Gateway P-7811-FX Crashing Issue

this has continued to work so far for me up until yesterday when i cancelled my aion subscription lol.

do you have to force your computer to reset with the power button when the crash occurs or can you force quit or alt tab out ?

 

on what freq is your sliders in riva tuner 3d performance? my core is 600 max, mem is 450 and shader is 1200. comp is p 7805u.
when i move them all the way right to the max my 3d mark score is about 2000 points lower!
any idea for this?

 

hey, does anybody has really solved the problem?
Yes, forcing the video performance2 3D works, but it makes the gpu lose performance. ain't a lil' bit. Furthermore when I'm navigating in the windows, with 3D performance forced the cursor stops and the pc crashes, like if it was playing a game.

Mine is p7805u and i don't know what else to do. I'm waiting for the w7 original from gateway and try again the OS. if the problem continues i'll try to change to another model if the gatewaybrazil permits.

 

I'm having the same problem with my 7811 when playing farcry 1 at max settings. it happens every 5 minutes or so and is very annoying

I haven't read all the posts and threads about it, yet, but just tell me, is there a fix?

 

elijah
the fix is using Rivatuner, but it decreases the performance of the GPU, the game start laggin'. And then, i have crashing issues when i'm just using the internet, in idle. The cursor in the windows just stops and the only way is hard reset.
I don't know what can I do. I just bought it and since than i have problems with it.

 

This is interesting:

I was playing Farcry 1 on max settings and my P7811 would crash after only a few minutes of game play. I was getting 50-122 FPS in the game

Anyway, it just kept crashing(Screen went black, sound stutters, had to 4sec shutdown). I started monitoring the temps while I played Farcry, and guess what the GPU was Hit 100C and then it crashed.

So, I disassembled the P7811FX and got to the GPU and cleaned the heatsink and replaced the thermal paste. Then, I had Farcry run in windowed mode @ 1440x1050, instead of Full screen @ 1920x1200.
The GPU hit a maximum of 69C(BTW I set the computer up on books for better air circulation). Also it did not crash at all anymore.

So whatever game that your P7811 is crashing on is probably a heat issue, so I recommend cleaning your heatsinks and replacing thermal paste+using a cooling pad or someway to get better air curculation+changing the games' graphics settings and monitoring the temps so it doesn't hit 100C.

 

Yeah it is a heat issue within the motherboard. I did a month of testing and found that the GPU is the problem because the power supply would generate a lot of heat and in turn would raise the temps to a point where any game I played would cause the laptop to crash. I even bought a cooler for the laptop but that did absolutely nothing to decrease the temperature and I would still get constant crashes.

So we all kind of pooled together and found this solution with Rivatuner. I actually undervolted the GPU at first, after I completely took apart the laptop and applied Artic Silver 5 to the GPU and the GPU memory modules. Then I went into Rivatuner and underclocked it to about 390 out of 400. This stopped the laptop temperatures from reaching the freezing point which is about 169F for me. I didn't notice any slowdown or performance loss and the laptop would maintain a 120F-130F temperature throughout playing Arkham Asylum which is a hugely graphic intensive game.

I then decided to just use Force Performance to get the full benefit of the video card and to test if this would increase temperatures. To my surprise, the game would max out at 136F which is acceptable as my temps while playing without would result in 168F-170F.

I'm now playing Dragon Age Origins and haven't had a lockup or anything else happen since the fixes we posted. I also installed Windows 7 Ultimate and I actually get better frame rates while playing as well!!!

 

I'm going to be playing COD6 on my P7811, since I do not want to have to tune down the settings so it doesn't overheat. I have no experience with rivatuner so can you give some instructions on how to do this thing, with rivatuner?

Thanks +1

 

the "solution" for the black screen/sound loop crash appears several times early on in this thread but nomios did a nice little step by step that an idiot like myself could follow so here is his post again for the lazy

 

Am I the only one this isn't working for? This is starting to drive me crazy.

I tried setting RivaTuner to performance 3D (and even low-power 3D), and manually lowering all the sliders, and I'm still crashing at a similar or identical rate.

Does anyone have any other ideas for me at all? I'm getting desperate. I'm not even sure if it's GPU heat anymore...I've been trying to remember to display it with RivaTuner, and I just today crashed at like 62 once.

 

Hi, my laptop is 7805u, but I think there isn't any different between 7811 and 7805 since they use the same GPU. I've had the same situation with you, crashed even in desktop, and this is what I've done to get rid of it.

1. Undervoltage CPU using RMClockUtility
2. Install nVidia driver 181.71 beta (with a little help from Mobility Modder.NET) after using driversweeper to uninstall old driver
3. Update driver to 195.39 ^^( without using driversweeper)
4. Done.

Hope it will work with you, too. Please let me know if it help

 

Following instructions I found somewhere else, I opened up the bottom of the laptop and cleaned out a layer of dust between the heatsink and a fan. I think that might have fixed it...I haven't managed to cause a crash since then, but I haven't had time to do a really tough test yet.

On an unrelated note, do you have any more detailed instructions on how to get 195.39 to work? I'm still using a driver from about a year and a half ago because the only more recent driver I've found that officially supports the 9800M GTS for 32-bit XP breaks the scaling on old games that don't support widescreen (which forces them to be all stretched out and ugly instead of just putting black bars on the sides of the screen like it's supposed to).

 

Dragon Rider Could you post that site. I have updated my drivers and I stopped crashing to a black screen and now just become really choppy. I have noticed that my fan has stopped moving as quickly as before and I think it needs a good cleaning.

Also here is a link to the other driver

http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook_winvista_win7_x64_195.39_beta.html

Make sure you uninstall your first driver or it will not recognize your Vcard.




Side question: What temp. does you Vcard game at. I was breaking 100C and I was not sure if it was normal. Some cards can handle it but I didnt know our cards range.

 

Alright, so I kind of fixed it.

I noticed (as said in this forum) that games will run without crashing on battery power. So I ran a game that I knew crashed while plugged in, and waiting for things to heat up. I then alt-tabbed out and using Nvidias systems monitor I wrote down what my GPU clock GPU Shader clock and GPU Memory Clock were. I then unplugged the machine, and watched those numbers instantly drop (as the GPU cooled). I then changed my clock speeds to match the max allowed under battery power. Follow these steps to do that.

Open you Control Panel... Then Nvidia Control Panel...Then Under Performance Click Device settings... There under current settings change the clock speeds from Factory shipped to Custom.... I use the following numbers;

Core Clock - 400 Mhz
Memory Clock - 300Mhz
Shader Clock - 800 Mhz

I got these numbers from my battery settings. You are welcome to play around with them and see your max. As soon as I set these numbers my temp during World at War dropped from 105C to 68C. I can even put AA on x4 and put the Resolution to 1900x1200 and it stays at a solid 70.

I know this isn't technically a fix but rather just underclocking your GPU. But I did notice while running on battery power that the graphics did not change due to the lower clock settings, the same applied for here.

Let me know if this works for you or if you find better clock speed numbers.

 

I forgot to tell you, you need to download NTUNE and open the performance icon. The regular Nvidia control panel does not let you control the clock speed.

Here is a link to Ntune

http://www.nvidia.com/object/ntune_5.05.54.00.html

There is a beta 6.0x version that I have started using, but 5.0x is fine as well.

Once downloaded and installed, open the performance shortcut and go to device settings. Here you can make the changes listed above.

 

When you do that force 3d performance thing...does that mean it is always sitting at the highest shader rate? Or when it switches to performance it locks there?

 

Just registered to say thanks, developed this on my 7811 after moving across town, thinking it might be due to dirty power here, though gonna test that when I can, but the force performance level trick worked, though it pretty much makes games unplayable due to the low clock speed. So what I did was to disable powermizer when on AC so the gpu doesn't do it's power saving tricks, and runs at full clocks all the time, this has also solved the crashing issue for me, and allows me to run games with no performance decrease due to the gpu running 600/1500/800 all the time and not downclocking.

 

Ok so it's been over a month since my last reply. Since then I've played Arkham Asylum, Dragon Age Origins, The Saboteur, and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 without any crashes or lockups. Just wanted to update and to see how everyone has been doing since.

 

My 7811 crashed 2 or 3 times during the entire MW2 campaign. Not bad

 

I have been searching the Internet for 6 months trying to find anything at all that helped with this crashing problem and the "Force constant performance level" fix has seemed to do the trick for me so far. I followed the instructions and then loaded a game that wouldn't run for more than a 3 minutes without crashing and it ran for over and hour after trying this fix. My deepest thanks to everyone here.

 

I just wanted to say that I've had success with the RivaTuner fix. I've been searching for months to find a solution for the crashing. Thanks for allowing me to enjoy my Gateway P-7811fx again.

Mass Effect 2 was tasty, without a single crash.

 

Hi All,
I just have to post a reply here since I just got my 7811 back from Gateway.
Let me start by saying I've had the "freeze" problem since the day I bought the unit from Best Buy 11/09. Pretty much the same issues with freeze occurring not long after starting a graphics intensive game (COD4,). Repeated trips to Best Buy (Geek Squad.....nice folks but really in over their heads), and numerous send-backs to Gateway. Geek Squad just last month told me my Avira and Malwarebytes proggy's were conflicting and freezing the unit.....PLEASE!
I've researched this issue on as many different forums as I could find. Many, many folks with the same issue and no one really has a fix. I wrote to one of Gateway's Customer Relations marketing folks (found her name on Google search) telling her of my problem and frustration. The four times I sent the unit back to Gateway all they did was reinstall the OS, bench it, and send it back "fixed". Infuriating really. She put me in touch with a "Specialist" down in Texas and gave me his personal phone number. He was no help at all. Told me he had researched the problem as well and it was his opinion that the freeze issue was more attributable to Vista than the 7811fx. What Bullsh!t. Basically told me I was on my own. I wrote back to my marketing contact and told her after all the research I had done I was convinced Gateway knew about this situation with the 7811fx. I told her I was at the end of my rope and was considering a class action law suit. Within 5 days I was contacted by another "specialist". This guy was a "Senior Tech" and he told me his department gets only the hard cases. Had me install and run Furmark GPU stress test while he was on the phone and it caused a freeze every time it loaded. Had me send it back to him. Called me 2 days after my lappy arrived to tell me they found the heatsink fan was improperly installed and one of the RAM sticks was not seated. Geez! If someone had checked this in the first place, none of this would have been necessary. Got the fx back and it screams through all my games with nary a hitch or hic-up. So, THIS IS HOW THIS THING IS SUPPOSED TO WORK!.......nice. So many people have had this problem and although I keep reading of the many fixes (and have tried many myself) the problem always seems to come back. I guess the point of this reply is to let folks know and to encourage all of you....don't just settle for sending your unit back to the normal Gateway tech geeks. Dig deeper, find some inside contacts and MAKE SOME NOISE!
Now, if I could just get my webcam to work after installing Windows 7.................

 

Glad you got it fixed! I assume you've tried the Win7 driver for your webcam?
http://support.gateway.com/support/...wse&platform=10022&model=12253&os=12390&type=

 

@ Tucmox

You sure that Gateway made no h/w changes ? If so then regular maintenance is the basic fix.

 

I'd say a poorly installed gpu heatsink is more than maintenance related. I'd also say I brought that common quality control issue up 5 pages ago.

 

Hey, I own a FX-7811 also...Tried the posted fix's to no avail. Guess I have to take it to a tech?

 

i own a p-7811fx and i have had trouble with the black screen crashes for months now, the force constant performance level to performance 3d stops the crashing for me but for some reason riva tuner thinks my cards frequency for performance 3d is: Core Clock - 400 Memory Clock - 300 Shader Clock - 800 which is way off from what it should be 600,800,1500.
I then tried to overclock it to the correct frequencies but rivatuner has my card undervolted to .9v for some reason which wont allow me to get it to the right frequecies. Does anyone know a way to fix rivatuner to the correct default frequencies and voltage?
I also tried just turning off powermizer in the registry instead of using force constant performance level but that just delayed the black screen crashes for a few more minutes for me instead of actually fixing it.

 

I'm using RivaTuner and it seems to work. Yet I haven't updated my bios at all, is there a problem if I don't update my bios?

BTW I'm a 7811FX owner.

 

I can explain, but cannot give you a solution. Rivatuner only supports 3 video card profiles; ours has 4. The first 3 run on .9V and the fourth is 1.11/1.12V. The clocks 400, 800, 300 (mem) are for the third profile which is the card's max when you are on battery.

 

Wow. Ever since my one year warranty expired it seemed like I couldn't play any game without the GPU overheating causing the games to lag and eventually crash. I have bought cooling fans, and tried a million different things.

I tried the the Rivatuner fix, and for the first time in ages I am able to play games without the gpu overheating, without lag, without crashing!! I am in shock! I can't believe this simple solution has been sitting around. Thank you so much to the person or people that thought up this fix!!!!!!!

 

The force constant performance method does seem to work, but it also made the 3DMark06 score 3000 points lower...

Is there a way to force it to run at the highest clock level (the one that RivaTuner doesn't seem to support), but only when playing games?

 

for the people who cant get max clocks on rivatuner heres how:

1. Launch Rivatuner
2. Then go to the power user tab
3. Then go to the section "Rivatuner \ Overclocking \ Global"
4. Expand that section and go to "MaxClockLimit" and give a value of 200
5. Then go back to the main menu and go back to the overclocking menu as normal and set the clocks that you need

note 1: doing this will cause an undervolt (which is the point (see note 2) which at max clocks will cause the gpu to be unstable. While you wont get a black screen, you will get nvlddmkm errors, games blanking out and coming back, and possibly artifacts. But at least you wont have to restart you laptop

note 2: btw for the people who have black screen problems, especially from day 1 (Like me) and were idiotic enough to not get a replacement (Like me again lol) its most likely not overheating but as a result of very poor gpu soldering to the motherboard by our friends at gateway. I'm not good with circuitry, but apparently if the gpu solders get damaged or "fissure" (Pretty sure thats the word) it starts to cut off power from the motherboard, basically just blacking out the screen and having to manually restart. Apparently if these solders "fissure", when playing recent games, the gpu voltage would be fully used, and i'm guessing if the psu power hits one of the fissured solders, the screen dies. Even worse, this is usually a big sign of a dying gpu, so it will probably go bye-bye someday. So, what i'm assuming is that by doing the rivatuner fix, the voltage goes down, and apparently it doesn't get affected as bad by the damaged solders. However as i said before, its still unstable as anything.

Note 3: The only "true" fix for this is to "reflow" the gpu. One way is to use an oven or a heat gun and do it yourself. You may be albe to also go to a repair shop and "reflow" the gpu using a special type of oven, but probably isn't cheap. And of course gateway, if of course you still have warrently, which only lasted for me 1 year (which means you have to pay lots of money to do it) Of course, this may not even be a permanent fix.

So lets just end this tale by saying if you get a black screen and nothing fixes it but rivatuner, there's not much you can do. Just pray your warranty is still there and get a replacement. If you can't, deal with it, use rivatuner and hope it doesn't die on you too quickly.

Sorry for the long post just wanted to show light into this issue and help all of you.

 

ive gotten sick of having my gpu to be undervolted and underclocked with rivatuner in order for it to work properly so i opened a case with gateway and am sending it in. they said that they will fix it for 199 and i was told parts and labor was included. what does everyone think?