Dell XPS M1730 Owner's Lounge, *Part 3*

Try running CPU @ stock 2.8GHz

 

Still has the same issue.. no improvement in FPS i havent tried cleaning out my vents yet ill try that once i get the screw drivers and compressed air needed... Anyone know if dell allows renewal of warranty ?

 

Deathsliser (hope thats right) my good man I believe we have had the same issue - now strangely enough I would recommend setting your CPU to 3.2 then voltin it nice and low you could get away with 1.23 (around there , which will give you cooler tems than 2.8 (as the fans only go to high on the 3.2 - 3.4 settings)

Before any of this however please unplug take out battery hold down the power button for 20 sec- get a thin piece of plastic or a paperclip to stop the fans and use some COMPRESSED air (if you open the two covers on the bottom and remove the battery I have found the dust will blow right out the holes provided) - if you know how to open the laptop then do so but this is a quick method. Right secondly I have the 8800 GTX SLI and have noticed if temps go over lets say 70c-75c I get the exact same slowdown problem, my clocks are at 600 885 1500 and it will never downclock after doing the above.

Also please make sure you install the Beta nvidia mobile driver - I think the latest is 260.63

If that doesn't work for you I will be a monkeys uncle....

 

me toooooo!

have same problem with R182249 in Batboy 'The Beast' Guide.. same
prob even go dell site after download , so copy R182249 from resource CD
then followed Batboy GUIDE an Quickset Led works cooooool.......

Dell Quickset 64 bit Drivers 1 to 5 all needed for 64 win7

1-- R182249 v8.2.20 A09 03/27/2008
2-- R188719 v9.0.12 A00 06/26/2008
3-- R200495 v9.2.13 A05 01/09/2009
4-- R216118 v9.4.6 A00 06/11/2009
5-- R226931 v9.6.6 A00 08/16/2009

 

another easy bake nvidia success story. 8700 baked @ 380 degrees for 8 min.....presto! Thats some funny stuff there! ROFL

 

I have missed all this about Baking a graphics card - so what happens your cards are dead so you bake them? and they fix?

Someone enlighten me....

Cheers

 

Yes I baked my old Go 7800GTX in my XPS M170 back to life again. I had the GPU in the oven for about 7 minutes at 195 celsius and the GPU worked again. This was for over 8 months ago and it still works.

 

hey all
I am looking for a program to monitor gfx temps and display in g15. I dont really want one of those loaded pgms with all the fluff just gfx temps. Any ideas?

 

Yes
GT8700 sli failed....removed and stripped card...baked at 380 for 8 min....reassemble and presto magic she lives again!

 

Rivatuner and MSI Afterburner.

 

I've had problems with my system for months that has involved replacing all the parts, some several times over, so all that's original is the plastic, and it's also been away for two weeks for a full scale repair. Since the latest engineer's visit on Monday it has had an annoying intermittent fault whereby it will freeze up, show a white screen for a split-second then reboot, obviously this is devastating if I'm in the middle of an application. Some days it is ok, today for example it has not reset at all. They have said they will probably completely replace the machine if it goes wrong again and as I have contacted them regarding this problem they have arranged for someone to call me back tomorrow.

Firstly I'd like to know if anyone here is familiar with the random reboots and what it could mean - I have Vista. Also wondering if it has somehow gone away because it has been fine today and whether I should press for a new system or not.

Any advice appreciated.

 

I run Vista on my XPS and I have absolutely no problems so far. It's also very stable and fast, maybe the few tweaks I made really helpt.
Do you monitor your temps? The machine might be overheating.

 

I don't monitor temps but it's 2.5 years old and has never done this rebooting thing before. I have a complimentary copy of Windows 7 that I requested from Dell after all the problems but have just found out it is problematic with the m1730 - should I install it anyway? The fan has started making a very irritating noise since the latest repair as well, might need loosening.

 

I installed afterburner today to monitor the gpu tems and what i have found is that it appears that the fans are not workin. I ran the dell test on them and they both pass the test and I can hear them working during the test but during normal operation they do not run. The temp at idle is about 70. I tried to use afterburner to force the fans to max and they do not respond. The graph shows them at 100% but no air movement. I ran far cry2 to see if the temp would get too high and it seemed to be staying around 68-72. I put a lit cig near the rear vents and i am sure there is no air movement through those vents.

 

i have cpuid installed and it is reporting the fan activity correctly. Seems afterburner can not control these fans ????

 

In the bios set it to 3.2 and see if they blow full blast (if they do you will know about it) Also if they werent working at all I am pretty sure that your graphics would go over those temps. It is a very quiet system when they arent blowing high. What I would also suggest is getting i8kfangui fan control and you can manually set the temp and speed of the GPU fan only, so you can make it full blast from the off. Its also good because you can stop it blowing, so if you do set your CPU speeds to 3.2 the volume of the fans can be quite annoying with this utility you can at least stop one of them until it is needed, by setting it to kick in at lets say 55c.

Hope it helps

 

Ah that will only work with the x cpu's. I have a t9300 but now i understand the cries for a bios update. I will check the fan program you suggested...many thanks

 

I tried i8kfangui but i can only get it to control the cpu fan and one of the gpu fans. Is there a trick to getting control over the second gpu fan?

 

No you cannot, I8kfan can only control a maximum of 2 fans. The 2nd GPU fan cannot be controlled at all.

 

Magnusssssss!!! I installed TinyXP and now it just boots into XP and I cant boot windows 7 (((( HHELLLLLLPPPP!

 

Use BCDEdit to edit the bootloader.

 

Yeah I tried and it just kept booting into windows xp....in the end I just reinstalled windows 7 on the second hardrive the only downside to all this is I lost all my steam games !! . I think I had converted my hardrives to dynamic which was maybe what caused all the problems I'm not really sure. Also in xp when I Sep my 3.4 oc- the system tried setting the voltage to 1.575!?! Crazy!

 

Did you try to set the W7 partition as active. W7 only boots if it has its partition as active.

 

Right strange things are going on , I am now using Throttlestop and all is well in the world. I will stay away from XP its just annoying

 

Yes you are probably more good with Win 7. I will install Win 7 later on though keep my XP partition.

 

hey guys i NEEEED emergency help. hi again if you remember me =].

whats better

x9000 core with dual 8800 gtx in sli

or

t8300 core with dual 9800 GT SLI

i will have a xps laptop!
then my old one shall become diamonds =]

thaaaankkss, at your mercy again!!!

 

hey guys i NEEEED emergency help. hi again if you remember me =].

whats better

x9000 core with dual 8800 gtx in sli

or

t8300 core with dual 9800 GT SLI

i will have a xps laptop!
then my old one shall become diamonds =]

thaaaankkss, at your mercy again!!!

 

Well, 8800M GTX and 9800M GT are basically the same cards. And you are definitely better off with X9000 CPU then with T8300.
The main question you should be asking is what kind of warranty these 2 systems have. Since there is a very high failure rate with M1730, I wouldn't recommend getting one without a warranty.

 

I'm thinking of picking up new WD internal 3tb drive and sticking it into the enclosure I have from a Buffalo drive. It'll be connected through USB. I just read however, that USB bridge needs to support large drives in order for system to recognize all 3tb of space. Does anyone know if it will work on M1730, or do I need to wait for an update (which will most likely never happen)? Tried searching for it, but looks like no one has run into this problem yet. Then again, 3tb drives have not been around for too long yet.
Oh, and I'm running Win7 64bit, and planning to use drive for storage purposes only, so there should be no problem in this regard.

 

X9000 - 8800GTX SLI .

 

Does anyone here play mount and blade warband? Add me on Steam - Marcusscalius - I also play Bad company 2 and a variety of other greats, would be good to have a smash on some games with a few other XPS peeps! I starterd Portal the other day what a game!

 

Hi Mag - would you be able to guide me through what I would need to type in XP to get the old Partition up and running again?

 

I hardly use my beast now a days just to make it last as long as possible, just gotta remember to renew the warranty sometime next year since I have about 1 1/2 years left on the warranty. I do use it from time to time to play some of my older games like Crysis or COD2( Yeah I know this game is way too old LOL!!! )

 

Hi guys im officially a member now!!, i couldnt afford the x9000 with 8800 went too high on ebay. but got a perfect condition t8300 with the dual 9800 gts with next day dell warrantee put in my name for 20 months. only let down is its gayboy red. going to try and get a x9000 core eventually.

wooop wooop

 

Ok, so I have run into a problem with my m1730. Recently, the hard drive took a dump, so dell sent me a new one. Only issue is they didn't have OEM harddrives with XP on them. So they sent me a install disk. I install windows, got almost all the drivers installed, except the sound driver, which refuses to install.

I have tried to install every version they have, the A13 version opens the console as though it were going to work, then crashes. Most others either say it's the wrong system, just fail flat out, etc.

I have tried everything that I have found on google, but can't get it any of them to install. Any help on getting my computer to have sound?

 

For those of you whom dual boot, do you need to install games on both partitions or how do you make them work?

 

Only install on both partitions if you want to play on either. I think.

My 1730 has stopped charging batteries. For several months it was giving me an error about my charger not being an official Dell one (it is), and this error continued after they replaced the charger right at the end of my warranty. When that error came up it wouldn't charge at first, but eventually would. More recently it said, for a span of maybe two weeks, that my batteries actually could be charged but were reaching the end of their lifespan. I have two separate batteries and get the same error, so I doubt that's correct. Yesterday, and I don't know if this is really related, the computer would randomly turn off when the battery was in (happened three times), but I haven't had the problem again after removing the battery.

So, two questions: what's the problem, and is there a way to charge my battery separate from the computer?

 

I only install on one partition when make a shortcut to the other partition. Sometimes I have to copy keys from the registry to make it work. But 90% works with just a shortcut on the other OS.

 

If your machine is still under warranty, Dell should replace the battery, AC adapter and possibly even the motherboard. Dell did this for me FOUR times in less than two years on two M1730's and they finally did the right thing and gave me a new AW M17X R2. I still have two more years on the warranty. This is one of several known design flaws on the M1730, and this one does not have a permanent fix. The issue seems to be the AC adapter not holding up to heavy use, but Dell takes the shotgun approach by replacing the battery and motherboard "just in case" instead of doing the research to find the problem. Since they do not make this machine any more, there's not much incentive to find the solution. I'm actually sort of happy for selfish reasons, because the M17X R2 that Dell sent me to replace the M1730 is a much better machine.

On the question about dual booting and game installation, the answer is no, you do not have to install the game under each OS most of the time. There are a few games out there that insist on having database entries in the registry to run, but most do not. Find a nocd executable on the internet and you can run your games from original installation folders on another partition, or from a previous installation. I had all games installed to my D drive on the M1730. I copied all files to another drive and dropped the folders onto my M17X and all but a couple ran flawlessly. The only ones I had trouble running were Gears of War, Crysis and Far Cry. I was getting an error message about not finding a DirectX dll. I found that file and manually copied it over to the Crysis and Far Cry folders it belonged in and it worked fine. I had to re-run the GOW installation and then replaced the nocd executable for GOW to run without the DVD.

I have the following games running under Win7 Ultimate x64 using folders I saved from a prior installation: Blade of Darkness, BloodRayne2, Crysis, Doom3, Enter the Matrix, Far Cry, FEAR, Halo, Max Payne, Max Payne2, Painkiller, Quake II, Quake III Arena, Quake4, Red Faction II, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Section 8, STALKER Clear Sky, STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl, Serious Sam, Serious Sam2, Unreal Tournament3. Some of these are older games that Vista and Win7 don't play nice with, but tweaks can be found on the web to get them working.

 

mrwalker try this tutorial, should get you going with XP.

Dual Boot Vista And XP (Vista Already Installed) - Windows Tutorials | Dream.In.Code

 

By the way, here is two SLI profiles for you guys.

Medal of Honor Tier One and Dead Rising 2.

Import them using Nhancer, these are Nhancer profiles.

 

Awesome, thanks a billion mag

 

heya, can anyone here please recommend a stable graphic driver for me
i have recently installed the 260.86 on my m1730 with 8800 and i have problem with booting up the machine.
i have uninstalled the driver in safe mode and now it has no graphic driver installed.
cheers...

 

Just use the previous one, 258.96. 260.86 has been horrendously unstable for me as well.

 

Theres 260.89 whql out and it works perfectly,plus its cooler and it got new sli profiles as well.
F1 2010 as an example runs great now althought it hasnt been patched.
No point to rolling back imho.

 

Er, .89 is what I have actually. I just assumed his number was right. It causes flash videos to crash the computer.

 

I always had great results using the latest notebook drivers from nvidia with my M1730. Links are below.

NVIDIA DRIVERS 260.99 WHQL - Released 10.25.2010 (Today)

64-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook-win7-winvista-64bit-260.99-whql-driver.html

32-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook-win7-winvista-260.99-whql-driver.html

 

Hi mate , installed XP fine and now have a dual boot - just had some real problems with gaming in it though - started Mafia 2 and it was pausing every few seconds for a second or two.... That was with the latest Nvidia drivers. It runs fine in Windows 7 with the 7 version of the driver....

Any ideas mate?

Thanks again

 

Could be the chipset driver causing that.

 

hmmmm that sounds about right - you posted a link to a chipset driver earlier in the thread but it said it was older than the driver I was using, do you have a link for the best one to use for XP?