*** Windows 10 + NVIDIA WHQL Drivers are Killing Alienware and Clevo LCD Panels ***

Holy shiz... so eVGA precision is really the culprit here isn't it. Even without windows 10. Yeah I tell people to stay away from 355+ driver wise. For the longest time that as how I helped people avoid this. But apparently its programs like Precision X that cause it.

 

Heres the issue, it also happens to DESKTOP MONITORS too. Just people are not realising it yet, instead they're thinking their monitors are all of a sudden not compatible with the 900 series.

 

No, EVGA Precision X can only trigger it once Windows 10 creates an EDID write-protection vulnerability. EVGA Precision X is not the underlying cause. There are a number of people that never had EVGA Precision X installed that had their LCD panels bricked at least once by Windows 10. My Alienware 18 LCD EDID was corrupted without EVGA Precision X being installed. I replaced the screen. The brand new LCD has not re-corrupted yet, and it does not have EVGA Precision X installed.

I am only using NVIDIA Inspector now. I'm not having repeat EDID corruption problems, multiples times in a day, like I was before. I am more than a week now without an issue. The fact that the installation of Windows 10 is what starts the problem for the first time for almost everyone affected by it is inescapable. Windows 10, or a messed up version of it that was accidentally circulated for a few days, is the underlying cause as far as I am concerned.

 

If you updated to 980M, did you have to change the BIOS to UEFI without legacy? I thought the cards required it and it was not supported in Windows 7.That would mean W8 or W10 at the same time.

Homer

 

No latest AW18 BIOS A12 allows legacy boot. I was able to swap 780M to 980M on my existing copy of W7.

 

As i promised i'm back with the full story.
1.Before all the s*** happend i had - MSI Afterburner install like...8-9 months old.
- EVGA installed like 1 month.
- Windows 8.1 with with some updates made but not ready for Win 10.
Then installed all updates for Win 10 to upgrade and latest Nvidia drivers which in my case were 355.60
3-5 days all good...then...as i posted before...1 GTX 680M dead and 2 LCDs.
2.After reading like 80% of this topic, last night i decide i'm ready, get back my old LCDs and using one working i started the "operation" -Recovery.
3.As someone mentioned its not hard but when you want to do this you must be very careful with swaping the displays and the LVDS cable and connectors. Be careful not to charge you with electrostatic energy cause it might go wrong.
4.Before you get into Linux be sure you get all you need for your edid (if you can identify it just the specific bin or if you dont all the bins)
5.The tools you need you can add in terminal...the folders were created by terminal commands.
6.Be very sure when you identify the i2c bus adress ..check it ...one...two...three times if necessary.
7.Before swaping you save the *.txt format of the device so you can compare it. You must read and save all the 256 bits in order to be readable.
8.After you identify the exact model (you have in this topic a link to an archive with all bins) and install all the tools you are ready to go.
9.If nothing has gone wrong thats it... if the final result in terminal is "succes" you can shut down and unplug the ac adaptor. Leave them like 20-25 min then connect all together and try to start with the LCD you just recover.
10. If NO beeps and win boot starting you have DONE IT.

Good luck to you all and dont be shy to try.

 

Figures... just my M18xR2 that can't... sniff...

Homer

 

@Mr. Fox- the system that bricked without Precision X, was that an upgrade to Windows 10? I'm pretty sure that the problem lies in the whole upgrade process and getting it Windows 10 ready.

There's definitely something happening with those Windows 10 ready updates if @cnorton never even had W10 installed. That's like the 3rd person that's never had W10 installed and it still bricked. Plus you can count the few of us that have had it brick after fixing our screens, and reverting back to that Windows 10 ready state.

Perhaps it can be tracked down to a single update or two by those of you that have the means to repair and a free weekend? There's only like 4-5 to check if I remember correctly so it may even be faster then that.

It will be interesting to see if that fresh install of Windows 10 doesn't brick @Mr. Fox's system. Also very good news for those of us that want to see some direct X 12 action when that can come to use.


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Strange thing is that my machine was working like a champ with W7 + W10 ready updates for a couple of months. I was even on the latest (at the time) NV drivers (355.82).

In my mind, a couple of things independently or in combination triggered the LCD brick in MY case.
1) Process of upgrading drivers from 353.06 (modded version from T|I - clean DDU install from 355.82) to 358.50 WHQL
2) Upgrading from my old version of Precision X to the latest version.

I never had a single issue until a couple of days ago when I performed the above.

 

I cannot speak for the other folks that said that, but my Alienware 18 was not an upgrade. It was a clean install and did not have EVGA Precision X installed. I was still in the process of installing all of my software and when I switched from Intel HD Graphics to NVIDIA, installed the GeForce drivers and as I rebooted to finish the GeForce driver installation is when it bricked.

So far, so good. Installed W10 on Sunday and it hasn't bricked yet. EVGA Precision X is not installed.

 

You should make a video installing Precision X and then it bricking after a restart.

I'd post that right here: https://forums.geforce.com/default/...ook-lcd-display-panels/23/?offset=350#4689922

After all, they couldn't reproduce the brick, so why bother trying to fix it...


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Howdy Folks,

I have been following this thread for a while, as the idea that Windows or even a NVidia driver causes a hardware fault is disturbing. It seems that the consensus is that Windows 10 is causing the EDID to become susceptible to corruption, and then another "bad" program writes information to it, and causes the system to no longer POST. If this really is a EDID corruption issue, you should be able to override the EDID using an inf file, as described here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/jj133967(v=vs.85).aspx

I also found an article describing a similar issue with a missing EDID entry for Vista http://www.komeil.com/blog/fix-edid-monitor-no-signal-dvi

Question, is the 8-beep a fatal POST error, meaning the system will not boot into Windows, or does it just boot to a blank screen? If it won't POST, then it sounds like something other than just a corrupt EDID, or the system BIOS (or UEFI if you prefer) is testing something, and failing the POST, not Windows itself. Logically, if it is just booting to a non-functioning display, the MSDN article should be an easy way to fix it. If it is indeed a halting error, something will have to be done on Dell/Alienware/Clevo's side. As the system should not fail to post with a bad display. Just my thoughts...

BTW, I have an M17xR4 that was updated to Windows 10, but I am running an AMD card, and have never had Precision X installed, which is probably why I do not have this issue.

 

i can't recall if i ever had precision x installed when i had win 10 installed.

A PC needs all parts to be working in order for it to POST, the beeps will occur when a component doesn't work and usually tells you what part it is.

 

Those linked articles are interesting, and I actually found them when searching for a solution to this issue. While they seem similar, they are entirely different.

This is a firmware corruption problem that is introduced by Windows 10. The EDID corruption occurs on the LCD EEPROM, (an IC chip that stores the LCD firmware,) so nothing you do with the registry or INF file is going to help. The 8-beeps occurs at POST (before Windows even tries to load, or even the system BIOS finishes loading.) It happens because the BIOS/EC cannot "find" (enumerate) the corrupted LCD EDID on the SMbus. To correct it, you have to actually flash a good EDID to the LCD panel EEPROM, exactly as you would flash a GPU vBIOS.

 

If you never had Windows 10 installed, the only thing left that could be causing the problem is the nvidia's driver. So far the nvidia driver is the only thing common in all broken displays because regarding precisionx there are people who did not have it installed and got their displays bricked and now it seems windows 10 is not causing it either.

If i am not mistaken all those that updated to Win10, also had the new nvidia drivers installed supporting win10, so one could easily misinterpret the cause of the problem and thinking it was windows when in fact it is the nvidia driver.

There is no doubt however Dell has also messed up, otherwise it wouldn't be only alienwares and clevos getting bricked, but every machine on the planet with an nvidia card.

 

I was using an old Nvidia driver when mine bricked the second time. There are others that have had it brick using old drivers as well, so that's not a common point either.

Edit to clarify:
Bricked on W10 using new Nvidia drivers as of June 25th. Not sure the number.
Bricked again on W7 using Mr. Fox's 145.2 drivers. This driver has never caused an issue before.
If there are inconsistencies in what driver was used when a brick occurs, then that rules out a driver issue.


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Still, anyone got it bricked on NOT Windows 10 with NEWEST driver?

 

That isn't exactly true. The new drivers could have acted as a catalyst of sorts, a necessary, but not sufficient, cause of the edid corruption. They could have changed something which, in conjunction with Windows 10 or Windows 10 readiness updates, created the environment for the event. The new driver and Windows 10 (or related updates) were all present at one point on these systems (Windows 10 baked in the new Nvidia driver, so you cannot say it wasn't present). The only possibility to somewhat rule out Nvidia is to see if the people who never installed win 10 has the readiness updates but never had g-sync supported drivers on their system. Now, even with both of these present at one point, it needs a final catalyst as a match or a trigger for the reaction. Precision X is the only one identified, but not the only one out there. So, no! You cannot yet rule out Nvidia!!!

 

Running 8.1 with most of the recent win 10 prep updates installed but I had not installed win 10. So I used the batch file from

http://forum.n otebookreview.com/threads/updates-to-hide-to-prevent-windows-10-upgrade-disable-telemetry.780476/

to remove all the win10 updates. It's a paralyzing thing though because based off of what has been written by others who never installed win 10, you still don't know if you are really safe. I figure since I did not currently have Prec x installed and have not used a more recent win 10 NVIDIA driver, I am good. I will say this, have not seen one report of this happening to anyone who does not have an NVIDIA card. Doesn't happen to people with a basic laptop that only has integrated graphics.

 

No reports of AMD GPU laptops (alienware or clevo) with this issue either.

 

Indeed, NVIDIA + Windows 10 + Precision X(Forst most ppl) seems to be the lethal combo.. Was for me at least...

 

it's hard to say that just nvidia + win 10 is still ok but on the brink of failure,.

 

Well @aarpcard has a Clevo P377SMA that had its LCD EEPROM corrupted by EVGA Precision X.

He posted about it over at Tech|Inferno... Possible LCD Firmware corrupted due to EVGA Precision X? Help!

 

I know this maybe premature, but... If EVGA Precision X (and possible anything that implements its features using the same steps) is the trigger and Windows 10 is what revealed the target, have we eliminated Win 8.1 and the Windows 10 Ready NVidia drivers or are the newest NVidia drivers still being questioned?

Homer

 

There are those that never had Windows 10 or PrecisionX installed, just Windows 10 ready updates and their laptops LCD EDID's were corrupted.

The common theme is still Windows 10 or Windows 10 ready updates, and Nvidia drivers. There have been 0 reports of any Intel or AMD powered LCD EDID corruptions, regardless of OS or Windows updates used.

Known triggers are PrecisionX after Windows 10 ready updates or Windows 10 install. No other triggers are known for sure.

 

They just released Win 10 build 10565 today. You can download the ISO's on this release. Anyone brave enough to try it and see if the hole is fixed?

 

nope!

 

I believe @Mr. Fox is still having luck with an older build.


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Maybe i will be

 

Should we post on EVGA's forums reporting our suspicions?

 

Nvidia will shove GeForce Experience down your throat whether you like it or not from december. Everything gets worse and worse gradually now. First Win 10 and now Nvidia. Great partnership ? Disgusting... Nvidia need your E-mail address also . The great idea may come from the Redmond mafia?
That means Nvidia will shove GeForce Experience down your throat whether you like it or not. So in short - you’ll be able to install Game Ready drivers only via GeForce Experience — and even then only after you’ve registered a verified email address with Nvidia. The drivers you can grab on GeForce.com or via Windows Update will also be limited to quarterly releases for bug fixes, new features, security updates and so on. http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/geforce-experience-gets-a-fivefold-of-new-features.html

 

My friends........... dark days are ahead of us. End of "free/customizable" mobile gaming is nigh.
All that crap that came with Win10 + Maxwell + UEFI + secureboot + broken drivers + forced updates
To be honest I don't see a lot of hope for desktops either. One day WE WILL wake up to BGA gaming desktops.

 

I suppose it will be more like this:

https://thevoid.com/

 

I saw this too on Guru3d. I reckon this could cause problems for people with non-standard GPUs in their laptops that require modded inf files to install drivers - I'm thinking Geforce Experience will be unable to install drivers to such laptops. Don't like the controlling nature of this possible move by NVidia!

 

Wow... quite the bombshell dropped with that Guru3D article. It certainly seems NVIDIA gets more retarded with every day that passes. As much as I hate AMD's MXM garbage, it might be time to tell the Jolly Green Giant to drop dead. There's a limit to the amount of stupid I can tolerate. Since my 780M SLI went from awesome to sucks due to their driver engineering incompetence, might as well downgrade to something that doesn't throttle unless I use 8 month old drivers. I wish GCN MXM cards overclocked better and did not have such a ridiculously high failure rate.

I'd like to shove my throttling 780M SLI into one of NVIDIA's orifices, but I had something in mind other than their throat. Can't believe they haven't fixed it yet, and I do not buy the story that they have no idea why it's happening and cannot reproduce it. If their driver engineers honestly do not have any idea, then we all need to be very scared about the height and depth of their incompetence.

 

They would still need to provide an installer exe on their site cos how on earth would desktop owners update drivers for a card that doesn't have drivers to begin with when they're doing a GPU upgrade????...if you have win 7 or 8.1.

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I wonder if they will have a barebones driver with no game optimization profiles in it, and only getting "Game Ready" (profiles) through GFE? Or, it may be that you just don't get to download any drivers without giving them your email. They may also be binding GFE cancer into the drivers in such a way that living without it or refusing to install GFE (as many chose to not install it today) is going to cause issues.

 

This might be a good reason to hold off the CPU upgrade as I don't want to waste the money when the PC don't work no more.

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Remember that you always can to upgrade BGA based CPU, you just need to pay more (75$ in Poland) for desoldering/soldering. But no chance to upgrade BGA GPU.

 

I wonder if I do have gfe installed and it tried to update would it just fail?

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Does anyone know where I can get the Firmware/EDID for my poor LG LVDS monitor that has run into the same issue as this thread?

Model # LP156WF4-SLB5

 

I will be getting my new Alienware 18 next week. I'd love to help. Did you guys need a clean EDID from my LCD when I get it?

Also for those successful with Win10 on the Alienware 18, I take it that one guaranteed way to make it work is to use the integrated Intel graphics only. From the reading I've done another is what sounds like using UEFI secure boot.

I really don't mind experienting to help narrow down. I don't mind bricking it either since will be under warranty and Win10 is clearly supported.

 

Didn't have that one, but fortunately its spec. sheet is available with edid bytes (pages 27-29). Included your panel's edid in the archive (PnP id LGD037E):

archive correct edids, v8

Spoiler: archive correct edids, v8 - all panels

Code:

pnp id  notes   interf  panel nr.      edid eeprom
------- -----   ------  -------------  -------------------
AUO219D !       LVDS    B173HW02 V1
CMO1720 !       LVDS    N173HGE-L11
LGD01CA         LVDS    LP173WD1-TLA1
LGD0226         LVDS    LP173WD1-TLC2
LGD0285         LVDS    LP173WF1-TLC1
LGD0289         LVDS    LP173WD1-TLA3
LGD02C5         eDP     LP173WF2-TPA1
LGD02DA !       LVDS    LP173WF1-TLB3
LGD02FC C       LVDS    LP173WF3-SLB2
LGD0343         LVDS    LP173WF1-TLB5
LGD037E         LVDS    LP156WF4-SLB5
LGD0391         LVDS    LP173WD1-TLE1
LGD03FB         LVDS    LP173WF1-TL**
LGD046C E       eDP     LP173WF4-SPD1
MEI96A2         eDP     VVX16T020G00
SDC3654         LVDS    LTN173KT03-W01
SDC4852         eDP     LTN156FL02-L01
SDC4C48 !       LVDS    LTM184HL01-C01
SEC314A         LVDS    LTN184HT03-001
SEC4A4B         LVDS    LTN184KT01-J01
SEC5044 !?AW    eDP     LTN173HT01-301  Winbond 25X20BLNIG
SEC5044 !?AW    eDP     LTN173HT02-D**  Winbond 25X20BLNIG
??????? A       eDP     LTN173HT02-D02  "" ?
SEC5044 A       eDP     LTN173HT02-P01  "" ?
SEC5044 A       eDP     LTN173HT02-T01  "" ?
SEC5443         LVDS    LTN170CT08-D01
SEC5448 !       LVDS    LTN184HT02-S01
SEC544B B       LVDS    LTN173KT01-***
SEC544B BD      LVDS    LTN140KT**-***
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
!  = known bricked panels
!? = bricked, but unknown which one
*  = unknown part id
A  = highly suspect: multiple variants exist, perhaps the others are safe ...
B  = multiple variants, flash the correct one!
C  = EliteBook 8**0w DreamColor, 10-bit, for fun ^^
D  = 14.0" version for M14x, just in case
E  = G-Sync approved panel (hint ^^)
W  = write-protect possible

If multiple edids exist for one PnP id; flash the most recent edid, unless indicated otherwise.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks . Unfortunately there's nothing strange here; first 162 KB is normal vbios and the remaining 94 KB is empty . Since you have an SLI setup; same thing, only with ' -i1'?

No guarantee it's truly empty, of course, considering nvflash is made by Nvidia. Could test that by de-soldering vbios eeprom and writing, for instance, a single ' AA' byte after the vbios payload. Kinda curious whether nvflash will catch that byte or steadfastly persist it's still ' FF' ... might run that check on my 860M bga system.

Not sooner than next week, though; kinda busy with work lately, so can't allot as much time into further researching this debacle as I would like. Would've checked those 10-ready updates by now; one of these may install drivers/files touching on ' low-level-hardware-control'.

Yes, that would be helpful.

Great, there is something you can do to help. But this does require you to the Linux tools.

Since you have a non-10 or 10-ready system, we might use that to check whether the ' 10 flips wp byte' is accurate:

1. Write modded edid v1 on the non-10/10-ready system.
2. Install 10 (+latest nvidia driver <- you have little choice anyway ...).
3. Write modded edid v2 on the 10/post-10 system.

If step #1 fails to pass (edid hasn't changed), then the write-protect is 'ON'. Thus, if step #3 does change the edid then you have your evidence (MS or Nvidia has changed the write-protect). Of course, both modded edids would be perfectly fine to run, just a tad of change in the 'comments' section. If you're up to it then I'll make those edids for you. Only need to know the current panel.

 

I just had my screen re-flashed back to life by Mr. Fox - thank you so very much!

He is willing to perform the same service for those that would like their screens un-bricked from the EDID corruption issue that many of us have experienced. You'll need to pay for shipping both ways plus a modest fee. You can ship the entire laptop, but sending just the screen will be MUCH cheaper.

Just shoot Mr. Fox a PM - he is an awesome gentleman! (and some may even say a scholar )

 

Yes, -i1 would be the secondary GPU. On an SLI system you have to specify for nvflash which GPU to work with... -i0 is primary, -i1 is secondary GPU in a 2-way SLI setup. You cannot combine them in the same command syntax, as nvflash can only enumerate them one at a time.

Thanks for the compliment, bro. Glad to help anyone that needs assistance with this. Having the entire display assembly, or at least the LVDS cable, would make it easier without increasing shipping cost.

 

I should also mention that you will DEFINITELY want to either do a fresh Windows install or boot into safe mode first in order to get rid of the known trigger - EVGA's PrecisionX.

 

Man I have all updates turned off and went to reboot my r2 and it said please wait while configuring Windows. I shut it off. Then booted it up it started over upgrading to Windows 10. I killed it and booted off my install disc and reloaded win 7.

Apparently a report came out today that Microsoft "accidentally" forced the upgrade/install and it is being fixed now.

http://arstechnica.com/information-...ng-automatically-on-some-windows-7-8-systems/

 

All of problems and new alterations that Nvidia doing now is carefully planned. Nvidia knows what they're doing... It's 100% for sure that they know what the problem is with your throttling 780M SLI. But they are not interested in fixing the throttling bug that you are experiencing. Next time Nvidia doing new things, then you might be forced on new (crippled)drivers or only can update drivers via Win update... Maybe Nvidia later make only time-limited drivers for their graphics cards. Genius. This goes the wrong way.

 

Wow, that sucks. I bet you were like...



I know that I sure would have been.

Screwing things up is status quo for the Redmond Mafia, but that really sucks. It's like they assaulted you digitally. Their most recent success is Windows 7 SP1. Nothing but fail since then.

I've been warning people for several years about having Automatic Windows Updates enabled. This is not a good thing. That filth needs to be turned off, and the only way to do that is a registry hack or in Group Policy. (Turning it off in Windows Update settings doesn't turn it off permanently.) I've had to reinstall Windows many times after updates lowering my benchmark scores or causing overclocking instability. It's just not worth it, and the "security" (in most cases) is mainly a placebo for customers to feel good and a way for Micro$loth to cover their fanny for liability reasons.

 

@Mr. Fox can you PM me details on the re-write? I'm not cool enough to message you first apparently haha.


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