gaming problems on m1330

Hi, i don't know if this issue has been dealt with yet, but here goes:

2 months ago I purchased the Dell XPS m1330 with Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0ghz 2gig RAM Geforce 8400 GS and Vista Home Edition...thinking that the 128mb graphic card would be able to play most old games, I immediately installed Rome Total War and it looked and played beautifully. Yet, from time to time, the game would suddenly go a "black screen of death"; the screen would just go black and just sit there (not even restarting or shutting down). I experienced this with other games such as Psychonauts and Knights of the Old Republic - they played perfectly fine but at random they would just enter that black screen of death.

I tried contacting the people at Dell, but because I'm currently residing in Korea until mid-January (plus I'm not fluent in Korean), the people here have been unable to provide any solution to this problem. I was wondering if I have to wait until I return to the states to fix this, and if there's any download-able solution to address this issue.

I did find this site http://helvick.blogspot.com/2007/12/gaming-blues-on-xps-m1330.html and it seems that the tech people at dell did seem to fix up the problem for him, so i'm guessing its a parts issue or something?

If anyone can offer some advice, I'd really appreciate it. I know that the m1330 isn't really cut for gaming, but it is a XPS series, and I would like my games which run just fine on this machine to be playable without any random crashing as well.

 

I've yet to try gaming on my m1330 but I'm just going to 'assume' that its a vista issue. I don't use vista normally so I don't know too much but I wouldn't see why the 8400 couldn't handle rome total war.

Best of luck man

 

rome total war works fine...its just that at random the screen just goes black and hangs there unless I turn it off forcefully...

I dont think its an OS issue...or is it? none of the latest driver and OS updates seem to get rid of this problem...

 

I used Vista for 9 months, played all kinds of games during that period on my 6400 with a X1400 in it. I didn't experience such problems, so I guess it's a faulty driver for the video card. Go to nVidia's site and download the latest driver

 

that has to be a driver issue.....my 1520 would do the same thing before I found the right driver. Then that problem stopped

 

WHY post something when you know nothing of a solution. by your own admission, you don't use vista.

if you have no answer or just want to ramble, DON'T POST

 

i tried all the latest drivers on laptop2go.com...hmm any m1330 users here who can recommend the best working driver for the geforce 8400 gs?

 

For me personally, after testing various Nvidia drivers, I've settled on 169.04. It's not the mobile version, but it serves me well on light gaming and overall stability of the Vista operating system. I've reduced any gaming issues as compatibility problems with the Nvidia drivers, vista and the games themselves. Perfect example of strange gaming issues for me have been for example with a few older games (NFS most wanted ) Couldn't run it at the graphic level I wanted, game play stuttering and it would crash if I played it for a long period. Then, I went out and got NFS Carbon which is the next installment of the series, installed all the patches for that. Lo and behold, NFS Most wanted runs at a higher graphic level, no crashes whatsoever and no stuttering. Like I said, I'm reducing gaming issues to Vista and game software incompatibilities rather than anything to do with the hardware, but you have to decide if you want the Nvidia mobile driver or the standard driver on your M1330. From my experience, I've came across very little tradeoffs with the standard driver.