1730 BSOD and system hangs in SLI mode

I just received an outlet 1730 with dual 8800GTX's yesterday. I owned a 1730 when they first came out and enjoyed it for about a year until I sold it. I currently also have a m17x-R2 that I love.

I know the system is old, but I am having problems finding much help with old posts on the forum. The posts I do find that seem semi related are so old that I'm not sure how relevant they still are.

The problem I'm having is I get BSOD's (I don't think I've ever seen the same error twice yet, I've seen "system has halted" and "display driver" errors) or a system hang when playing games or running benchmark programs (3dmark06 and vantage). When it hangs the sytem looks frozen in place with everything wtill on (screen, lights, fans) and you have to hold in the power button to reset.

Because of this issue I have tried many different drivers to no avail. It came with some really old drivers (17X??) but I've tried some of Dell ones, and both modified and official, newer, middle aged, and even the newest versoins and they all do the same thing so I've thinking it may not be the drivers. On a side not technically there were NO drivers for the 880GTX available on the dell site for Vista 64. They mention 8700, 9800GT and 9800GTX but no 8800, what's up with that? I can't even find the original drivers I started with online and the driver disk was the ONLY one they forgot to send me.

I then suspected maybe a temperature problem so I used HWinfo32 to monitor temps while I ran 3dmark, knowing that it would cause a system hang. The temps never got above 76C during the test up until the BSOD.

If I play a game it will play fine for a few minutes and either BSOD or system hang. If I use just one card (no SLI) I can run benchmarks and play games fine. I am suspecting that the 2nd GPU is bad.

Any sugestions? I am a huge Windows 7 fan, but money is tight so I don't want to waste it. If this could this be a Vista only problem I may be able to go to Windows 7. Thanks in advance for any help!

T9300
4GB
8800GTX SLI
320GB HD
BIOS A10

 

Well if you owned already an xps m1730 you would know that the symptomps youre describing are related to a gpu card failure.

I bet one of the card is going to die soon, or is dead already. So your guess is completely right.

In these situations your options are tight, really tight. Contact dell and send the unit back since it is DOA, they must offer something in return.

The gpu module is still so damn pricey, if money are a problem dont even think to upgrade to something else...this would mean some serious $$$.

 

Thanks for the quick reply.

Honestly I had zero problems with my original 1730 once I got everything updated and stable. I never had any heat problems or any hardware issues at all. I had the x9000 CPU and the 8800’s. I paid between 5-6 grand for it and sold it about a year later to someone who works for the Gov’s office in California for almost what I paid for it

Anyway, since I’ve had this one for less than 24 hrs I would hope the 1 year warranty should still be good! I will call Dell tonight unless I find some other solution that could be causing this problem.

Are both cards on the same board? Or are they separate boards?

 

The XPS M1730 had G92M cards that were NOT affected by the defective bump material.

It is however possible 1 card is having issues causing BSOD. I would try:

Using known good RAM, un-SLi the cards and test individually. Also official Nvidia Forceware drivers unfortunately fail often with a manufacturer branded OS install (aka using a Dell disc rather than an OEM disc). You also might want to check out the SLi cable.

 

Thanks, I will look into the cable and reseating any cards.

I may still call them first tonight just to get the ball rolling. While I am comfortable taking a laptop apart, I really don't want to spend a bunch of time doing that with a new (refurb that is, lol) system.

I thought about doing a fresh install, but without a proper Dell video driver I don't want to even attempt it. Does anyone know if I could use the 9800GT, GTX or even the 8700 drivers since there are none listed for the 8800? I thought they would all use similar drivers but the way they are listed separaetly I was unsure.

 

If you can remove the card, you could always try the "shove it in the oven at 200oC for 10mins to resolder it" option.


But yes.. I'd make sure Dell was replacing them first.

 

Can anyone confirm that there is only one physical card with both 8800's part of it? That would probably mean no SLI cable as well. Probably also means a card reseat is less likely the problem as well.

From tear down screen shots that's how it looks to me.

 

Two gpus on one card and unfortunately you cant unlink nor disassembly them.
Theres no sli cable, theres a chipset that links the two.
Its just one big card with two cores,like desktops ati x2 or gtx295.
So since we are experienced m1730 users, my advice is to contact dell asap before trying something by yourself specially if you dont know the architecture.
You got warranty, take advantage of it.

@tsunade: the cards are still listed as those problematic nvidia cards, also the m1730 is listed in the lawsuit as well.

 

Also i never used any dell driver, always used (and using) latest nvidia verde drivers.
There are some execptions made with partners likw toshiba and sony, which force you to use their drivers. Is not the xps m1730 case as both cards are recognized by nvidia verde drivers just fine,as they have reference specifications.
So the fact you need a dell driver is a myth and it needs to die. If you are attempting a reinstall, grab latest nvidia ones and youll be fine.

 

Thanks again guys.

I have heard of odd issues like the screen staying on when lid closed etc with official Nvidia drivers but those small things do not concern me. If they work for games and general windows use that’s about all I care about.

However, that being said, I have had Dell give me a hard time about what driver I’m using when I call though, so I like to be back onto an “official” one when I make the call. I think I will try a factory restore. There is no CD so I will have to try from the restore partition. That’s the only way I can get back to Dell drviers since they do not have any on their support page.

 

Just an update.

Last night I tried the factory restore from the image on the restore partition, with the same results as before. No windows update and the lockups continued. Because of the below results I believe that my original install and the restore partition were screwed up.

I called support and the lady was very helpful and spoke without any accent (from my perspective). She checked a few things and tried reinstalling drivers. The windows update issue worried her more than the lockups at that point. So she did a full reinstall from the Vista disk. It took a couple hours and was missing a ton of drivers as was expected. She got most of them reloaded and I did a few myself this morning. She noticed the lack of a 8800 driver too so she just picked the 9800GTX one.

I will test it out today and see if it made any difference. It runs very good in single card mode but I haven’t had a chance to try SLI yet. I would be thrilled if it is fixed but I will not be surprised at all if the problem persists tonight. She will call me back tomorrow night so we can go ever how it is running.

At least the windows update is working again!

**One thing I noticed is how quiet this thing runs. The fans on my m17x are much more noticable. I would have expected the other way around. I checked the temps again and the GPU's never got out of the 70's during my short tests. I thought that maybe I had a fan problem but I would expect to see higher temps. Guess it just runs quieter than I remember/epected.

 

What I tend to find if you install an OS with a manufacturer branding, official Nvidia forceware drivers tend to fail. If you do an OEM install and activate with the COA on the bottom of your laptop then Nvidia drivers have a much higher chance of installing successfully (I've recorded about 90% success rate). However ATi is 100% fail and you must use manufacturer drivers lol.

Make sure you run like Furmark or Unigene to test stability.

 

Hmmm, interesting. I haven't had any problems using the official ATI drivers on my m17x. Is that mainly true just for the 1730? (didin't think it even had an ATI option)

The problem I had explaining it to her last night is that I've only tested a couple games and couple benchmark programs. She was trying to say how it's "not the newest computer" and "it may not handle the highest settings".

I'm not having a performance problem, it's a hard lockup issue! The dang thing runs excellent right up until it locks up. It doesn't appear to be overheating either. How do I convince her that I am sure this is a problem, but yet it's hard to get it to do it on command in game, but the benchmarks do it almost everytime though.

I got a BSOD at lunch trying to run Vantage. It was a "system has halted" blue screen which I have seen a few times now.

 

She is going to call back tonight. Here were my findings:

Windows update is not working again, updates are failing to install now rather than failing to download. Also I had a BSOD during install.

I tried all of below and either got a BSOD or system freeze right away for within 5 mins of starting.

WoW
Left for Dead 2
Stalker SOC
Stalker COP
3dmark2006
Vantage

I think something is still wrong with my system

 

i still think that gpu/mobo fault is happening. Prolly you will reach a point that the laptop will not be stable even when booting.

To convince her just talk about anything but games, because no one in this world will get you seriously if you say that your bsods happens in games.

Just report to her that now the machine bsods itself even on desktop, windows update fails everytime, sometimes it doesnt boot and so on. That should make them move with a replacement.

 

Update from 2/3 call.

Sarah never called me back, when I came in to work this morning I see why, she called my work desk phone and left me a voicemail . I promptly removed that number from my account online. I always call them from my cell phone and give them that number as the number to call me back at if disconnected. The only reason that desk phone was on the list was during the day it’s the best way to get ahold of me.

Last night I gave her 3 hrs (said she’d call between 6:30-830 and I waited an additional hr). When I called back I had to go through troubleshooting from scratch yet again. He noticed that the “clean” install she did was not so clean. She did not format the partition for worry it would mess up the diagnostic and the restore partitions. I asked her about that during install. She assured me that it actually does do a format in the background but it just doesn’t tell you that. We this guy said that was wrong and she should have done the format like I suggested. Luckily he did not go through all of that again.

He ran some Dell diagnostics from in windows and everything he did passed. He didn’t do the video card tests because he said that would take too long. He managed to get one update to come down, SP2. When I tested my programs none of them failed at all, no BSOD during vantage, 3dmark06, WoW, two stalker games. I could not believe that would fix the issue but I had no other choice than to setup a return call for tonight. I was dumbfounded that the problem seems to have went away completely.

It was after midnight when we finished so I did a little testing but not enough to be fully convinced yet. I did do both the quick and the full video card test on both cards individually using this Dell Windows Diagnostic program. It has some 3d rendering so it did put some sort of load on the GPU’s and everything passed with no issues at all.

Maybe SP2 had some sort of Directx update or something that would fix this BSOD issue? Probably not but I’m hoping it’s fixed.

 

Mhm,
well vista sp2 as well as windows 7 does have a patch that "improves graphical processing unit in intensive tasks" so actually it may have fixed your problems.

Also i consider the fact that your precedent os was somewhat screwed and messed on drivers side that could lead to some instability.

Also part of my advices were posted with windows 7 in mind, i was not actually thinking about the fact that you were running the old vista.

Glad that everything is working thought.