**OFFICIAL** Dell XPS M1730 Owner's Lounge, *Part 4*

I don't know what that battery is or how to remove it

I'm certain that the 4GB I already have is the maximum ram the system can hold.

 

No I heard it can go to 8Gigs and the CMOS battery is under the keyboard...you have to remove the plastic power button cover to get to the keyboard screws to remove the keyboard. But you have to slide the keyboard back to unhook it but be careful there is a small ribbon cable on the left side under the keyboard that I think controls the keyboard lights. Otherwise there are online references on how to remove the M1730 as well. Sometime removing the CMOS battery and resetting the BIOS settings will get it to recognize the upgraded memory.

 

Can anyone try BF4 for me on the M1730 with 8800M GTX in SLI.

I have a super low budget, i can get this laptop for 350$.

 

Shouldn't matter what price your getting it for I still think that is a worth while laptop to have and the GPU is a higher model then the factory one that came with it the 8700 which I have in my system currently. Just make sure the board and everything else is fine working order.

 

Hello,

Yes these notebooks will work with 8GB of ram. I have been running 8GB for a long time now.

 

Here's another question considering the cost of the GPU for 8800GTX and 9800GTX would I notice anything different in game play in each or will that depends alot on the game itself to show the difference? If I just played NWN2 and The Witcher and Witcher 2 I don't have time for 24/7 online gaming I have other needs that need attention to as well. The 8800 cost alot less then the 9800 and I like to go 9800 but if I am going to get a X9000 that would mean a 8800 is the most likely upgrade I be doing. I have the GeForce 8700M-GT right now.

 

I can do that . How are these things connected?

 

One HUGE difference is the amount of VRAM. The 9800M GTX has 1GB/core, whereas the 8800 GTX only has 512 MB. Believe me it matters in 1920x1200 and today's games.

 

I am referencing to the particular games I listed not the GPU intensives 3d games of today.....

 

The most likely cause of your problem is a blown video card. If it's only an 8700 it would be worth replacing with an 8800 or even a 9800 2G card. Be careful if you choose the latter - make sure you get the 2GB card and not the 1GB one as it is basically a rebadged 8800 card.

The M1730 will definitely run on 8GB of ram. I have run 8GB in mine for about the past 12 months with no problems. Just make sure you get DDR2 800 ram. The ultimate question is do you really want to spend the money on the machine. I find that as long as you look after the video card (keep it cool and cleaned out regularly) you will have a very reliable machine.. I run my machine on a small stand about 6 inches high to minimise the intake of dust. I find that cooling pads are of little help as they suck the air away from the base of the laptop and work against the internal laptop fans.
I'm running a X9000 CPU in both my M1730's. One has a M9800 2GB video card and the other a M8800 card. One has 8GB ram and the other 4GB. I have had no problems with either machine. I don't overclock the CPU's or video card.

 

My XPS M1730 seemed to be running quite hot. I decided it was time for a thorough clean, so I stripped the computer right down. I found the CPU heatsink full of gunk and cleaned it out. I also installed a copper shim on the I/O chip and new arctic silver. the video card was also full of gunk, so I completely dissembled that as well, cleaned the heatsink and fans (9800MK GTX SLI 2GB). I put new arctic silver on the three chips and replaced the silly heat conductive pad with a copper shim. I made sure the clearances were spot on by reusing the thin copper shim already there as well as my replacement shim.

I reassembled the machine and presto everything runs cool again.

Maybe if anyone else has a machine which is running hot the deep clean treatment may help return things to normal.

 

Hi!

Just to let you know, im selling my Beast. It has been sitting idle for a couple of months with the GPU faulty. Im moving to Mac because of my work.

If you want more info, here at ebay Portátil DELL XPS M1730 completo (Gráfica defectuosa) | eBay

or info at 777javier AT gmail

XPS M1730 CORE 2 DUO T9300 2.50GHz,800,6M
17.0" UltraSharp Widescreen WUXGA (1920x1200) TFT Display with TrueLife with 2.0MP Web camera
Chasis colour Sapphire Blue 1 S
Spanish Documentation XPS M1730
Resource DVD XPS M1730 - (Diagnostics & Drivers)
4GB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM (2x 2G)
320GB (7200rpm) SATA RAID 0 Stripe (2x160GB)
Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Drive
AC Adapter 230W
Euro 220V AC Adapter Power Cord
Primary 9-cell 85WHr Li-Ion Battery. End of cicle, lasts 5min.
DUAL SLI 2GB NVIDIA® GeForce® 9800GTX card FAULTY!!!!
Ageia PhysX Processing Unit Card
Dell Travel Remote control
European - Dell TrueMobile 355 internal Bluetooth Module
Intel® Next-Gen Wireless-N Mini-PCI Card
Spanish Internal Keyboard (QWERTY). Key (S) missing, replaced by key (*)





IF ITS NOT ALLOWED TO ADVERTISE HERE PLEASE REMOVE POST AND ACCEPT MY APOLOGIES. I thought it was the perfect post. Thank you!

 

Can someone that is running raid tell me if there are any jumpers on the master hdd? I installed a 2nd drive and ran raid for quite sometime( used as dual boot with 2 separate os) now I replaced my main drive as it was failing and not my pc does not detect 2 drives. I changed the connector and still smae problem. I am beginning to think that there could have been jumpers on the drive ,but I cant seem to find my old drive . Please let me know if there is any and what position it is in. thanks

 

With all you have been though maybe your drive was not going bad, maybe it is the connecter on the motherboard.
With the bios not seeing the hard drive it maybe the motherboard, seeing you have replaced the cable and the hard drive.
Again, I am with StormJumper here. I do not see why you need raid for what you are doing. I have dual booted windows and I have never used raid to do it, I would just change the boot order in the bios to the drive that has the windows install I wanted the use.

 

As far as I know 8800 will be defective at 100%, while there is a small chance that the 9800GTX will live longer . Btw I really miss The Beast.. If not these cards I could play on it till today.

 

Hey everyone would appreciate some help getting my m1730 back up and running after been out of commission for two years or so...yeah I know I've been a busy college student and haven't had time to makeup for a mistake my have made when he helped me move from windows vista and install windows 7. I'm pretty sure the computer acquired a bad virus back when I had vista and that is why I had a buddy help me scrub the hard drive with dban and fresh install Windows 7 64bit. That could have fixed the issue and the real reason the computer is running very slow is because the drivers I've been trying to download for dell are not really what I need after switching to Windows 7 64bit. So despite trying to download the up-to-date drivers for the computer off of Dell's website the computer is moving as slow if not slower than when I decided to do a factory restore and install Windows 7. When I first bought the computer way back when about a year after it's release drivers were still issues with the 8700m (had to use custom drivers for a while until Dell & Nvida finally got their together).

Basically how can I do a complete wipe of the system to ensure no viruses are on the computer, factory restore, then I have my windows 7 disc to do reinstall. If you guys can point me in that direction then update me on where I can find the current drivers to work appropriately with Windows 7 then that would be huge. I really want to try to get some more use out of this system and entertain the idea of upgrading it for med-tier gaming desktop style.


XPS M1730 INTEL CORE 2 DUO T9300 2.7GHz
17.0" UltraSharp Widescreen WUXGA (1920x1200) TFT Display with TrueLife with 2.0MP Web camera
Chasis colour Sapphire Blue 1 S
4GB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM (2x 2G)
500GB SATA Hard Drive
Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Drive
AC Adapter 230W
Euro 220V AC Adapter Power Cord
Primary 9-cell 85WHr Li-Ion Battery. Dead battery***(Must be plugged in at all times)
DUAL SLI NVIDIA® GeForce® 8700m
Ageia PhysX Processing Unit Card
Intel® Next-Gen Wireless-N Mini-PCI Card

 

When you format the drives on the Windows 7 installation it will get rid of everything. Once you install Windows 7 it should be running fast straight away. Obviously you will need the latest drivers from the nvidia site for the gpu to sort out your display but any other drives will just be to make certain hardware work. It wouldn't actually make it any faster. So the ones from the Dell site are fine as Windows has all the drivers to make all your main components work.

 

@wagstaffjh,

I sympathize with you. I remember that when I was in the position to update my beast it took a bit of work on my end. In addition, my hardware is a step up form what you have but it should not make any difference. If you search on these forums you will find what you seek as it has been discussed in detail. Start with a username “Psyloid” then see what threads you can follow. At one time he created a web page, which had all the driver downloads for Win764bit. But I think he took that down.

You can try a program called Driver Genius Pro to help you find all the drivers. There is another good one called Driver Pack Solution. The Bluetooth module and the LCD panel are the most difficult ones to get the drivers for but they are not necessary to get your beat up-to-date. You can probably do the chipset and the BIOS version A10 (A11 version runs fans loud) I have version A10 use the CM Storm (19” had two fans) Amazon.com: CM Storm SF-19 Gaming Laptop Cooling Pad with Two 140mm Turbine Fans (SGA-4000-KKNF1). If you do not know that the BIOS has an over clock option but it will run the fans loud and of course if you do that you are on your own.

I just updated mine with Win8.1 and all hardware was good. (even the LCD panel) I used Driver Genius to get other drivers and it downloaded the recent graphic driver. Incredibly fast boot time and OS response time. I switched to an SSD. This one. (Should have got two of them). If your's is a dual card then you should get the most recent DirectX version too because the second one may not get recognized.

Have fun tinkering!

 

Does anyone know what the best Nvidia sli driver there is for games? My system is on my signature.

 

Go for the latest nvidia driver.

 

As for your drivers when installed Windows 7x64 you need to go to the dell site and get the Vista 64 drivers and load those onto your Dell those will work fine. I have my M1730 with Windows7x64 Ult Sp1 with Vista64 drivers and it works fine. You have to go to the Dell site and use the service tag number sticker on the bottom of the Dell to find the right drivers on the dell site to download the Vista64 drivers to install. Otherwise the Service Tag number is also in the BIOS as well to lookup your model of M1730 you have.

Got to Nvidia and lookup your driver for your GPU specs and download the latest version for it. Link

Drivers | GeForce

Forgot to mention make sure to update the BIOS to A10 some have said A11 with the 9800 GPU causing the fans to go OD but since I haven't gotten the 9800 I don't know but kept my BIOS at A10 for now.

 

Hi
Recently while playing The Sims 3 occurred 1 beep and the total system suspension - a hard reset was required. Should expect another failure of GPU?

 

Yep sounds the case. Could be over heating. Get the Hoover on all the vents and suck all the dust out. May fix it.

 

Ok thanks , it will be the last failure for me . Overheating is not an option. I'm on A11 + very clean inside . Farewell beast ....

 

Run a diagnostic and see what comes up, if your very lucky you may just have a bad memory stick.

 

Thanks for the info on the Nvidia 9800m x2 GTX driver info. Runs Great!!!

 

I have done the diagnostic - no errors (I was hoping to ram errors ) . It works for now . Is it possible that one beep signal before the suspension refers to a different component error . No to graphics?

 

The one beep is just a general hardware fault code. If you have 2 ram sticks try removing one and running it on one at a time. You may find it will run fine on one but bad on the other. Then you know if you have a faulty module.

If it acts fine on each stick then I would say it's the gpu as it is vary rare to get a faulty cpu. When I had issues with my gpu the laptop would just crash and freeze the screen.

 

I am trying to understand why my computer freezes with the latest nvidia drivers
GeForce 334.67 Beta Driver - BETA
Version: 334.67 - Release Date: Mon Jan 27, 2014
GeForce 332.21 Driver - WHQL
Version: 332.21 - Release Date: Tue Jan 07, 2014

When I use 327.44_win8x64
I dont have this issue. I do OC but it is conservative OC: GPU =555; Memory = 855 without a problem usually. Anyone have any problems with the new drivers??

 

It may be because it's a beta driver. I always stick with the official release drivers myself.

 

Same here I never use Beta unless your testing...stick with Release as those minor updates in beta don't qualify for video problems should they crop up. For endusers stick with Release your far better off with those then beta especially GPU drivers

 

It even crash randomly with the latest release.
Version: 332.21 - Release Date: Tue Jan 07, 2014
However, When I use 327.44_win8x64 doesn't have this issue. I am just wondering why? Weird! I will probably just have to stick with When I use 327.44_win8x64. I am curious if anyone else has had problems with Version: 332.21 - Release Date: Tue Jan 07, 2014?

 

Hi everyone,

I have recently acquired my friends Dell XPS m1730 which was suffering from overheating. Fixing the overheating was simple enough, I opened up the beast, cleaned it out, reapplied thermal paste etc. I did some light gaming and the beast runs pretty good, I was pleasantly surprised. I then decided to try the SLI, the system has an 8800m GTX SLI GPU. When I try to enable the SLI and rebooting the system as asked by the NV control panel, the system boots, I see the windows 7 loading screen and then...black screen, just before gets to the welcome screen/desktop. The only way for me to boot back into windows is get into safe mode and uninstall/re-install the drivers.

I've done some searching around the net and found that it could be a driver issue. I installed the ageia physx drivers first and then installed the latest nvida drivers as recommended, and I still get the same issue. I have tried a few different combination of drivers and used Dell's driver's as well but to no avail.

So my question is has any of you had this issue before? Is this a driver issue? and if it's a driver issue, which driver(s) versions should I be looking for? I have Windows 7 pro x64.

 

Are you sure? I have that 332.21 Desktop and Laptop version installed and no random crashes are you described? I have W7x64 Ult Sp1 install and don't have the same problem as your describing? You sure your O/S isn't the cause of the crashes when the same version under Windows7 doesn't crash as your describing?

I have X9000 @ 3Ghz and 8700 SLI with W7x64 Ult Sp1 and don't have any problems with SLI setup. I think that black screen is more akin to a failing GPU when you switched to SLI mode.

 

Thanks for the reply StormJumper. Pretty much confirmed what I thought initially...I was just hoping it was a driver issue...looks like that 9800m GTX off of eBay is looking pretty good right now...

I also have the X9000 @2.8GHz, I'm thinking of overclocking the CPU after I get the graphics card, 8gb ram and a SSD hard drive. What method(s) did you go about overclocking your CPU? Did you just use the bios performance setting or did you use software? I'm thinking of doing a 3.2GHz o/c if it can handle it.

 

I had this problem when my 9800gtx card was busted. Once the gpu overheats on these it's usually the end of the road for the gpu as it kills some of the components.

 

I would re-install the Operating system clean install and get a air compressor and blast the CPU and GPU fan out. Mine has been driver finicky too. I use Nvidia driver 331.65 from
NVIDIA Driver Downloads - Advanced Search.

 

Throttlestop is the only program I have found to use for overclock past 3.4ghz. I have been running at 3590.07 ghz with Throttlestop for over a year now. Very stable! Temps on Prime95 torture test are just under 80 degrees C.
Link to 6.0 below.

Download ThrottleStop 6.00 | techPowerUp

Throttle stop jpg attached

 

Yeah, the Nvidia 8700 series are know for failing due to heat. If able get a 9800m gtx sli from ebay. It runs my WoW real good.

 

3.6Ghz stable overclock? Really? What is the performance like in gaming with your setup? I'll have the same set up very shortly I am getting curious.

Buying a 9800m GTX off of eBay right now, it'll be arriving in 2-3 weeks. When It arrives i'll be taking the motherboard out and clean the heatsink/cpu and reapply thermal paste for some overclocking. I'll take a few screenshots when it's all done .

 

Playing WoW is awesome! I put a cooling pad under my rig to helping cooling and works well. My cooling pad has 2 big fan but does not make a lot of noise. I will take some picture when i get home from work and post. I use MSI afterburner for overclocking my Video Card (VC). I use to flash but I kinda got obsessed with that and if the flash goes wrong, well brick time So, MSI afterburner does well now. I have more conservative OC's with my VC, but runs Great!

 

Well, my graphics card has arrived. It work's great, 55c in SLI idle. Now that I've fixed that problem I seem to have another issue, I can't seem to fix my X9000 2.8GHz CPU to stop throttling. I tried downloading throttlestop and force 100% modulation etc, but for some strange reason I cannot set the multiplier above 14. Both CPU Z and Throttlestop both report that my CPU is limited to 6 x 199.45 = 1196.6, and I can force clock modulation, chipset clock mod, I can undervolt the VID to 1.05 and set my modifier down, but not up. What am I doing wrong here?

Also my battery decided to give out on me, it runs off AC power fine, but not charging. I assume it's the battery and hope it's not a faulty connection on the mainboard.

If anyone can shed some light on the throttling issue's I'm having would be much appreciated...I've been tearing my hair out trying to find what is wrong.

 

I apologise for the double post, but I believe I have solved my issue. A week ago I couldn't boot into windows because of a hardware/software failure..I didn't think anything of it at the time and re-installed windows and just left it until I received my new graphics card. I think the AC Power Adapter has failed. It doesn't detect in the bios, only registers as an unknown device. I tried uninstalling the battery in device manager and restarting, and even unplugging and plugging the power adapter in the bios, but still doesn't register.

Apparently dell ac power adapters fail because of one lousy wire in the connector fails, and thus throttles everything in my system. Anyway I think replacing the A/C adapter will fix the issue's I am having with throttling. If you guys agree, or believe there is another issue present, let me know.

 

Have been scouring this site the last few days--just bought an M1730, getting 7 working on it not the easiest thing, thanks for the wealth of info you have here! :thumbsup:
It doesn't do badly at all for the few games I like to play, looks like bumping graphics cars from 8700 to 9800 is cost prohibitive, likely take the ram up to 8 gig, mebbe cpu from 8300 to 9300. As it happened, I assigned it the Windows name of "The Beast"....had no idea that's what it is actually called, heh

 

Any of the old heads still on this thread? Been nearly a long time since I was on it. And would you believe my M1730 was only replaced 6 months ago by a new system. Truly "The Beast"! I still look forward though to re-purposing it as well!

 

Lol, I turn this thing on, and my neighbour's lights go dim

 

Too quick goodbye. The beast is still alive. :thumbsup:

 

Mine is running good and upgarded the processor to Extreme 9000 and will upgrade the GPU to a 9800 when I can find one.

 

Hello Experts,

I am from India and have been a silent follower of this forum from the past couple of months.
I had bought an xps m1730 way back in April 2009 currently running on the following specs:

1. 2.4GHz C2D
2. 8800M GTX SLI
3. 4 Gb Ram
4. 320 Hard Drive.

It has been used extensively for gaming over the past 5 years. recently I faced an issue with it and as it is not covered by Dell any more I am in a fix.

I was playing BF4 on it and suddenly the laptop crashed. i thought it was the normal overheating thing and will start after sometime, but even the next day it failed to start.

Now the issue is:

I am getting a Black Screen before the windows logo screen and the HDD LED also stops working.

I have tried the following steps to check for components:
1. Swaped Ram with another laptop.
2. Opened and cleaned the fans and the fins of the processor and the gpu
3. Swapped Hard drive and tried loading another OS
4. Tried to load another OS.

The Only OS it seems to respond is the Win XP mini version. For everything else it just blacks out before the win logo screen.

I am also not able to enter the advnaced options to force it to Safe Mode.

Any ideas as to what might be the issue or the type of issue(software/hardware)?

Any help is appreciated.