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

What version of BIOS are you using? It sounds like your GPU is starting to fail and the best test would get another working or remanufactured GPU and see if the problem is GPU related.

 

I am running the A10 version. no updates or upgrades to BIOS.

I had also had my laptop checked with a technician and he also says that the issue lies with the GPU he is also assuring me that he will repair the GPU.

After the GPU repair should I sell the laptop or continue using it? For gaming purpose I am getting an XB1.

Edit: The service center is changing the heat sinks some pads of the graphic card also reflow is being done.

 

I have no idea which GPU do you have? That would be a start???

 

Its the 8800M GTX SLI.

 

Just make sure if they fix it they reflow the solder correctly and backup the work should it fail again. Otherwise you will have to go a buy either one that is still new or refurbished GPU. I am thinking of replacing my 8700GS with the 9800GTX cost more but then again you won't find peps selling their M1730 as it was a very good system IMO.

 

I would advise getting the 9800m GTX SLI. It runs a lot cooler then the 8800 series. My runs about 74 degrees Celsius on absolute full load. 66 when runs a benchmark like 3dmark. I put a Targus HD Chill pad that blows up, not down on my rig. I will picture soon. Looks cool.

 

Hi everyone. Is there anyone out there who could somehow upload the intel chipset driver? It was originally on http://www.psilo.be/Downloads/infinst911autol_X64.exe. As windows XP is nearing it's end of life, I'm trying to make sure I have every driver ready. I thought I downloaded that one previously but I only downloaded the 32bit version at the time. Anyone kind enough to help me out? I'm going 64bit now.

 

Here is what I found...

Drivers for Laptops\XPS\XPS M1730


But stay with A10 BIOS some have reported excessive fan noise and some haven't but I have my BIOS to A10 just to be on safe side but I do have both A10 and A11 saved incase they no longer have them for download.

 

Set in our laptop Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 (2 cores) or Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9300 with 4 cores?

 

huh? I don't think a quad core will work in the M1730.....

 

I know the Intel ® Core ™ 2 Intel ® Core ™ 2 Extreme Processor QX9300> 3.4 Hz site ixbt.com put on our noutbuk.Modul HYNIX DDR2-memory 4GB, 800, SO-DIMM to run both "sticks" passed all tests all okay. 8 GIG on board!

 

So where are you getting your info from AFAIK the board is fsb 800 and the highest processors is the x9000?>? The intel QX9300 if you look it up is 1066 and I highly doubt it will work in a M1730 since it was made before 1066 fsb came out. If that was the case I would've upgraded to it already but to correct it I have a X9000 currently in my M1730.

 

Best processor is the X9000, X9100 / QX9300 will fit physically, but not post.

 

In other words X9100/QX900 are 1066 fsb and the M1730 is 800 fsb...not interchangeable. Either the poster is giving misleading info or making very bad attempts and showing their lack of knowledge to know what they are talking about.

 

Firstly hi guys iam new here
I live in Belgium iam 30 year
I love to get bisy with gaming laptops
I got now 3 m1730 laptops with problems
1 is powerjack broken i can fix that its a 8800m gtx
1 got a 8700m videocard wich is dead
And 1 got a half dead 9800m gtx wich shows double screen at the most right side of the screen
Sli also dont work only 1 9800m gtx shows bios and device manager
Tried enable sli at nvidia settings but the options doesnt even show
I tested all things with parts from the other laptops
The 9800m gtx works perfect on a external screen but on laptop lcd shows double screen at the right side of the screen
Lcd screen is fine because i tested 3 screens on it with same result
Anyone familiar with this problem and know how to fix?
Drivers are updated

 

First off you going to have to replace the 9800 and 8700 and the broken power port needs to be replaced to test if the 8800 is bad or not. So you got alot of work here to fix the problems. As for the 9800 one side for SLI showing is going to need replaced regardless and the dead 8700 need to be replaced.

 

I would suggest that you source some refurbished video cards from eBay. There's a place in Poland selling the M9800GTX 2GB video cards for a very reasonable price.

 

Hello
I buyed 2x 8800m gtx sli from ebay from ares international brand new 105 euro each
I saw also 9800m for 200 euro each new but the performance difference between these 2 arent me worth 100 euro and refurbished 1 for 150 euro from poland is a used 1 and broke before so not feel good on it
I got now a defect 9800 gtx and a 8700m gt if someone is interested
Also selling 2 m1730 laptops with brand new 8800m gtx

 

There is a definite difference from 8800 to 9800 besides the price. But as you stated your finances will make a difference what one can buy.

 

Nice to see the thread for XPS M1730 still going, I finally ordered 9800m GTX for my XPS M1730 from Poland, pretty cheap I must say since not long ago these GPU´s costed a minor fortune. So finally I will have X9000 running daily at 3.6Ghz and 9800m GTX SLI.

 

Hi Magnus, long time not seen. I just passed by. It's indeed nice to see this thread is still going.
I'm still running my XPS M1730 at original specs, although not so often anymore. Till today my system never let me down. My original 8800m GTX is still rocking solid for 6(!) years now.
I think the key for this success is to clean the system often. Overheat is the weakness of this magnificent notebook.

Cya.

 

Nice to see you ernstig, it is a very good system I agree and finally nice to see how the 9800m GTX performs and how much they can be overclocked.

 

They are not that expensive anymore indeed. Maybe I will change my 8800m GTX for a k650m 9800m GTX. The XM888 served me well and deserves some retirement in my display cabinet.
Maybe changing the memory to 8GB will show some effect too.
Also is there some profit to make to change the system from Windows 7 to Windows 8?

 

Nope. Unless that screen is a touch screen you won't benefit from going to W8. Windows 7x64 Ult if you can will bring that system back roaring from the dead that's what I did to mine. X9000 and 4 Gigs will upgrade later to 9800GTX SLI and keep the system til I have to give it up.

 

All good! Also revived his legendary XPS m1730, installed windows 8.1. All very quickly, loading and off.

 

Thought of installing Win 8 but I just did a fresh reinstall of Windows 7 64-bit instead.

 

That has no real basis to compare fast or load quickly has been debunked as less then Zero.

 

I have a strange problem in both Win 7 and now in my installed Win 8.1. My Cpu usage is very high when in idle no matter what I do. It seems like dxdiag.sys is causing very high latency bit I cant find the culprit to the high cpu usage.

 

Have you tried to go back to 2.8 instead of 3.8 where you have it set at right now and see what it does??? Sounds like a throttle problem hopefully it isn't hardware problem.

 

you've probably already checked it, but did you give a look at the power setting? if you've got it stuck on high performace it'll do that, many MANY reoccurring problems with my m1730, and now i have dieing gpus (the fans absolutely REFUSE to turn on) and a cpu that is stuck at 797mhz instead of 2.5...(8700m gt sli, t9300 cpu). Also, power supply is pretty much shot (funny enough its the reason my cpu is stuck at 797mhz, keeps saying unknown installed device and not at 230w) and the battery wont charge, so my question. should i throw the money into the beast and get the x9000 cpu and 9800m gt cards(and battery and power supply), or go ahead and just build a pc? stuck on the fence right now.

 

Hello
It can also be motherboard problem
Anyway if you ganna buy it in parts al stuff i think you better get another 1
Ive got 2 of these laptops for sale
1 with x9000 processor,9800m gt,blueray,4gb ram,250 gb and 1 with t8300 processor,new 8800m gtx,dvd,4gb,250gb hdd
Links for ebay:
Dell XPS M1730 With X9000 2 8GHz Blueray 9800M GT SLI Nwprice 3000 Euro | eBay
Dell XPS M1730 With 8800M GTX SLI T8300 2 4 4GB RAM 250GBHDD NEW Price 2500 EUR | eBay

 

Solved it, seems like it was the Nvidia driver and possibly the NVidia HD Audio driver that caused it.

 

Hi all,
I have a question about World of Tanks - I noticed ia significantly lower performance in SLI mode compared to a single card. Is this normal in this game ? .
I'm on Vista sp2 32bit and 310,xx drivers , T8400 and 9800GTX SLI .

 

Hi - I am trying to resurrect and upgrade my old M1730 and I have hit a couple of snags.

I previously had Raid0 200gb (or so) HDs. I now have one Crucial M500 120gb SSD as the primary and one of the old HD discs as secondary.
It now has the x9000 extreme processor.
It now has the 9800 GTX SLi Gcard.
it now has 8gb of RAM.
it is running Bios A11.

Both HDDs are empty. BIOS recognises both "Primary HDD" and "Secondary HDD"

I have a full Windows 8.1 iso.

The issues that I am having are...
1. When I try to install Windows 8.1, it recognises the SSD drive but NOT the standard HD.
2. It refuses to install on the SSD stating that errors will be recorded in the log file.

What am I doing wrong here? Do I have to reformat the HDDs? If so, do I need to choose MBR or GPT? Any other ideas?
Is this laptop even EFI/UEFI compatible?

Many thanks,

rafiKi

 

OK... RTFGoogle to the rescue. I ran the diskpart steps and all was well..... now to locate the drivers.

 

I doubt Windows 8 will have any support for M1730 why don't just use the W7 drivers for W8 instead or will those not work? If it doesn't work that should tell you W7 is the only last O/S for M1730.

 

Is anyone playing in WoT on 1730 ? What's your fps ?

 

Just purchased an M1730 on Craigslist. X7900, 4mb ram and a supposedly new 8800 GT video card. It didn't come with any hard drive, so I put in a 256GB solid state drive. The previous owner said that he cooked the original 8700 card and received the new 8800 card as a replacement. The 8800 card does look new.

I installed the OEM copy of Windows Vista Home Premium, and had some trouble with it hanging up until I changed the RAID configuration in the BIOS. One thing that I did note was that the video memory listed in the BIOS is 24mb.

Once vista was up an running, the device manager shows an error 43 and the yellow exclamation points. I've updated the drivers from the nvidia website, but it does not seem to help. I also pulled the card out and reseated it. I didn't notice any screws holding it down like on my M1710;

Is there a chance the new card is faulty?

 

What´s the bios version? Try to flash back to A10 if it´s A11 and see if there is any difference. I hade problems with my 9800m GT´s I had earlier with one disappearing in bios until I reflashed back to A10 and then flashed to A11 again.

 

Thanks. I will check that when I get home. I think may have the updated BIOS as the cooling fans tend to run constantly.

 

I updated the BIOS from A03 to A10, then A11.

The card (8800M GTX) now reads with the correct memory in the BIOS (1028MB), but has now disappeared from the Windows device manager.

I now have an unsupported 3D device and what I am assuming is the PhysX driver. I've downloaded the drivers from the Dell support website, but still nothing. Nothing shows up in the diagnostic tests, so I am assuming the card is OK and it's a windows issue.

 

OK. Installed Windows XP and the 8800M GTX cards and drivers installed with no issues.

 

FYI ... XP is no longer support but Windows 7 will install and just use the Vista drivers for it and it works fine. That is what I did.

 

I have Vista 32bit ( installed it mainly due to the lack of xp support ) . No issues too .

 

Hello.
I do not see anything in the screen of my M1730. Black screen while computer is running.
I gave the computer to my parents and suddenly this happened.

Does this mean that the graphic cards are broken? Can I check anything? Could be a software or screen problem?
Just if one of the cards worked could be fine, as my parents only use the computer for web browsing and multimedia; but as screen is black I cannot change configurations..

Any advice or next step to do? (I may call Dell, but do not know if it is worthwhile?

System config: X9000, 9800M SLI, blu ray writer, RAID 0.

Thank you so much!

 

Try to do diagnostic tests (F12 at startup if I remember correctly) . You can also try to connect an external monitor to exclude or confirm the display malfunction .
Btw mine still works - and I play it very often lately , the good old days .....

 

Wow! This thread is still alive?
That is amazing, because so is my XPS M1730.
Well, it isn't mine anymore but my mum's.
It's getting old though. She said to have issues with it, so I am going to have a look on Friday.

 

Mine's still alive too and was my main PC up until this time last year!

Has anyone found a particularly good use for it as a secondary PC?

 

I keep mine uptodate as a backup PC should I loose power to my Desktop that's what my setup is. This is the reason why laptop have staying power they pack their own battery back to keep power should the electricity go out the Laptop can still function.