Neglected M9700i R1 - Needs a new lease of life

Hi,
I've just signed up as this looks like an excellent forum and resource.
I've been running an M9750 for over 2 years now and it was my first laptop. I use it mainly for Excel / VBA Programming and also playing some games..This is my spec:
T7600 (2.33GHz Core 2 Due)
4 Gb Memory (2 x 2Gb DDR2 PC5300)
Dual 7950 GTX with SLi
Running Windows Vista Home Premium SP2
2 fujitsu 120Gb 7200rpm SATA Hard Drives running in Raid 0 if I remember correctly.
Wireless / TV Tuner and the stabdard stuff.
So why am I here..Well its always ran pretty well..I did need to phone AW once after it messed up somehow on shutdown and busted the raid setup so I had to re set that up and reinstall but apart from that its been good.
Then within the last couple of months, I can't remember when exactly as it was a little while back I got a blue screen of death which I caught the bottom of about the nvlddmk issue...I've researched this and haven't been able to fix it yet but the only way I can boot up is after I reinstall the video card drivers and not enable the SLI mode...as soon as I enable sli and it boots I put in my password and it blue screens and crashes out. I have also found that the fans seem to be running noisier than usual so I am worried about overheating.
I've never done any maintenance on the machine and I do run it on a flat surface all the time. I may have updated a few drivers but never the BIOS and whilst I have some time on my hands I wanted to try and get it back to its former glory. Its a lovely machine and I am quite practical and confident on tinkering inside desktop pcs but I've never been inside a laptop. Are there some experts out there who can advise me on how I can hopefully fix the noisy fan problem, get the sli working again and generally get this machine spruced up and running tip top again. I was considering increasing the Hard drive capacity which would obviously facilitate a fresh install of everything which might be what I need...Any thoughts / advice are very welcome. Many thanks for any help..
Cheers
Tim

 

When is the last time you clean your system. Buy a can of air and blow it out. If you have not you might have burnt out one of the gpu or fan. Why have you not had a laptop cooler to help in cooling.

Laptops as I learn are like desktop the diffence is the Heat. So cleaning the fan. Everything so close to togetther it give off more heat.

 

Hi, Thanks for the reply - I'll get shot for this after some of the reading I've been doing on here earlier but I have never cleaned the laptop...I am happy to give it a go if someone can point me in the right direction...I did venture underneath earlier and took of the cover and saw all the copper heat pipes, 2 fans and vents and gave it a bit of a blow and quite a lot of dust came out But thats as far as I've got...I am not getting any raid issues now at bstart up..it all goes fine...If I did upgrade the hard drives would I be able to install windows 7 of this beastie? Thanks

 

ah..you've updated your reply..I have never used a cooling pad as to be honest its never got that hot or I've never had a problem with the fans running so fast. I always use it on a flat surface and there isn't loads of dust around but it still needs cleaning out..I'm not sure if one of the GPUs is knackered or not..the device manager says they are both OK and I think it may be a driver issue..

 

Your Rig will easily be able to run Windows 7.

 

I thought it would..and it appears a lot better than vista..Will I be able to get hold of all the drivers I need?

 

Well what I heard that can happen is redo you Thermal compound after a few years. Some people says it helps.

dont let desktop and laptop changes scare you. As long as you can keep your self grounded. You should be able to work on laptops with out hurting it. At one time I was a desktop users who was scared how to work on a laptop. Due to many issues of 2 laptops I dont worry about working on laptops.

After a few years even redoing your thermal grease is a good idea. It like what you do on desktops. Same rules and such. Use the rules of what company like artic sliver or other thermal grease. They will have how to guides. How to remove and clean the old thermal grease.

 

Yes tracking down drivers is very easy and yes it is leaps ahead of vista, its no contest in performance.

 

Thanks guys, I am appreciating these speedy responses..so to cover my A*se so to speak..would it be a good option for me to buy a couple of new hard drives, and set myself up with windows 7 on those and keep my current ones as they are in case I get in a pickle? I could then have a fresh start and still leave my existing config as is on the old drives...?HArd drives are pretty cheap now anyway..whats a suitable replacement / alternative? Probably looking for a pair of 500Gb?

 

The optimal set up would be a good solid state drive for the OS and programs and a second drive for storage. if you dont want to spend that kind of money get 2 500 gig 7200 rpm drives in raid 0.

 

I do not see much issue with windows 7. It differnt then windows xp and vista. I beleave there two versons of windows 7 32 bit and 64 bit. The only drivers you will have is drivers That are not normaly use like keyboard lighting and such which your system dont have. Printers and other things might have issues but you should be ok.

 

Thats an interesting suggestion...Those SSD drives are still pretty expensive though..
So how about the BIOS? Would I need to flash that if I moved to windows 7? I'll need to look on the Alienware support pages to see if they have a Bios upgrade for windows 7..I've only noticed xp and vista..
Are there any video / pdf instructions for cleaning out the fans / vents?

 

If you have a friend that has a SSD drive. check it. might not work becuse your system is still a older tech. go to alienware.com and check what your hard drive can use. Right now there Ide Sata and sata 2 sata 3. So there a unknown to this.

What you have to do is look at What happen back then and now. We can see this with Internet connections. Between 56k modems to Dsl. there was a few Off line companys that did not work and stop. cable internet with upload phoneline. Was a Joke.

 

Any 2.5" HDD will work. You can go with two 500GB 7200 RPM drives. If you want you can run them in RAID 0, but I would leave them un raided. I tend to reccommend the set up I use. I use one HDD for all the Applications and operating system. Then I use the other drive for file storage. Things like homework, pictures, music, videos. I also keep a folder on the extra drive that has application setup.exe files. This is the drive that I back up. The reason I don't suggest RAID 0 is becuase while the performance increase is nice, you also double the odds of your system crashing. Now your depending on two HDDs, and if one fails, you lose all info as it is split between two drives. So using two HDDs as a partion format works well and you just need to back up the storage drive so you don't lose your files. True you'd have to re-install everything if your O/S drive fails, but thats easy. If if you really want, you can clone it to a stored drive that you keep, just in case. I tend to have my O/S drive aimed at speed with a storage drive aimed at large capacity. A perfect set up in my opinion would be an SSD O/S drive with a 640GB 5400 RPM storage drive. Probably what I'll run in my next Alienware and what I'm going to do to my Inspiron 1720 as soon as I quit being lazy.

Now as far as your current problems, I would take it apart and clean it. Maybe change your thermal paste as well since you have it taken apart. New thermal paste can reduce your temps by a few degrees. Probably new paste on the CPU as well as GPU's. A cooler could help with this too, although not totally necessary. You can also start be running tests. Since you can run your laptop with 1 gpu and not SLI mode, you may have a faulty SLI cable or bad GPU. I would check the market place or ebay if you determine the the GPU is your problem. I'm not too knowledgable on the older machines, but I'm sure somone will come along with better advice on how to test the GPUs individually. The fan may also be going out as well. Is it noisy as in constantly running, or noisey as in bearings are going out?

 

Hi, Thanks for your reply..That is very good advice regarding your hard drive setup. I use a similar approach on one of my desktops and it makes a lot of sense. I will certainly give that some serious thought if / when I upgrade the HDs.
OK..so the cleaning out / reapplying thermal paste etc. If there any type of guid or instructions for this? I have removed the back panel and I can see the fans, GPUs, CPU all covered with the heatpipes..Will unscrewing the heat pipe hardware from the top of the processors mean I'll be able to get to or pull out the vents to give them a good clean? Its the PC I am on at the moment so I'll have to shut down to look at it so please be patient with me...
I've been happily running in SLI mode for well over a year with no probs and I am pretty sure that I have messed up the drivers somehow so I could do with working out what the upto date SLI 7950 GTX drivers are and trying to remove all trace of the existing drivers in safe mode and starting again. When I say the fans are noisier I am being lazy in my description...The fans seem to run at set different speed levels and the seem to crank up and run faster when they aren't under any particular strain..which does suggest I am having problems with heat dissipation...is there any free software I can use to see what my temps are? Thanks again

 

Absolutley no prob. I would start by downloading HWMonitor. That should give you a good read on all your temps. As far as thermal paste application goes here is a good thread from when I had the same questions. As far as disassembly goes I don't know if there is a guide or manual online. Should be easy to disassemble, just be sure to carefully note where each screw goes. Maybe seperate them in baggies and mark them. Also I would run CCleaner and make sure you get rid of all registry errors that can bog down the system. Maybe do a fresh install with all the latest drivers and newest BIOS

 

Thank you..You are very generous with your help..I've downloaded and run the hardware monitor. M GPU cores are both at 70 degrees C (157 F) with maxes of 71 c. The 2 cores on my processor are running at 63 C (143 F) with maxes of 72 / 73 C...I don;t know whether these are good or bad? I suppose the fact that it giving me a temp for both video cards must be a good thing..I'll have a look at the other link you posted...thanks again for your time..ah..just sitting here typing..I ahve a few progs open..nothing special and the fan kicked in at a higher speed so I went to have a look at the temps and it was one of the processor (not graphics cores) had come upto about 73 C...not sure what that means...

 

I'm not sure what a normal temp for that laptop is but they should stay under 85*C. Probably at 105*C would be dangerous, but just standard day to day stuff shouldn't be that high I don't think. A though cleaning of everything that has built up and reapplication of thermal paste should help with heat dissipation. If you want you can run OCCT or Intel Burn test which should give you an idea of how high the CPU will go under stress. If you have any games, playing those at higher settings for a while, while at the same time running HWmonitor in the background can give you an idea of your GPU temp range and see how high they get. You can google for OCCT and Intel Burn test. I can't get the links due to a filter on my work computer, but they are CPU stress tests which will max out the CPU for a while to test stability. Designed for stability testing when overclocking, but also gives you a good idea of the temp range with HWmonitor running.

But again, try cleaning and see how that goes as far as temp changes.

 

OK Thanks for all your help. I'll order some thermal paste and then when that has arrived I'll get in there and have a go and removing all the heatpipes and giving everything a good clean. I'm am half tempted to copy off all my important data and then have a fresh install which I might aswell combine with some new hard drives in which case I may use one of the 120Gb drives for operating system and apps and just buy a single 500Gb for documents etc...I only need to buy the one drive then...So the decision then is should I go for windows 7 home premium over vista home premium...I don't have the software so I would have to buy it but from what I have seen it would be worth it...I might have to move over onto my desktop whilst I get it all set up....Can I ask a dumb question - re the Raid Setup...I am going to do what you suggest but how is the Raid config held? It is part of the BIOS settings..Or is it configured to be enabled in the BIOS but then it runs from somewhere separately? Thanks again for your help...When I open her up I might take some pictures and post them in case its useful for anyone else..

 

Your temps are fine, the m9750 is good for temperatures right up to 100 Deg C i'd only get worried if it hits 95 which from what you say it isnt.
My CPU peaks out at around 87 under full load for comparison purposes. I'm pretty sure from when I still had 7950's they peaked out at a similar temperature.

 

Thanks for your reply..I need to have a bit more of a search to see whether I can track down all the drivers I need to be able to get everything running under windows 7...I think it looked like it was just the drivers to get the USBs working at USB 2.0 speed that people seemed to be lacking...I'm still digging though..Thanks

 

Take it from someone who has installed Windows 7 on this machine you dont need any drivers other than for the graphics cards and the card reader. The vista drivers work fine and are available from alienware.com.

 

OK, I'll take your word for it but was there not some problem around finding a driver to get the USBs running at USB 2.0 speed?
Thanks