XPS 1730 Freezing Up..

I recently reformatted my xps using the sticky. Since then its been freezing in random occasions. It has frozen up just doring normal use not at all during gaming so I dont know why.
However, I did the following today and it froze each time after doing exactly the same thing.
So I was looking at some pictures from my external using the windows photo gallery and when I would try to see a video (my pix and videos are together) it would get stuck and not respond. I would try to close windows photo gallery and it would get stuck. So I'd try to close it with the task manager and it wouldn't work. Then I'd try to do the control alt delete thing and bam it would freeze up. It froze up doing the same exact thing 3 times in a row.. I have no clue as to where to start to troubleshoot or fix this problem...

Can anyone please help me troubleshoot this issue? Any advice or anything would be great .

Thanks

Just incase it helps I have the XPS m1730 with Intel Core Duo Extreme X9000 Processor, 4GB Ram, 1GB GeForce 8800m GTX SLI, Agiea PhisX card with Vista 32bit.

 

Try using new drivers. 174.74 and 174.93 have been rock solid for me.
P.S. Those are some "beastly" specs!

 

thanks for the advice. I checked the drivers I got by going to control panel, device manager, display adapter, nvidia geforce 8800m gtx properties, then click on the driver tab and I got "7.15.11.6755".

First, is this the correct way of checking the driver version because this version must be really old if thats the case?
Second, is there a link with the updated driver and specific instructions to install??

 

That is correct. If I am correct, probably not though, that is the 167.55. Anyways, go to laptopvideo2go.com and the Vista 32 section top right, click and then read the forums and decide what you want to try. The thread it brings you to are the latest commonly accepted drivers, but you can certainly switch series or get the latest within that series. Hopefully I made since. BTW, use Riva Tuner to get the driver information, it will confirm all files are updated to the new drivers. Google riva tuner, etc.

On a related note, I am not sure if video drivers are your issue, if they worked before, then it might be another driver/software conflict.

 

Check your temps as well using "Hardware Monitor". Maybe your GPU or CPU overheats.

 

Try everything again, but with SLI enabled. I bet it works fine!!

Mine crashed every time I ran Movie Maker with SLI enabled.
Disable SLI and it worked perfect.
The Dell Performance Drivers 174.31 gave me the best stability though.

Funny, but my M1330 is MUCH more stable then my M1730. And, to be completely honest, the performance also seems a lot better. Its more responsive, and faster. Obviously not with gameplay, but I noticed a difference with performance in things like Movie Maker etc.

 

Definitely drivers. 174.74 from laptopvideo2go works fine for me.

 

Say Joako, since I'll get it, what is the score I can expect on it ?

 

Thanks for all the input men. I will certainly get to downloading the new driver ASAP. I downloaded 174.74 but after extracting it and opening the setup it says "the nvidia setup program could not locate any drivers that are compatible with your current hardware.setup will now exit". Help here please...

But yet another freeze up followed by shutdown just happened while playing a game. When it came back on it gave me a "windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown" window. It also gave me this under details:

"Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: d1
BCP1: A602F000
BCP2: 00000002
BCP3: 00000001
BCP4: 8E639C04
OS Version: 6_0_6000
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 256_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\Mini060908-01.dmp
C:\Users\INFIDEL1\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-63305-0.sysdata.xml
C:\Users\INFIDEL1\AppData\Local\Temp\WER4893.tmp.version.txt

Read our privacy statement:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=50163&clcid=0x0409"

But it only gives me two options either check later or cancel. Which should I choose to do??

And, could it still be the drivers causeing my freeze ups and shutdowns???

 

By default the drivers don't support the mobile cards. You need to download custom INF file from laptopvideo2go.com.
Once youve done that extract the drivers to C:\Nvidia, paste over the standard nvidia INF which will be in that folder with the custom one you downloaded then run the setup inside the folder.
I know my instructions aren't so great but there should be more info on laptopvideo2go.com if you need them.

 

Thanks I)ickie for the help on installing. My drivers are now updated to 7.15.11.7474 (in properties).

So Ill wait to see if that was the root cause of my problems.

Thanks for the help everybody!

 

Also,update your DirectX , and check the RAM with Memtest ...
You might have bad RAM modules...