NVIDIA Geoforce GT 335M (11xR2) Causes Game Crashes

For Left 4 Dead 2, verify the game cache file integrity ( https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2037-QEUH-3335). This can cause an error and generate a crash in some cases.

Also, that shader bug has been around for some time. We saw this with the R1 driver early on. I believe it was fixed but could have been broken again with a recent L4D2 update or possibly the NV driver itself. try resetting the in-game display settings to default and then change only the resolution to match the 11x display res. Once done, slowly up each setting until the crash is reproduced.

When I have time and I can log in to steam, I'll post my L4D2 in-game settings from my R1 and you can use it to compare.

 

This is my underlying issue. none of these games are a consistent crash all around so it isn't something like a driver issue. There are even a lot of people who are able to play the witcher without any problems.

We should definately start posting configuration settings. like batboy says, WoW is the easiest one because so many people play it on the m11x (and play on it successfully)

p.s From the sounds of it the new drivers are creating a bunch of problems. should i just stick with the older drivers for now?

 

Hi, I recently made this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ames-crashing-looping-sounds.html#post7075332

It's in regards to this system crashing with source engine games. I checked my event log as BatBoy suggested, and found this error:

The program hl2.exe version 0.0.0.0 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Action Center control panel.

There was also a different error on the list:

Faulting application name: NvXDSync.exe, version: 7.17.12.6099, time stamp: 0x4cb9d6d6
Faulting module name: nvapi64.dll, version: 8.17.12.6099, time stamp: 0x4cb9dad6
Exception code: 0xc00000fd

What does this all mean?

I can play games such as STALKER and Oblivion fine, it just crashes with looping sounds when it comes to source engine games and mods. I'm using the 260.99 official driver, no overclocks, and my system is using the Core i7 with 4GB ram.

Thanks

 

That is your NV driver crashing out. Since you are on 260.99 according to that crash data, what about the current Dell driver? Yes, I know that it does not have the BC2/Punkbuster fix - but, do you crash with it???

 

To be honest, I'm not interested in a punkbuster fix at the moment, and I don't use this to play BC2. This said, I will happily downgrade my driver in an attempt to fix the issue. Do I simply download the Dell driver from their page and install it? Or do I need to uninstall the 260.99 first?

 

Only had problems when I upgraded to 266.58 ... all other drivers I've used have played Left 4 Dead 2 perfectly. In fact that's one of the games I had *no* issues with consistently. It has to be driver related... the first thing I did was check the integrity of the game, and even reinstalled 266.58 while ticking "clean install" ... no luck. The drivers mess something up very badly.

 

I feel bad for you guys. From November to Christmas Eve I had an Aliencrap m17x R2... completely decked out with literally every upgrade even the xm i7. It did nothing but constantly lock up. The worst part was the Dell Tech Support... they're clueless when it comes to the Alienware products and literally everything they did for me in regards to service calls was screwed up somehow. I finally got it sent back and was refunded. Best move I've ever made since I got a nice laptop and built an absolutely insane desktop with xfire 6970's that boggles my mind. I still have over a thousand left to spare.

Last week I found a small company that sells laptops and got an i3 with the 335m and I paid $390 with a 3 year warranty. They were nice enough to refund me $50 too because I wanted to buy my own 7200 RPM HDD and RipJaw DDR3 above 800mhz. I've had it 3 days now and no problems in WoW or ME2. If any of you have the 30 day return still active I'd use it. They even screwed up my warranty refund that I shelled almost $300 on for the My Tech Team. It took me 3 weeks to get that refund.

They seriously don't care about customers. It was the biggest mistake I've ever made. So, I feel for all of you and what you're dealing with is completely unacceptable. I hope it gets worked out soon and you can enjoy your laptops. Good Luck!

 

Thanks for sharing that Zero but lets not sidetrack the thread.

Glad you're happy though.

Thanks.

 

haha, sorry to bug you, but do I uninstall the 260.99 driver before I install the dell one?

 

I would. So, uninstall the 260.99 from the Programs & Features Control Panel. Once done, reboot and enter safe mode (F8) at the BIOS. Once in Safe Mode, run CCleaner's registry clean module. This will remove any left over traces from the NV uninstall. When done, restart the system (normally this time, no Safe Mode). Once back at the desktop, run the Dell driver install.

Not sure if its required but you may have to re-run the Intel Driver installer as well. Again, not sure - doubt it since they are two different installers.

Leaving for a bit guys - will check back later tonight to see where we stand with additional data on the crashes and various configs.

 

So bottom line... of the following drivers:

Stock dell driver
260.99
266.33
266.58

which should I be using? which has the fewest crashes/issues? Cause this latest driver is a big load of crap.

 

As far as the driver order is concerned. Alienware .. (2-3 Techs ) told me the order of driver removal/install for graphics would be:

Removal : Nvidia.. Intel.
Install: Intel.. Nvidia

So, changing Nvidia only.. dont worry bout intel.

 

Try the dell driver - the current one from the R2's support.dell.com driver page.

 

Sorry I missed your request BatBoy!

I had the driver ( before this new one 8.17.12.6658 ) that was twinked from sonone on this site.. and got freezing in EverQuest. Couldn't kill the process.. could type and serf the web with window minimized.. CTRL+ALT+Del did not delete the process eqgame.exe. Shutting down the pc, I had to hold the button to hard shut down.. If I tried the windows - shut down or restart.. it would start the process of shutting down, but stop.. Alien Head eyes had nothing.

Even the driver before this.. ? 260.. I think it was.. same Game freezing. EverQuest commented the game was intended for desktops therefore they don't support laptops.

Classic!

No overclocking the Vid card ever.. or throttlestop used.. Tried CPU oc same results.

Before with EQ. Before several components switched out via Alienware, I was on the Stock 250 hdd.. Now with the Guild wars issue, Intel X-25m 80gb SSD.

Intel graphics driver, 8.15.10.2266

Ide be glad to post a MSInfo ?

Hmm.. Device manager.. Processors.. Driver 6.1.7600.16385.. dated 6/21/2006 ??

M11xR2 i5/4Gb 1333 CL-7 Nanya/ Intel SSD X25-M 80Gb...........

 

Ok it froze again -.-
Im about fed up with this sexy beast,
EDIT
Also forgot to mention, i talk on vent while its frozen, i force shut down, turn back on, and it does a disc check, idk what that means

 

Specs are in Sig,
drivers -
I used the 260.99 had no problem (might try those out see if they work)
I used the 265.99 (modded ones might not be exact)
266.** (Modded drivers also)
Now the new drivers =/

 

This is pretty much exactly the same issues I have. Wireless drops.. My MacBook Pro in the other room ( further from router ) is still connected.. And various tries to fix the game freezing /lockups.

 

I've been experiencing lockups as well. I don't OC my GPU and my laptop will lockup even while just surfing the internet.

 

how long is the policy for refunds? because all this really is right now is a $1000 netbook with basic capabilities

 

Good news. I uninstalled and reinstalled both the intel and nVidia graphics drivers, cleaned the registry, restarted etc. and just managed to play Day of Defeat Source without a hitch for over an hour and a half. I don't wanna speak to soon, but I think that's my problem solved.

FYI, both drivers that I'm now using are taken off the dell drivers page.

Thanks a lot everyone who helped

 

are you using ts/oc'd/gpu oc'ed?

also in what order did you do those things?

 

I'm not using TS, and nothing is overclocked, all stock.

1) I uninstalled the 260.99 nVidia driver
2) Restarted
3) Fixed registry
4) Uninstalled Intel Graphics Driver and Control Panel
5) Restarted
6) Fixed registry
7) Installed Intel Graphics driver (under Display on the Dell support and drivers section)
8) Restarted
9) Installed nVidia graphics driver (also under display on the dell support and drivers section)
10) Restarted
11) Tested
11) Hour and a half later, got bored, still no crash, so I quit DoD:S

I used CCleaner to "fix" the registry.

Having only done the one test however, I can't say for certain that this has completely fixed the problem for me.

Anyway, hope it helps some people.

 

let us know if it is a permanent fix!

 

I think this is probably the common factor here guys. Looking over the last several pages, I see many posts relating to issues with various modded drivers or drivers straight from NV. Keep in mind, M17xR1 owners have been having non-stop lock up issues with the NV Releases (Verde Drivers).

My suggestion is this - if using a modded driver or NV released driver and you are running into poor performance or lockups/crashes in-game, roll back to the current Dell driver. If the crash/lockups continue then we can look at which modded driver seems to produce the least issue and focus on that driver and tweaking it.

For easy reference - current Dell drivers are:

Intel Driver (8.15.10.2182)
Drivers and Downloads

NV Driver (v257.30)
Drivers and Downloads


Suggestions on reverting back:

1. Uninstall your current NV driver via the control panel.
2. Uninstall the Intel Display Driver via the control panel.
2. Boot into Safe Mode (F8 @ BIOS) and run CCleaner's Registry Scan - fix any found issues and restart (normal boot - no safe mode).
3. Once back at the desktop, run the installer for the Intel Display Driver. If prompted to restart, do so.
4. Once back at the desktop, run the NV installer. If given the option, select the 'Clean install' checkbox. Not sure if this NV driver supports that function or not.
5. Reboot the system and game on.

Report back any crashes with the above drivers and if possible, re-check the Event Manager (Application Log) and look for any entries relating to the crash/lockup.

**If you do lockup, try to avoid hard re-setting (holding power button to shutdown). Only do this as a last resort and if done, wait at least 15 seconds before powering back up. This type of shutdown is always risky as it can lead to corrupt sectors on a HDD. Corrupt sectors can kill your Windows install as a result and lead to instability.

Finally, I suggest testing with overclocking disabled. If you have Throttlestop installed, disable or remove it (note your settings before doing so). Again, this is done simply to rule out these as a possible contributor to the lockup/crash. If gaming is fine (with the exception of the punkbuster issues obviously), then re-enable any overclock you were using before. Re-test for stability and once verified as stable, go back to any other tweaks you were using.

I know this is drawn out folks but its something many of us AW owners do in order to really get at the core of an issue and part of the whole 'lets find the best NV driver' for our systems.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

f3lic,

See this page and all the information is there. you'll need to take the time to read over the relevant sections.

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/services/main/service_map?c=us&l=en&s=gen

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/policy/en/policy?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=gen&~section=012

 

Just checking in. After:

1) updating my avast engine
2) updating spybot immunizations
3) clean install of latest nvidia drivers
4) updating windows defender

That issue with taskhost.exe has not returned. No freezes in 2 days on anything. I leave the laptop on almost all day as well as overnight. Could this be virus/worm related? Almost all of us are online gamers.

 

Virus - no. you'll know if you have a virus. Try using something other than avast and spybot for a 'second opinion' scan. Also and this is off topic - I'm wondering if the combo of Avast + Spybot + Windows Defender is not causing issues. you might want to check here for more info - post a thread and see what others have to say.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/security-anti-virus-software/

Humor me, uninstall Avast and Spybot and then run CCleaner in Safe Mode. Reboot and then try gaming. See if you keep running into lockups/crashes - note if the crash behavior is different. you can always reinstall Avast and Spybot again. See if that helps.

 

Well, I just managed to play Nightmare House 2 (and HL2 mod) from start to finish without a single hiccup, when it crashed within a half hour on my previous drivers.

I can't completely confirm the fix, but it's looking promising.

And I am also running avast! and Spybot, both updated (and immunized) and they don't seem to be causing me any problems.

EDIT: Hmm, after 5 minutes of play, one of my other Source mods (HARDWIRED) crashed the same way as the others used to. This however didn't present an error in the Event Viewer, so I'll blame the mod itself, and uninstall it. Ill update you again if Day of Defeat or a similar, official, source game crashes.

 

I followed the instructions on uninstalling, cleaning and installing the Dell-drivers.
Played for about an hour and a half then i got the same freeze as i got before.

Event log says "Application Hang". The rest of the info is not interesting, and in swedish

I have no indication that the graphic driver has crashed, the eventmanager says its working fine and so on.

I now have to force-shutdown my laptop for the 1 billionth time to be able to kill the process.

Please advice!

 

Bummer....I installed the A4 bios update today... Going to play the trial again of Guild Wars.. see if I lock up.

thanks again BatBoy on the great advice.. I will put forth an effort to continue to de-bug this.

3D Mark 06 jumped 30 pts from A4 /boggle.

With that said, I'll game with the drivers I currently have.. then try stock.

 

Just an update and a question.

I still have the issue running, example, Lord of the Rings Online.

But after like 2 hours of Ultra-setting playing SC2 i have no freezes.

Again ive never seen the issue outside of MMOs.

And the question, i think someone posted issues with SC2. In that case, is it the EXACT same issue? With game freezing while music plays on and the only thing you can do to kill the process is to force-shutdown?

Really wierd if this affects different games on different M11Xs. Really!

EDIT: Ignore this remark, 5mins after post it crashed.
I think its clear that this affects ALL games, its just so random that people might think it works playing under 2h straight. I think the major reason reports on MMOs is the vast gametime people put into these games.

Maybe its time to realize that those affected have a hardware malfunction. Too bad it takes 2h of gaming to verify and no tech-support in the world will perform those kind of tests.

 

Before I attempt to download Guild Wars, I need to know, does GW crash when playing on every single m11x? If not, does it affect the r1? I don't want to waste a whole bunch of space (I have several games here and no money for an HDD upgrade) with a useless program.

 

I don't think u can make that assumption solely based on the issues your having. I've played all my games 6-8 hours at a time without ever having any hitches except for medieval 2. which i've decided is just not worth bothering with since i can play my other games.

Are you OC? using TS? and plz be aware that the order of installing drivers sometimes can affect things. Otherwise, no idea what the problem is :-\

 

Well, im saying Those affected probably have a hardware issue.

I dont use anything thats not default. So no OC, no TS.
I have installed drivers in the exact order given by the Alienware Mod on this forum.

And just to update, just tried cranking every graph-option to lowest so LOTRo basically looks like Doom. Had no effect on the issue at all, crashed after 30mins this time. So im dropping the possibilty of game options having any effect on this.

Im gonna try playing it using the internal Intel card now, pretty sure that will work.

 

I wouldn't consider anything off topic just yet. So far, I am the only person who fixed the problem and had it return (and subsequently go away again). I'm also only playing FFXI (8 years old), so there's little chance it's my graphics drivers.

I will run this test over the weekend, though my system is currently stable. I run all three protections on 4 different computers and none of them crash but the M11x.

I ask about viruses because of an old FFXI specific threat that showed the same symptoms: game is unresponsive but computer is responsive. This turned out to be a computer hijacking, where the hacker would redirect game data to his computer while forcing the player to reboot their computer. To my knowledge, this has not happened to me, but I am aware of the possibility.

I'm still convinced the problem is the WLAN card, but I run a clean system anyway. My first fix came from disabling the DW WLAN card utility. This thread here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m11x/494366-totally-random-lockups.html

Describes a very similar crash but there are no games involved. Likely they aren't having shader issues. People fixed the problem by buying a new network card. My new card will be arriving in 10 business days.

 

but our computer isn't randomly freezing its only freezing during games which is the weird part

i can't play any of the games i previously listed and probably a lot more.

 

Yeah im drawing back my remark about some games working.
Nothing is working properly after some more testing.

Tested playing with internal Intel graphics though, no problem at all.

My guess is that all our Nvidia cards are bust.

 

Oh great, Oblivion just crashed after about an hour of play, had to hard reset -_- It's possible that I have a bad load order for all my mods, so I'll disable them all and play vanilla for a few hours to see if they're my problem.

Is it possible that my No-CD crack is causing the game freezing? I own a legit disk copy of the game, but I really don't want my 2 USB port stealing, battery sucking, loud external DVD-ROM drive constantly plugged in so I can play with the disk in.

 

I played WoW for about 4 hours tonight, no problems,
Did the uninstall, registry clean, install dell drivers and its working better.
Also for those that might be having problems, there was an old thread that a guy said he had major problems with his m11x and he just opened up the back and lightly vacuumed the inside and cleaned it out, worked like a charm he said.
Might try that if it ever crashes, if that doesnt work then I will email dell/alienware

 

It's been a month now since I had the motherboard replaced and I've only had 1 crash and it was last week. After I got the mb replaced this was my initial post: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-11xr2-causes-game-crashes-9.html#post7036416.

I had the crash last week (that was scary) but since then it hasn't crashed so I'm thankful for that.

 

Nup, turns out this hasn't fixed it at all. Day of Defeat just crashed again after about 2 hours of play. I've had it, emailing Dell. I've tried everything D:

EDIT: Just tried the new 266.58 nVidia drivers, and it crashed in less than 5 minutes, forcing yet another hard reset. ffs. Now I'm gonna try using my integrated chip to make sure it's the graphics card that's at fault.

 

Could you try some more and post all your driver versions etc.
Still think you´ve just been lucky thou. Cause ive tried uninstall, clean, install and i crash on any game all the time.

 

They replaced the MB but kept the Nvidia card in? Or is that a part of the "MB" ?

 

I will be playing lots today xD
My current driver is now the 257.30 drivers off the dell website,
No OC, Throttlestop.
I also let my computer warm up before i use the NVIDIA card, like going to this website or other forums.

 

Cool, too bad i already got those drivers And the issue...
What BIOS-update you have? And what Intel-driver you have?

Thing with this issue is that it seems most people get it after a while. I never had this issue until last week. And ive been playing alot on latest Nvidia drivers (not Dell-drivers). The most logical explanation is a heating issue that has casued the hardware to malfunction, which is indeed sad since a replacement isnt the obvious answer when the new part might aswell go bust too.

But go ahead and test like a crazy person and post your specs. Perhaps you have found the holy graal

In the mean time, an update from Alienware/Dell ppls would be nice.

 

Not to dampen your enthusiasm Bobtheflea, but I am pretty sure your system will still freeze.

I've honestly done every humanly possible thing (including factory resets and fresh installs, BIOS update, all available drivers) since finding out about this issue and believe me, there currently is no fix. Now I'm working on getting my money back for a broken notebook.

Just let any affected game run long enough, you'll see.

@BiiF
It's not a heating issue. You can run certain stuff, or even affected games with certain settings 'forever'. It's a driver or hardware issue, since non-admin started applications can not result in such deep-rooted issues. The 420m is not affected.

 

i was about to try a factory reset or formatting the whole thing but now according to your post thats not going to work either. sad news indeed

 

Dont know if i can agree to game setting having any part in this. Ive tried disabling everything running on lowest possible graphs, dont matter at all.

More over, non-admin apps in Windows are not games in this matter. So is there a "non-admin" app that will run on the Nvidia GPU ? If so, let me know so i can try it out.

 

Well, you could confirm my findings. But I've diagnosed it for over 2 weeks intensively now, so I don't really doubt my results.

I was referring to game(s?) where this is possible. In Everquest 2 you can enable Shader 3.0 in the option, which works around the issue somehow, actually putting more load on the System. Since it's quite the performance eating option, it's not a fix, though. I'm hinting at the possibility of this being possible in other games, I don't know any so far.

I have trouble understanding you answer. Games are applications to me, so this might have been confusing. Games are (usually) not started with priviledged permissions, so they could not even block resources as this is happening. This was what I was referring to. It has to be at the Kernel or driver ring, then, so it's clearly the driver doing something wrong here.

@Bobtheflea
I'm encouraging you to letting Everquest 2 (Free) run a bit on your system, preferrably at a location where you can see water. I'd be surprised if it runs for more than an hour without freezing. (Settings: High Quality, Shader 3.0 off)

 

Hmmm if the game processes wouldnt be able to block resources there wouldnt be an issue with killing the process.

Unless, its the graphmem that cant be flushed from gamedata and is somehow holding up the process on a lower-level, as you said.

It all sucks bad anyways Would be awesome to find something like the "shader 3.0"-thing in LOTRo so can stop playing on internal Intel-card, sucks.

 

Don't envy that option, it slows everything down and I think it looks worse, too.