime.

While SC2 crashes on ultra after 2h or something without the workaround.

So the issue is truly random and doesnt seem to be caused by load.

Its just a really big fudgeup by AW

 

Glad to hear you got EQ up and running, I Have been using 427 1060 and 800 memory for about the past week with no lock ups-I bumped the shaders down just abit just in case-no lock ups at 1080 though. Seems like some of the 335s need a little more underclocking than others. Hell I am just happy as hell mine is stable now, It is probably the most stable, since the freeze fix, not to mention the coolest notebook I have ever owned and Ive had some damn good ones.

 

So far so good. I have been using the 427/1060/800 settings now for a bit, and no problems.

Does anyone have a link to an active thread for this issue either at nvidia or AW forums? I am hoping a thread where tech support has been actively responding in some form? I would like to follow it and add in some information to try and help get us a resolution.

 

I read your earlier posts,
for different people there are different solutions, for me i have to downclock below 430 to not freeze up but since every computer is a little bit different you might have to downclock further for different games than i would have to or vice versa.
Downclocking doesn't effect FPS in games that much (depending on game, might be a "sweet spot") and it works for me which is a "good" solution since the other solution is to call up dell/nvidia and talk for a few hours only to find out they have no clue what you are talking about and you have to transfer several times before someone actually knows what overclocking and downclocking is, then you have to explain to them your problem and they will say "Oh, I'm sorry. Would you like a replacement?"
and that replacement might be bad also so its a big cluster *bleep* and i really don't want to do that for a replacement since this is working fine now.
If you come across freezing problems in game again, try using lower settings on each thing or higher settings (don't recommend OC the CPU since it seems like overclocking that is causing the problem, -.- which is like ! since one of the main things about this is to be able to overclock it)

 

The last few pages were all about underclocking, but I'd like feedback to something different.

Has anyone tested their most-freezing game with Windows 7 SP1 installed? I just finished a >2hrs test, and EQ2 did not freeze on me, where it mostly did within 5 minutes, but 40 minutes tops. Might be coincidence, even if unlikely. Will test further, but I'd like to see if anyone else has experiences regarding this.

It would possibly make sense - the multi-GPU functionality like optimus has been implemented after the release of Windows 7. Maybe the architecture has been adapted to that.


Edit:
I also want to add that I run the 'Dell certified' Nvidia driver currently and could not watch flash (e.g. youtube) videos fullscreen anymore. They were only black. Since installing the Service Pack today, I can successfully view them fullscreen. Nothing else but the SP1 installation has been changed on the system.

 

I'm installing the SP1 as we speak. I will also do some testing to see what's up.

If this SP1 fixes this problem without underclocking, then I will have an all new respect for Microsoft.

 

Okay, never mind that with the SP1. It was just coincidence. Freeze again.

On with the lawsuit.

 

Having some freezing problems with STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, using the 266.58 drivers and no overclocking.

This Windows 7 Service Pack 1, does my version of Windows 7 automatically update or what? It did update earlier, but it didn't mention a Service Pack 1.

 

Hi everybody,

So I have install tonight the SP1 of Windows 7 like you, and I've not try yet to default settings, but I can do that.

For the moment, I can say that's the underclocking method still working fine with WoW game.

For information my drivers are :

NVIDIA : 266.44
Intel HD Graphics : 8.15.10.2266

And if you have any questions... I'm here

Bye

 

I'd like to ask for assistance from people having the freezing issue in WoW - I'd like to reproduce that with a trial account.

Are you at a special location or viewing special effect when this is occurring the most? Thanks for any details.

Yes, it installs via Windows update. You have to select it manually, though.

 

The SP1 update failed the first 3 times for me... just keep trying it. My theory is that the Micro$oft servers are just overloaded. Service packs are generally a big deal for PC users.

 

258.96 (Off dell's website aka official drivers)
Ok after much testing I've compiled a list of the settings on EVGA precision for WoW (also tested out different quality settings on WoW with each set of "clocks")
All testing was done within a highly populated area.
*Default with High settings on WoW except for water (messes up, known issue must be put on low)

**Also tried the memory at overclock and underclock didn't have any effect on the rate of crashes but helped with loading images far away extremely slightly
450
1080
790-948
~2hours for a crash to actually happen, choppy at sometimes aka when going in and out of densely populated areas.

*
500
1200
790-948

~45min very smooth at first but slowly diminishes over time. Noticed extreme "lag" problem when opening a still image (map,bags,character info, etc..)
Also noticed lag when trying to press start to get be able to go to internet, slow at minimizing game.
*
401
962
790-948

No crashes so far, sometimes choppy when going from non-dense populations to dense populations. Slight drop in FPS (average of ~4)

Also I noticed that when I did the high Overclock 500/1200/970 and tried putting the shadow detail to ultra(max) that it crashed instantly so shadows are the main issue (as far as these tests go)

When i changed graphic settings to Medium it gave an extra time to high overclock by 25min.
Ultra for high overclock lasted about 25min and froze worse than normal so i wouldn't recommend to even attempt it
^ above done around 20th of Feb

Now new stuff

Tried lower settings with different variations of each thing,

352
844
790 (as stated before doesnt really matter, though at 970 can cause crashes every few hours so to be safe i tested at 790)

Drop of about 5fps compared to default (WoW), no crashes, no stuttering as mentioned before when opening up still images (map/bags/etc)

352
1180
790

Froze in 4 hours, no stuttering gain in FPS of ~4, nothing much to add here.

500
844
790

Froze in 50minutes, big stuttering problems when opening up the map, drop of 5fps compared to default clock settings, it seems like the both overclocking contributes to crashes, (the CPU more so than the GPU)

500
1180
790

No surprise, 25minutes and bam crash, good fps ~7 above default clock, stuttering is a problem as always with a higher clock (might only be me who gets the stuttering when opening up still images?)

-Bobtheflea

 

I cant get Napoleon Total war to load a ship battle on my m11x r2. It just sits there pretending to load and does nothing, sometimes it goes to desktop and says the game has crashed. Ive tried the lowest graphics settings and that didnt help. Any ideas?

 

Please read the OP and post the information requested.

 

Try setting your processor/ram overclock back to stock. My guess is there's about a 95% chance that it's what's causing your issues. WoW is VERY intolerant to miscalculations by the processor or ram and my guess would be that it's due to your ram more so than the processor. The ram that comes in these machines is rated at 800MHZ. If you overclock to a 166FSB, it's then running at 1000MHZ. There's not a lot of ram out there that can handle that much of an overclock. You're usually lucky to get 50 - 100 Mhz OC out of ram.

 

This very specific type of lockup:

* Playing a game.
* The game locks, audio often still playing.
* The rest of the system is still accessible and functioning.
* The game executable is not able to be killed by any means.
* Any applications that utilize the 335 cannot be run.
* Nvidia control panel isn't accessible.
* 335 driver pukes.
* The only option at this point is a forced a shutdown of the system.

Has been thoroughly tested by many of us with every setting for CPU and GPU at stock. At some point someone determined that the ONLY way to avoid this very specific lockup was to downclock the GPU.

This is a different issue than your garden variety lockup where you can easily kill the locked up process and restart as you please. Just trying to clarify the scenario that we're referring to when talking about downclocking the GPU in this thread.

 

Hey guys, it's me again.

So, has someone underclocked and his notebook still froze?

I've set up a site as resource about this issue so we can document the issue clearer.

Reference to the Nvidia Optimus freezing issue | Tired of explaining it over and over?

Please don't flood me instantly .

Oh and one thing, I haven't listed underclocking as a solution. It's not really. We don't get the full performance we bought and are also running an unsupported configuration then.

 

Only if one were attempting small incremental drops. Once suitable settings have been found then it stops completely.

We know. It's merely a workaround. There's also very little real world impact on frame rates.

EDIT: No mention of downclocking on your site? Why?

 

Because of exactly the reasons mentioned above. It seems to be a workaround and can be distributed here, my page is centered on the issue itself.

The notebook needs to work as it is sold. And yet - I still have the nagging feeling that this just makes the issue occur less often, so there's quite some long-time watching to be done. I've had two situations where I thought my issue was gone - and both were proven wrong.

What I said about underclocking was just related to my site.

 

So there's no value in making it known that reducing clocks has a positive impact on the issue? Isn't that a vital bit of information that whoever is ultimately responsible for what's wrong should have? What's the downside of mentioning that on your site?

 

You're right, I should propably include that for anyone wanting to do that.

However I have not followed the discussion regarding that. Anyone feeling like doing a little howto for underclocking?

 

Does weeks without the issue returning after downclocking seem sufficient? No one, once they've found suitable settings, has reported that the lock-ups have returned. That's pretty conclusive in my book.

No it's not a proper fix, but it's probably the single most important bit of information gleaned from all of the testing that people here have done. If we could get a unit that is currently experiencing these lockups into the hands of the Dell engineers then that would be the next step in getting this problem solved.

 

You misunderstand me. I'm not dissing anyone's effort here. It's astounding what communities, like this one, are capable of. Indeed it seems like a viable workaround. My fear is that manufacturers will just take that and downclock by default .

I agree with everything you say.

The other things I said are just regarding Dell and the price I paid for it and not getting what I was promised, is all.

 

The word from Dell support is that they're unable to reproduce the problem in-house. So until the can do so then it's really not possible for them to identify the root cause of the problem and go from there. I've requested that they attempt to capture a returned M11x (or a motherboard/GPU) that is experiencing this problem.

 

I'm having some freezing problems with Minecraft, running the 266.58 drivers. Is anyone else experiencing any problems with these drivers? I'm not overclocking.

 

@slickie88

Yeah similar situation here, I've basically begged them to download the free EQ2X client to just see for themselves... there it would be real easy to reproduce. But now they simply don't (want to?) believe me. But anyway, for me that's just toying along the way while the legal gears are working.

 

I can't speak to EQ2X specifically, but not all R2s are having this problem with a given game. For example, some of the games that people have reported here as producing this very specific type of lock up are games that I've played through to completion without issue on my R2. It would therefore stand to reason that only some R2s are going to be impacted by this issue. Especially given the fact that there aren't a lot of people reporting this specific issue here or elsewhere.

What engineering needs is a system where this lockup does occur, not simply the title of a game that we've seen as being very problematic. They need to be able to reproduce it reliably or they're going to nothing to work with. In that scenario I'd be highly and understandably skeptical too.

 

I got my M11x R2 on Saturday and have suffered the freeze about a dozen times and have yet to play the first game. I ran diagnostics on the hardware and it came through with flying colors, so I tried the latest nVidia driver but still had the system freeze. I did a clean install of Windows and kept with the most recent Dell drivers. Still it froze. But this time I was more focused and deliberate in getting it up and running. I patched the OS. It was fine. I installed some apps. It was fine. I surfed the web. Still fine. I opened Steam. I downloaded a demo. I downloaded another demo. I started downloading the Command and Conquer game I bought Sunday. When it got to 6% the computer froze.
After trying Ctrl+Alt+Del and waiting five minutes or so, I gave up and held down the power button. When shutting down, I noticed it had to force closed the Steam Snapshot something or other, which I think is a new Steam feature. I did not have a chance to turn off that feature and see if that helps, but I wanted to post this in case it helps. Let me stress, I have not played any games on my M11x yet. And to be honest I'm pissed I have to work this hard on a brand new laptop. If it didn't have the custom "made for" on the bottom and all the hardware I specifically requested, I would have already sent it back to Dell. My original plan was to run it as a dual boot machine but if it doesn't shape up by next weekend I'm putting Linux on it and I'll run a virtual Windows PC to play my Steam games and do everything else in Linux.

 

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I do not have it overclocked (I've got the Core i5 ULV), I tried turning off the Intel Speedstep and Turbo mode as well, it still froze.
I tried with the latest Dell drivers and it eventaully froze, then tried with the latest drivers from the manufacturers - I really enjoyed having multi-touch from the Synaptics trackpad driver. If I ever get this working, I'll have to go back to that one. Unfortunately, even with current drivers from the individual manufacturers, it still eventually froze.

 

So your saying it froze without playing any games? lemon return it and get a new one.