Alienware m9750 Problems

Ok, I purchased m9750 the other week and in general stuff its performed fine however when i try to run games on it i start to run into issues. Now i can't pin this down to one game. I play alot of Wow and the basically what will happen with this is i will log on start to run around as per usual then flickering will start say on an icon then spread a bit then eventually the whole screen until it atempts to recover fromthe process.

The flickering im talking about isn't lcd flicker but the graphics on screen in a strobe like effect.

Im starting to tear my hair out with trying to figure a fix on for this as i can play some titles with out any problems at all but some will just develop the exact same problem of strobe like flicker under textures or somtimes the whole screen.

Here is the spec i got mine with:

Core 2 duo T7200 2Ghz
4GB 667 DDR2
8700M GT 512mb
120Gb HD

I have tried many differnt drivers and i have used driver cleaner to remove them each time i try a new one i have got many of these from laptopvideotogo and Nvidia's site also tried the basic ones from ALienware.

Any help would be much apprciated.

Thanks

 

What OS are you running? What Nvidia Driver are you using right now?

 

Also, please try to monitor your temps and see if there is an overheating issue

 

hey tomask

sorry to hear you're having troubles...I had some difficulty with my 9750 in the beginning, slightly different symptoms than yours - and I have dual 7950 GTX gpu's in SLI running XP Pro - but I solved my issues by reseating the cards.
It's possible that a driver update might be a solution as well - refer to the guide that's stickied on the first page of this forum about increasing performance in SLI for detailed instructions on how to do that - there are also links to updated drivers there as well.
I've also noted from other 9750 users on the forum that some experience stability issues when using 4 Gb of Ram, and seem to remedy the problem by replacing one of the 2 Gb sticks with a 512 Mb stick for a total of 2.5 Gb RAM...to troubleshoot if it is a RAM issue you could try removing one stick and running it to see how it works, if it doesn't help try switching the stick you left in with the one you removed - if that doesn't help then the RAM is probably not your issue.
In summary - I would try these in the following order:
1) Try an updated driver - follow the instructions in Stone's guide I referred to, I would pick a driver that most people are reporting works well.
2) Troubleshoot the RAM
3) Reseat the video card

If none of these measures help you out, I would then touch base with Alienware and see what they have to say...

Good Luck Sir

 

Thanks for the suggestions and i apologize for not posting my OS hehe, I should know better than that. I was fresh off work and knackered.

I'm running vista 32bit premium on there at the moment. And im currently running the 173.80 Laptopvideotogo drivers on it at the moment.

It isn't an sli setup but i will try what is suggested in the guide tomorrow.

With the regards to heat being an issue im not sure it is but i will monitor it all the same. The reason i don't think it is, is because when i got it first originally i installed a few games such as battle for middle earth 2 and unreal tournament 3 and they worked fine then i put wow on and got the flicker up. The other games where running fine except for a couple of other which had the same problem as described. So this is what drove me to update the drivers for the video card only after doing this did it result in everything doing the same.

I have also fully reloaded it using the provided recovery software but this didn't seem to make a difference. Something worth noting i can actually stop the flicker if i ctrl+alt+del and pull up task manager in the background. Although not 100% sucessfull it does work the majority of the time.

I am wondering if the problem comes from the ram though as well now due to the fact this smacks of a similar issue i had with my main pc and memory remap on the board. Problem is i cant test this due to the fact the board dosen't have the option.

Once again thanks for all your help and suggestions.

 

sorry to hear that the problem is so prevalent. I would still do the following:
I would try to use a fresh copy of vista, as people on other forums have said the recovery cds have often not fixed their problem. Maybe the recovery cds don't properly format before restoring.
I would also recommending using system restore but I also hear that the options are quite limited in Vista.

So, I still recommend to still keep an eye on those temperatures. To me it sounds like a possible chip degradation, as it seems to get worse with time.

Also, I do highly recommend to reinstall Vista fresh and not use the recovery cds. Format the hard drive first (after backing up of course). Then load the drivers per the guide and do not load any other drivers (not sound, Ethernet, anything that Vista wont do automatically). Sounds like something in Direct X could also be corrupted so this could clear that up. If you get better results then install drivers step by step from there.

If you are still having problems try enabling/disabling various hardware or better yet run the laptop with batteries, and then without to see if there is any difference. Since the clock speeds of the CPU/GPU change based on battery power or not you may find something there.

Just doing my best to try and keep you from having to take it back to alienware. Good Luck!

 

Thought i might give you all an update, I tried pretty much all the above suggestions and then i decided to tackle it on a game per game basis. So picked a selection of games and cranked all the setting up to max see which i got problems with. Answer was all ofthem!

So i was bit annoyed but i carried on and did the opposite put them to lowest res and settings possible.... now everything was working so i started the long boring task of putting up one setting loading game see if it ran ok.

So to cut a long story short i think i have narrowed it down to two possibles, I can run World of Warcraft no problem with all on max as long as "Spell Effects" is on low/off ... strange. I then found the majority of games ran into problems when using AA once this was off they ran fine.

I thought heat might be an issue but i just isnt running hot enough to be that and also diffrent driver sets give differnt results of uptime on maxed everything. I personally think its a vista/driver issue but for thre time being i can live with this as it works which is them main thing. Its good enough to blast a few hours away while im out of town in a crappy hotel in the middle of nowhere!

So anyway thanks for your help just one thing anyone know what the "mystical" spell effects effect actuly turns on on the gfx card as i think this might hold the answer.

Tom

 

Have you tried using my SLi guide and trying multiple drivers? Let me know which drivers you are currently using.

 

I had major issues with one set of the 173.xx drivers, I just can't remember which one. I upgraded to Vista SP1 and then installed the 174.xx drivers and now performance is unreal. I am running dual 8700s so our situation is a little different, but the difference from 173.xx to 174.xx drivers was very noticeable during gameplay in UT3.

 

Wow Tom thanks for the update!

I do hope that it is a driver problem, but I'm really starting to fear that it is a RAM problem either on the GPU or the normal RAM modules. Just one byte can do this sort of thing as well. still, if you got it working you got it working

Do try one more time to do as tokaygeko sugested and get the latest driver and Service pack up and running.

 

Thanks for more suggestions guys:

Stone, yes i tried your guide and it was very useful I basically tried all your suggested drivers then reverted back to the Alienware ones which had some success with fixing certain games while others where about the same. I then cleaned all the drivers off using the suggested programs and installed 174.31 from laptopvideotogo which improved performance but still gave the flicker and texture break up. However as i said above tinkering with each games settings turning certain things off fixed it. I have since diagnosed that it isn't AA as some are running fine with this. (i have also in between pretty much tried 10+ driver sets as well hehe)

Tokaygecko, yes I'm waiting on SP1 at the moment as I'm hoping this might fix a lot of other vista issues and i hope it also fixes my graphics problems.

I'm really loathed to send it back for a check up as i have always had bad experiences with getting the dam things back so that is my current last resort.

Oh and rsgeiger while i was chilling in my wonderful hotel i removed the base of the laptop and tried with one stick of ram then the other but had the same problem. Didnt really want to try much more DIY than that in that situation without my tools of the trade about hehe.

I find it strange though i poped ut3 on the other day and it ran fine for over an hour.

 

I am having a similar problem. On most games I am getting what looks like vertical yellow lines on the whole screen. It is only visible on light areas in the games but it is very distracting. I have tried all the current drivers in the driver thread. Any ideas?

I am running XP pro SP3 ( it happened on SP2 as well)
7950GTX sli

Hmmm, seems to only happen when sli is enabled.

 

I had those vertical lines too, but they went away when I installed the 167.46 beta driver from Alienware, as well as some others from laptopvideo2go.

If you have already tried those drivers, also play around with the different SLI performance modes in the Nvidia Control Panel. It may be that what makes it go away is changing it to "Alternate Frame Rendering 2" instead of Single GPU.

 

tomask- I still have a program that a member of this board wrote that modifies the windows registry to allow you to download SP1 through Microsoft windows update

This is the same program I used to get SP1 and it worked great. Two days after I used it the link to the program was taken out of the persons sig. I don't know why but I'd assume microsoft didn't like the idea of people getting SP1 before it was officially released. I dont regret doing it at all- it made my computer 99.9% stable.

 

Unfortunatly looks like im sending it back for a repair now. Its got progressivly worse so i think its a gfx card heat/memory issue im constantly blue screening with a 0x00000116 stop error or getting extreme texture artifcats and tearing.

So i decided to contact support via email although im going to phone them tonight to be honest as im getting no where on the e-support side of things. I have been contacted by two seprate people after i asked if i could send it back to be repaired in my orignal message.

I was told i cant return it due to it being past 7 day money back etc ... hah they should learn to read i just want to send it back for a repair.

So after asking again and informing them i have done what they asked but no joy, Another person contacted me asking me to turn my SLI off and see if it worked ... again what is going on with this they have my spec sheet and invoice i dont even have SLI setup on my laptop.

SO frustrating to get things fixed when they cant read what you type. Wish i had gone with a Rock Direct one now.

 

wow, sorry to hear that. My m9750 had problems too but newer drivers and sp1 fixed them.

 

tomask,

Have you sent in your system yet? I sent you a pm.

 

Hey there
Same problem i had,The cable for the sli connection was not seated properly
What happened too the 200 point inspection!!!!!!very poor

 

My condolences, tomask. I think you are right in that there is not much more you can do to fix this. For Alienware support I would just get on the phone and talk them through step by step what you want done, and what ever they promise to do to put in writing and sent to you before you hang up. This has as far as i can tell gotten the best customer support response. You could also try reseating the GPU yourself, and they will probably suggest this first, but this is a shot in the dark.

Anyway, good luck with everything!

p.s. My m9750 and I have most of our bonding time in hotels as well

 

Sorry for the lack of updates i have been out of town for a fair bit of time last few weeks (and with no laptop to use). I eventually got a replacement Card sent out to me which i fitted myself.

This seems to have solved the issue although i noticed some flicker on WoW the other night i am going to test this more extensivly this weekened with some other titles as ive wiped and cleaned the dam thing so many times i got sick of it i have to reinstall hehe.

I did get a blue screen last night come to think of it with same 0x00000116 error i was getting but like i said i need to give it a good run through of different stuff to test.