M17x I'm dying on the inside, help!

I will try to keep this not TL so you all will read.

Just got my M17x yesterday (unboxing vid to come) and it was a grand day. Loaded up Left 4 Dead, rocked max settings, great. Updated my GTX 260 drivers via the beta link on the driver thread, everything goes fine until i play L4D again.

Everything is slower and shaky in game. I'm thinking maybe the 9400m kicked in because some issue with the beta drivers. I go back to the old driver, and back to full speed.

Problem:
Randomly when playing L4D now the game will lock up for no reason. Image freezes and audio repeats the single note it is on. I have to hard power off via power button for 10 sec since nothing responds. Breaks my heart.
Decided to see if it was just L4D so I started up COD4, max settings. Runs like a champ but locks up at the same point on the first map (when i get to Price to do the obstacle course). Same frozen image but this time audio continues.

Investigation:
I looked around and couldn't find much so thats why I came to you wonderful people. I tried the 260 GPU driver on the driver thread and also tried the driver on the CD that came w/ the laptop. Still same issues. I don't want to game until this problem is fixed because I had to hard power off my computer about 7 times on the first day! AHH!

please help, I am dying on the inside.

oh PS:
QX9300 2.53GHz
1GB Dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M - SLI Enabled
4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz
256GB Solid State Drive

 

Two basic things to try is a different video driver and make sure all patches are installed for the game. There was a thread around here with similar complaints and I think it was the video driver.

 

Well I have tried the 260 driver on the driver thread of this forum, and the driver on the included disk. Should I just check the latest from Nvidia? I figured the link on the thread was the latest but im new to this gpu. I've been ATI my whole life.

I'll see if I can find that thread but I've been sifting for a while with no luck.

 

I'm guessing you don't have anything overclocked. Do you have anything to monitor your temperatures? Maybe something is overheating.

Try the said games in a windowed mode to see if the same thing happens.

I've had that same issue with GRID. In fact, it happened this morning. But my CPU and GPU were both overclocked pretty good.

When installing a new graphics driver, you need to use Driver Sweeper (or equivalent) to make sure the remnants of the old driver are completely gone.

Mandrake or someone else will probably show up in a bit and tell you what's really wrong. These are just my off-chute attempts.

EDIT: Looks like I got beat to the punch.

 

and you installed the latest game patches?

 

no, nothing is overclocked and yes I have my temps monitored and everything is fine.

I haven't messed with patches for the games so that will be the next step. I will let you all know if it works.

maybe I will also reinstall latest driver and use this driver sweeper just to be sure.

 

There were reported problems with Crysis (new vid driver fixed) and FO3 (game patches needed).

 

I'm having a similar problem also. I changed nothing, but all of a sudden I'm getting crap performance. It's like the computer is tied up with some intensive task that I can't detect.

 

You didn't by any chance unplug your system at any time did you?

 

....lol @ mandrake

 

People don't understand when you unplug it goes to the 9400 and you have to manually switch it back even if you plug it back in.

 

l4d is controlled by steam he would not be able to join any server if his game was out of date.

 

The person who had issues with FO3 was a steam user. They don't have to join a server to use steam do they?

 

no fallout is all on your computer (local)

 

I don't use steam so I don't know enough about it.

 

i hate steam


The guy never responded i guess he did unplug it

 

ok, been workin for a while

no im not retarded, the gpu's are on

have the latest patch, still locks up. there is no warning like slowed performance and my temps are fine. its just all of the sudden BOOM lock up. screen freezes at whatever I am doing.

I have whiped the drives clean with that drive cleaner in safe mode. reinstalled my drives. made sure my gpus were enabled in bios. played the game with max settings and great performance...and same thing.

now one more thing to check is turning of multi core support on the in game settings. I did find somewhere that it was the cause of a lot of lock ups in left 4 dead. not sure about cod4 though.

 

Which vid driver versions have you tested?

 

COD 4 does have lock up issues .... slipping my mind what it was... it was the Vram filling up and stuttering the system

 

still locked up without multi core support in game

well i went to nvidias website to get the latest driver for the 260 for notebooks and i got an error saying it couldnt detect the hardware or something

thats not good

ill see if i can get a screen for you guys, this is crazy

 

I would start testing by shutting off Hybrid SLI and integrated graphics in the bios. Once you find something stable introduce it back into the mix.

 

mean anything?

 

well the only issue im having is these lock ups in 3d games, performance is great otherwise...so disabling all of my graphics controllers wont let me test anything in game

im going to keep messing around, ill keep checking back and let you all know if i come up with something

 

That's why I said disable the integrated card not the discrete cards.

 

oh and will the 186.12 beta driver work for the 260?

 

sorry misread

 

It can mean a couple things.

1. There are zero drivers loaded for your GPUs and you need to make sure the default VGA driver gets loaded before doing the install.
2. It's reading the wrong card.

 

I think people have loaded that up already. I haven't myself.

 

My M17x has been running rock solid since I got it, and last night I updated the command center app as well as the audio driver. Since then Guild Wars locked up on me once and World of Warcraft hard locked on me (had to hold the power button to power off).

Anyone else had similar experiences since updating either of these drivers?

 

Apologies for not responding, no, LOL, I didn't unplug it...

 

ok so, update

tried lots of different nvidia driver versions
still same thing, maybe its just cod and l4d...but i wanted to try one more thing

i downloaded the dox driver, went through all the necessary steps with driver cleaner in safe mode and manual unstalls to remove every traces and started up with basic vga. installed dox with sli - hybrid choice because well...thats what i have and when i reboot and it loads the drivers my dedicated gpu is all green and garbled but the 9400m is fine. checked device manager and all it lists is my 9400m. there isnt even anything with an error or yellow !.

did i do something wrong with dox?

 

do i maybe need to disable hybrid and my integrated in the bios and try again but only install drivers for my dedicated?

but then i wouldnt be able to use the hybrid funtion, right?

 

Nothing above the Dox 182.46 work and they don't support hybrid. I posted a question on his forum asking him about it. We'll see what he says.

Edit:

He responded

"Try installing on Standard singl/sli option.
Hybrid setting is buggy with this release.
Problem persits? then try nvidia's 186.03"

I tried the Standard single/sli option and it didn't work for me. You can test it out and see if you have better luck.

 

ok then thats the problem, i did the 185.85

so i guess ill try the 182.46

 

Found out what my problem was: Trojan, LOL

 

OUTCH!!!!


10char

 

tried the standard/sli version, buggy for me as well

going to try nvidias 186.03 now

 

Yeah, found that out when I could not get my external monitor to work, lol. Have you tried disabling SLI? Do any games use SLI config? lol