Definite solution to the nvlddmkm video crash on the P-7805u!

I was having this same crash on my P-171S FX with the Nvidia 8800m GTS. I got the crash message twice, and then after a reboot i ended up with a messed up screen, with all kinds of artifacts and lines. Is there a way to do this same sort of flash to the 8800m.

Prior to this i had no issues. I hate to just go buy a new motherboard. Heres what im seeing, during boot up and windows load. I get the same issues in Ubuntu and get a notification also about problems with the nvidia drivers.

Picasa Web Albums - Greg - GPU ISSUES

For reference i pulled down a rom thats supposed to be the 8800m rom and just renamed it and ran the tool, had a mismatch issue.

 

What you are experiencing can not be fixed with a Bios update. You have a failure with the chipset itself, typcially just the solder under the chipset that has caused the issue. There are many companies on ebay that advertise for Nvidia BGA reflows, I've used one for the HP DV9000 series laptops because I can take the motherboard out and ship it to him for around $50. There is one company listing specifically for Gateway 7805u laptops for $125.

The only thing I hate about having someone on eBay do it is because I don't know if they actually have a machine to properly reflow the chip or if they are just using a heat gun and calling themselves a professional repair company. I've had thoughts about asking before I send in any more laptops to get a better idea or who I'm sending it to though. I do try to find the ones that offer some sort of warranty, which is mostly just a 3 month warranty but it's better than nothing.

 

I would be willing to say that yours is also past any kind of Bios fix. I bought a 7805u that was supposedly not working because of a bad Bios flash but after I finally got the Bios working correctly, it turns out that it also has the nvidia defect, and bad enough that this Andros bios didn't fix it. Mine won't even boot into Windows with the correct display drivers installed although if I uninstall the display adapter and just use the standard VGA driver, it'll work all day. I've experienced that same issue with a DV9000 before so I'm getting ready to send it off to have it fixed.

This nvidia issue is far and wide, to include Dell, Sony, Gateways, HP and even a handful of desktop graphics cards. There are people and threads out there that talk about "temporarily" fixing this issue with either heat guns, blow dryers or some people go the extreme and bake the motherboard in the oven. If it were to ever happen to my own computer again, I'd probably try the heat gun and then figuring out what I need to do with the cooling system to make it better so that it would hopefully prevent it for a while to come, but since quite a few of these that I come across are ones I'm working on, I don't want them coming back in 2 weeks to 2 months because my fix failed. I'd rather send it off to someone who has the right tool to do a proper BGA reflow. I've also looked into buying one of the machines that are better suited at fixing it too.

 

I had a 7805u before my sig and NEVER had these problems. I always ran the 186.81 till I went to the 195.62 found Here. Maybe it'll help.

 

Yeah but if you notice, H82Lose is having these issues before Windows even begins to load. That is not a driver issue.

This is a well documented case of the Nvidia defect. Google it, there are probably thousands of documented cases of it, and the best solution that any company has offered is a 1 year extended warranty on top of the warranty that came with the laptop, which in most people cases is 1 year. This means that anything after that 2 year period that goes wrong, is on us. Now there have been stories where people have been VERY persistant with the tech support over the phone, stating how the company knows there is an issue with this defect because they were willing to issue one more year warranty and they eventually got their motherboard replaced for free.

As far as superrockit is concerned, I can't say a driver might help his out, but I just stated what I have experienced with the one I bought.

One thing I can suggest trying and one of the biggest things to do is to make sure your heatsink is not blocked, whether you get some canned air and blow it through the vents or take it apart and clean it out, which is what I recommend if you know how because if you use a can of air to blow it clean, your pushing all that stuff back into your laptop and fan area and its only a matter of time before it makes it way back to the heatsink. I'll take a few pictures the next time I get a laptop to take apart of the "web" of dust, dirt, and debris that gathers by the heatsink, blocking the airflow and therefore causing the cooling solution implemented into laptops to be essentially worthless. This causes more overheating issues and starts the nvidia defect quite a bit of the time.

 

Sad to say but that looks like a dead video card... Thats what my 8600m GT did when it died.

 

Thanks for the info. Any chance of passing along the info on the guy you use? I had never heard of this before. Seems like theres quite a few hacked methods for reflowing posted on youtube. Dont think i wanna try any of those.

 

Well the company I have used in the past said they could probably fix the Gateways but they've never done it before, it's just a matter of them taking it apart and fixing it I would assume. They've pretty much specialized in HP and Dell's. The other company I have been in contact with specifically advertise for Gateway. If you do a search on eBay for "7805u motherboard repair" it should come up with two links and the seller of both is DQSales. The other seller that I've used for a couple HPs that have worked great since I've got them back is Member id lindenstny14487. Maybe we should start a thread with companies that we've had a good experience in fixing these things since I have a feeling there are probably a lot of people that could contribute. lol

 

Thanks Steve im going to take a look into them. I got in contact with Precision Division, also listed on Ebay and he agreed it looked like GPU failure and was repairable. He also mentioned doing some mods to help with the heat issues, one of which being keeping the fan on high, which sounds great, but being on the go a bunch id rather not have my battery killed. Im pretty sure my failure is directly related to the excessive build up of dust behind the heat sink.

 

Well I decided to try and fix my laptop myself and was successful. For the moment anyways. Im pretty sure my major issue was dust blocking the cooling passages from the inside that couldnt be removed with compressed air.

I found a write up on another forum and went for it. So far so good. It atleast buys me some time to purchase another MB or find a parts machine to send out for proper repair.

Also got a temp utility to keep an eye on the GPU temp.

 

What write up did you use may I ask?

 

I have a 7801U (same as the 05) and under heavy load, I average around 75c-77c temps. This is with andros' mod. Is this normal/safe?

 

It is both normal and safe.

 

Awesome. Thanks!

 

nice man just flash my stuff, hasnt seen 80 degrees yet

 

Andros,
The GPU bios flash files in your post are not opening/extracting after I download them.
Can you repost them somehow?
THanks bud. Looking forward to trying this on my laptop.

 

i just download and extracted all the file out and no problem here.

 

use 7zip to extract

 

Thanks for posting this!

Unfortunately it didn't correct my consent crashing, and I started messing around with it. I tried modifying a bios myself with NiBiTor, and ended up bricking my machine. When I power up, I get one beep, followed by two beeps. Any ideas? I'm attempting to boot blind, and re-flash, but I'm not sure I'm getting anywhere.

I read a few pages back that someone fixed a "three beep" bios flash problem, however I'm not sure if it's the same one I'm seeing.

Thanks guys
-Rob

 

I'm pretty certain that the 3 beep bios issue is the same one that I fixed. I went into as much detail about fixing this issue as I think I could in my last post on the bottom of page 9. I tried many different "fixes" and different ways of accomplishing this "fix" before finally getting it to complete successfully. I used a USB floppy drive, so if you don't have one, they can be had for about $10 on ebay. And then follow the steps that I list in that post.

If you have any questions, just ask. Hopefully I can help you out.
Steve

 

I've attempted that about a dozen times using my USB flash drive... Do you think I'll have better luck with a floppy?

-Rob

 

From my experience...yes. I tried it with a USB flash drive and also tried a cd with that on it too but niether of them worked. It was maybe my second attempt with the floppy drive that worked like a charm. If I remember correctly, the USB flash drive would flash a couple times like it was being accessed but nothing ever happened after that. I know your feeling, when I bought the floppy drive and had to wait on it, I was feeling a bit skeptical about anything at all working but determination paid off. Don't give up.

 

Well, it's accessing the drive briefly during the 3 beeps, but nothing after that.

-Rob

 

I've now flashed the GPU bios and haven't had problems with crashes in game since. But I am still trying to figure out why my FPS has been dropping lately.

 

Update: Currently reverting to driver version v196.86 to see if there are any differences.

 

Well, I've been messing with this for a few days, and I just don't think it's even trying to boot off anything after the three beeps. I'm attempting to recover it with the Phoenix Crisis Disk right now, but I think I have an incorrect BIOS for it. Can someone take a Winphlash backup of their BIOS and send it to me?

[email protected]

Thanks
-Rob

 

9c.23 and 9c.25 have the dos and winflash files from the support site, will those help?

 

Thanks for the heads up on those newer BIOS'es. I don't think they will work for me, but I'm going to try them out anyways. The reason my laptop bricked is that I set the Video device ID to "9800M GTS" which is setting for the 7811. However the proper setting for the 7805u should have been "9800M GT 1GB". When I open those bios files in PBE, they both have the setting for "9800M GTS" That's why I'm hoping someone can pull a working BIOS off their 7805 for me.

Thanks!
-Rob

 

Reverting the drivers to v196 lowered my overall temperature from 70 to 62C for my CPU clocks for some reason, although I am experiencing MUCH better FPS in games.

 

I don't think it is an ID you can set from nbiter, I think the ID is vendor specific and that is whay you are having an issue, I may be wrong here. if you could flash any P78xx with those bios's the system will work wether 7811 or 7805 etc...........

 

When I open the bios in PBE, it un-wraps all of the included .ROM files into /Temp. The file OPROM00.ROM is the Video BIOS that I can open in NiBiTor. All of the BIOS files I've been able to find have the incorrect OPROM00.ROM for the 7805u.

I'm going off of the information I got from "ONE_J" on page 5 of this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gat...s-bios-recovery-7805u-dead-laptop-help-5.html

Unfourtionatly I can't seem to reach him to get a copy of the BIOS File he used to recover his laptop.

Thanks
-Rob

 

Success!!

Got it flashed and working, by following ONE_J's instructions. I was going wrong by modifying the *.ROM file, and not the *.WPH file. I had to change / re-compile the *.ROM file, and then use a hex editor to append the end of the file with the data from the end of the *.WPH file. I've got a functioning laptop again! Although I still get the nvidia crash constantly. I may try dropping the VDDC even lower, see if that helps.

-Rob

 

Okay. Had been reading this post for awhile now just to keep abreast of things and now I think my lappy has developed the symptoms. I upgraded to 8 mgs of ram last week so I was, of course, paying attention to every little thing when over the weekend I get this "Nvidia driver has stopped responding but has recovered" (or something to that effect) in the notification area below right. As I thought about this I realized I've gotten this message maybe 3 times over the last year but never really gave it any credence till now. My wife tells me it happened again yesterday but the screen went black then came back on. Is this the tell tale signs that I need to re-flash the bios with your mod Andros or is it something else?

BTW I still have the 9.17 bios.

 

Hey there, can you tell me of anything specific before or after the crash. Like did it happen while gaming or watching a movie, did it happen while browsing? Were the gpu and cpu temperatures ok? I've read that some people had to lower their GPU 3d extra clocks after installing more memory to stabilize their system so that might do it for ya.

 

I've done the 8GB upgrade, I did have to lower my OC's as Furmark became unstable after a bit. Since I've slightly lowered them all is fine.............

 

To be quite honest, that last time it happened was when my wife started to print something. I don't know what the temps were, didn't think to look. It had actually happened a couple of times before I changed the memory as well. My clocks at the time were stock as I only change those when gaming.

UPDATE: Last night I witnessed the crash and it is happening when you print something. The print screen pops up, you hit print, and the screen flashes, once in a while it will stay black and you'll have to reboot in order to do anything else. The message is: "Nvidia driver has stopped working but has recovered." Of course my wife thinks its because of the 8 gbs of ram I upgraded to, because this didn't happen before I put it in. What she doesn't know is that the message has popped up a couple of times before but not with the screen flashing issues. My wife has a project due today and thought best not to do anything to it that might prevent her from finishing that before I start replacing the driver. I believe I have the 179.24 driver but I swear I saw 186.?? on my screen last night. I get to the bottom of this in the next day or so.

 

Well, I definitely had a problem that when I tried to print, I would get this flashing of the screen and the pop up message that "the nvidia driver kernal 186... yadda... yadda. stopped responding but has recovered" I unistalled the drivers and went at first to install the 260.99 drivers but that failed midway through process for some reason 3 times in a row. I then went to Gateway and reinstalled the drivers from there and the "problem" has gone away. Perhaps the drivers got corrupted? I am going to try to install the 260.99 drivers this weekend per Flynnaz in other post. Apparently he runs them on his lappy without a problem. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

I run the 260.99 without an issue as well. Not a true gamer here but they don't crash when printing. If it matters I am also on 9c.17.00............

 

Is there anyway to get this to work on a 7811fx? I didn't flash it using your method because it said it would overwrite my device ID and I imagine that would brick my comp but I'm getting really bad Black screens of death when i game and none of the other 7811fx flashing guides work. Says the EEPROM is different (20.00.FF). I can get yours to work it just wants to overwrite the device ID, subsystem ID, and the image board ID and I know that's gonna brick it. Thanks for your time! Can't wait for a reply!

 

Sorry for the late response, have been busy with work/gfs/study etc. haven't been checking the forums.

Use the guide on the link I posted on my OP on this thread to the guide for making a USB bootable device, then use Nbitor to make a backup of your current Vbios using dos. Then after creating the backup make a copy and edit that copy to change the 3d and 2d clocks to the ones I use. Don't know if that will solve your black screens of death though, you might be having other hardware problems that aren't solvable with these kinds of mods.

 

What driver version are you guys using also for Nvidia?
Just did your bios flash to the GPU so will see how that goes first..

But I'm using the latest nvidia drivers too so.

 

Personally, I use the 197.xx drivers. You can find them on NVIDIA & Laptop News | Latest NVIDIA drivers and related news | laptopvideo2go.com, all the instructions on how to install them are there. I've installed some of the later drivers but they do not perform as well as these ones. They work perfectly with stereo3d as well so I have nothing to complain about

 

There are alot of 197.xx versions, which one specifically do you use? I have just been useing the latest ones..............

 

Right now, since I am enjoying stereo 3d on my projector, I am using the 197.15 which has great compatibility with most games. Only game right now that isn't working correctly for stereo 3d is Black Ops, and that's fine since I always turn it off when playing multiplayer, even for BFBC2.

 

Thought I would update. Since doing the gpu bios flash no flicker then stop driver issues.

Anyone play Trackmania and if so what settings you using? I'm getting some good stutter even at low settings.

 

Good, so my fix worked for ya after all. I used to have Trackmania a long time ago and it ran quite well at max settings/max rez for me.

 

run something and check the clocks. It may be downclocking or by overclocking it may be shutting itself down...............

 

yeah not overclocking at all. But I have noticed that the fan throttles (best way to describe it) alot. I can hear it speed up and run for a few moments then go off again, happens in rapid succession .

 

how rapid is that? on and then off every 2-3 seconds? Use Nvidia tools to monitor the clocks to see when it slows down if the card is declocking itself

 

Sorry for late response.
I listened closely and it will go for about 4-5 seconds of what I'd called the fan spinning up/down. Then stay steady for about 2-3 seconds then up/down again.