M15x: Display dead after 2 minutes

Hi folks
I have a problem with my Alienware m15x
I reinstalled Vista last week, started the m15x, saw that not all drivers were installed (WLAN and GFX Card were missing), went to my other PC to download them from Alienware, and when i came back after 15 minutes, the screen was black and the Laptop didn't respond anymore. I had to shut it off by pressing the power button for 10 seconds and tried to start it again, but the screen was still black. I waited several minutes, tried again, and it started normally again. I then installed the WLAN and tried to install the gfx card, but the driver setup didn't recognize any geforce on my machine and failed. i downloaded some other driver versions and tried those, but none worked.

After 10 minutes suddenly the screen went grey and then black again and the laptop didn't respond again. reset it again, tried to reboot, didn't work. i left it alone for a while, and then it worked again, for around 10 minutes, then the screen went grey and then black again.

I later booted the laptop with the integrated gfx card and in safe mode, and then it worked for an hour or so until i turned it off. i tried to install the gfx driver again, but to no avail. this time i noticed, that all of a sudden the videocontroller driver hasn't been recognized either, which hadn't been the case before. puzzled i tried to look for a driver that would work, but none would. after a while i gave up and shut it off.

When i then the day later tried again to boot it, the screen shut off after 2 minutes, and did so again even after every long cooldown break. Sometimes it booted to windows and i heard the jingle, sometimes it just froze and didn't do anything anymore in the background.
I then wanted to reinstall vista again, because i suspected something went wrong the first time around, but again, after 2 minutes, the screen went off, the computer somewhen froze and my existing vista installation was screwed up, so i couldn't even boot to windows anymore.
i then checked if the screen also freezes if i just stay in the bios for 2 minutes, and yes, it did.

I later opened up the laptop to see if both fans were running, and found a little piece of plastic falling out of one of the fans, which probably fell down from the case of the screen, which had a material defect since delivery, which didn't bother me until now though.
i checked then if any other plastic pieces were in there and if the fan was still running fine, and it did still run, so i tried to boot the laptop again after a break. but it still just boots for 2 minutes and then the screen freezes again.

I have no idea what could be wrong or what i could do to at least start my laptop up again. anyone had a similar problem and can help me or tell me what to do?
I'd be very grateful for any help

Peace
Haron

 

Silly question I am sure, and no disrespect intended,

Did you maybe get an m15x with the ATI Radeon Mobility HD 3870 installed? Also could your system be overheating for some reason?

Good luck and I hope you can get this figured out!

 

It's the silly questions that solve such problems most of the time, so don't worry, but according to my invoice it's been delivered with a M15X NVIDIA 8800M-GTX 512MB, and it did run correctly on the nvidia driver before i reinstalled vista , so i'm quite positive about that
i don't see any reason why it should be overheating, but i'm gonna take out the gfx card tonight when i get home and see if dust could be an issue, or if there are any more loose plastic parts from the case.

 

and what would the problem be if it was 3870?

 

Well it isn't, but if it was an ATI card, Nvidia drivers would not work.

 

Update:
I found the problem
I removed the geforce card, cleaned the heat sink of the cpu and the gfx card, booted the pc again, and this time it was working and i could install vista again. after the install i inserted the gfx card again and tried to boot, but after 2 mins it froze again. that's when i checked the fan of the geforce and noticed that it wasn't running, so it's overheating because of that.
what could be the reason for the fan not to run anymore? any ideas?

 

If I remember correctly that was a problem a few people had when the computer went to sleep and they turn it back on and the fan of the GPU would forget to turn it self back on. I think alienware solved this with a bios update though so you might wanna look for the latest bios update and install that.

 

he should of received it with x36 BIOS....

yea i could tell it was overheating pretty quick

you could boot on integrated graphics until AW can send you a replacement Fan.

 

ok, i just flashed my bios to x36
the problem still persists. the interesting part though is that for the first few seconds while booting the fan is running and then suddenly turns off, thus overheating the geforce. i would understand if the fan wouldn't run at all, but why it runs and then turns off i really can't understand...

 

puzzling indeed ..... i'll think about it .... try a different driver

 

call asap and get a new card sent out.
if your fan is not responding even with the x36 your SOL till you get a new one.
as Moo said, integrated until further notice....

 

when the computer is off hold down the right mouse button to boot into intergrated

 

problem is, i can't install the nvidia driver, because the system doesn't let me install it without the geforce in. if i try to boot on the internal gfx card with the geforce in, i still only get the 2 minutes, and that isn't enough to install the driver for the geforce.

i just tried to boot the laptop with the geforce in again, pressed f2 and went to the bios and left it there for some minutes. there, the fan ran all right and the screen didn't freeze.

i then tried to boot the laptop with the geforce in stealth mode, and the fan kept running all the way. but still, after 2 minutes, even with the fan running, the screen went black again.

as long as i take the geforce out and boot on the internal everything is fine...

is there a possibility that i do the booting on the internal card wrong? i press the right mousebutton on the touchpad, press the power button, and after some seconds when the laptop boots i release it, right? is there any sign that it boots on the internal? and should the fan of the geforce be running then?

 

Take out the geforce. Boot the on the integrated. Install geforce driver. Shut down.\Install the geforce card. Boot up regular.

Same thing I had to do when I was installing a discrete graphics card into a system using an integrated gpu.

Hope that works for you.

 

NO you hold the right mouse button until it powers on

 

doesn't because the driver setup aborts because it can't find any supported hardware. is there any way to install the geforce driver without actually having the geforce in the machine?

 

until when exactly?

 

um not to my knowledge because there would be no point?

you are special in this case

 

"until it powers on "

 

yep, that's what i did then...

 

did it work or not ?

 

lol moo

 

it seems to boot differently, yes, but the geforce still overheats and shuts down my machine after 2 minutes, so i still got no chance to install the driver...

 

download HWmonitor and run that in your 2 minutes