Help with gateway p-7805u gfx drivers

For starters, I am on a gateway p-7805u and currently running Dox Optimised 182.46 graphics drivers. Upon buying the laptop and beginning my first search for drivers, i learned that this computer can be iffy with drivers, and it definitely has been. the 182.46 driver is the only one i've ever ran that give me literally no graphics driver crashes. i've never had a problem with it crashed, and the performance seems fairly good too. my only problem is this: for certain games, quake live is the one i know the most but i can also get the setting on warsow, i end up seeing these horizontal falling lines ( video example photo example sorry for iphone quality, lol) that simply leave me unable to play the game from the amount of stuff i simply can't see. i've tried updating to probably 10 or 15 other drivers, both official and unofficial (other dox drivers, for example), but i don't have a list of all that i've tried or the reason i didn't stick with them. Most of the would crash pretty frequently. In the end, i always fell back to my trusty old 182.46 drivers and dealt with not being able to play quake live.

So, here i am looking for advice on new drivers to try. I have lurked through the drivers thread located here in this subforum and tried many of the suggested drivers, but always running into one problem or another. I am here to start fresh and finally (hopefully) get to the bottom of this problem so i can play me some quake live without crashing! and i will start keeping a running list of the drivers i try and the reasons i don't use them anymore.



List of tried drivers:
-DOX optimised 182.46 drivers - WORK except for quake live stuff - always fall back to these
-Nvidia official 270.61 dirvers - worked for a day, even through some light gaming, then started through a brutal cycle of artifacts/freezing and eventually led me to uninstalling through safe mode. never again.
-nvidia 270.28 drivers- crashed immediately after the initial restart after installing.

THANKS!

EDIT: was lurking a thread beneath mine and found these questions for a problem kinda similar to mine, so i figured i'd go ahead and answer them.

1.) what driver version? currently running Dox Optimised 182.46
2.) do you over clock the video or CPU? No
3.) is the system stock? Yes
4.) what OS are you now using? Windows 7 64bit
5.) have you ever cleaned out the vents? I recently (like, 3 weeks ago?) opened it up and sprayed out around the fans and vents etc.

 

have you tried the latest WHQL drivers available from nVidia themselves? The reason I ask is those mod drives can carry issues along with them..............

 

i tried the official suggested nvidia drivers as of maybe 2 months ago back... well... 2 months ago when they were official. not sure if they've changed since but i'll start there and report back.

edit: just looked at the date on the current suggested driver and it was released 7 days ago, so this is a fresh start on a new driver. i'll post results in a bit.

edit: finished installing 270.61. about an hour into using it and i haven't had any problems yet. played a small amount of quake live and the horizontal lines were gone as per the usual new driver, but i also haven't crashed yet so far. i'll put some tf2 and call of duty on this thing and report back.

thanks for the help so far, tan.

 

update: just saw my first evidence of problems a few minutes ago. saw some flashes of artifacts on screen for 20 seconds or so. no crash yet, though i'm sure there will be some to come. gonna restart comp now to try and stabilize it.

keep the suggestions coming!

 

how are the temps? if too hot you may need to clean it out or if really bad a disassembly and repase of the GPU may be in order. also make sure your fans are kicking on when need be to keep it cool...................

 

i run hwmonitor and my graphics card temps never get terribly high even through multiple hour long gaming sessions. occasionally it gets up to 85 celsius, but it's not very common. my processor temps and hard drive temps also stay relatively low. the only temp reading i ever get above 90 celsius according to hwmonitor is under the "gateway imv" temp listing. this usually maxes out at 93 or so during very active and prolonged gaming. i don't relaly know for sure what this is, but maybe motherboard? idk, that doesn't sound right but whatever. that's the only temperature that has me a little worried. also, fans seem to kick in when needed.

i'm pretty sure this isn't a overheating problem. at least not a graphics card overheating problem. the crashing and artifacts have always been fairly random when i try out these new drivers. for example, these most recent artifacts showed up and i checked my gpu temps and they were mid 50s celsius.

 

you should be able to run furmark without a overclock and rarely if ever see 80c. If it is fairly warm in the room 85c might be acceptable but no 90c. so temps are a definate issue for you.

Below was my P7805 overclocked..............

Edit; also use powermizer switch and turn it off so that the system never puts the memory to 2D speeds, this can be an issue as well.

1.) If you run/load the gateway web cam software it sometimes try's to pop up and can cause an artifact to the side.
2.) with Steam/Source games gadgets can cause what looks like artifacts too................

Edit 2; I have seen when the card overheats it can get to a really strange GPU/memory/Shader setting it will not come out of until you reboot. This will cause stuttering and artifacts untill you do. I could only mimic this by severly overclocking to overheat the card............

 

alright, i downloaded furmark and ran a little test run with basically the default settings. gpu temp went to 79 celsius. i really don't think my gfx driver crashes or artifacts are due to my gfx card overheating.

the only time i've had artifacts so far since updating to my current drivers has been during a random time browsing a different forum. i immediately checked my temps and all but the "gateway imv" were beneath 50. gateway imv was at 56 or so, iirc.

i'll get on that powermizer stuff tomorrow.

 

update: just went through a brutal series of artifacts/crashing/freezing. when i turned my computer on for the first time today, everything seemed fine... until about 10 seconds in. artifacts began to show up so i braced myself for the imminent crash/freeze, and it happened this time. the whole screen froze up. had to turn it off and on only to have it happen 2 more times before i decided to start up in safe mode just to have enough time to uninstall the drivers. so there we go, that's one driver off the list.

also, i did manage to load up hwmonitor before the first artifacts showed up, and all temps were in the upper 40s with one of them at 55, so temps definitely weren't an issue with any off these crashes.

any suggestions for where to go from here, or what might be causing me to have so many problems?

Edit: just updated op with info about failed attempt with 270.28 drivers.

 

wit the drivers that crash, if you load windows on battery power does it run ok, I know the GPU will be set to run slower. If it does then the downclocks alow the GPU to run without artifacting. The says the GPU is possibly fried, although it could be the driver just ins't cleaning out from that one version.

If there was a hanging file that sould explain why only going back to that old version works. This can especially happen with the older MOD driver versions. Others would be better at helping you to be sure the old drivers are fully removed along with the settings etc...............

 

The first crash was with the laptop plugged in but the second two were actually on battery power.

edit: back on 182.46 right now. everything's working smoothly except the quake live issue.

so i have a few questions.

first, the idea about the 182.46 driver not completely cleaning out and causing problems with new drivers seems to make the most sense of the suggestions so far, so can anyone give me a little advice on how i might go about completely cleaning the driver out? (ps: i already use driver sweeper after every uninstall).

also, what difference in drivers would make me have quake live problems as shown in the OP video, but be fixed with newer drivers? i assume it's just a new feature that the game is trying to use that my 182.46 drivers don't have, but can anyone pin point it?

thanks for the help so far.

 

Would love some more feedback here!

 

Youre talking about the graphics drivers right? if so why not download the latest one, the 270.61 from nvidia.

 

Already tried. :/

there's a list at the bottom of the first post with the drivers i've tried since i made this thread.

"-Nvidia official 270.61 dirvers - worked for a day, even through some light gaming, then started through a brutal cycle of artifacts/freezing and eventually led me to uninstalling through safe mode. never again. "


Any suggestions?

 

i hate to keep beating this thread to death, but i'd really like to work on getting this fixed.

the most probable answer i've gotten so far (thanks tanware) is that my 182.46 drivers might be leaving a file behind even after uninstall+driversweep that is messing with any other driver i try to install. i've uninstalled/reinstalled driver sweeper and i'll be testing it out again sometime tonight or tomorrow, but does anyone have any other suggestions for completely cleaning that driver out? reformat HD is obviously a possibility, but i wanna make sure there's no other way to get this accomplished before jumping to that.

so, any suggestions about programs or anything?

 

great news! (if anyone cares, lol)

i decided to try dox 195.62 last night, and i have had no problems so far. i've played some quake live (without the lines yay) and some tf2 and had no crashes so far. wish me luck!

 

well that is cool. Other than an entire fresh instaqll and not ever touching a DOX driver there is little else you can do from what I can tell. Even that is not a garenty you would not have problems..................

 

Just came across this thread and was gonna suggest the DOX 195 series. Always seemed to work good for me. Glad you got it fixed....

 

the only issues i've come across with these 195 drivers are occasional crashes when on battery power (regardless of what i'm doing while on battery power). any idea what could be causing this?

 

I have been using the newest Nvidia drivers including the newest beta with no issues. Make sure if you do have issues to completely scrub the old drivers before installing the new drivers.

You can use Driver Sweeper to make sure after you install the old drivers that there is no driver files left over. Is helps prevent corrupt files from being passed on to the new driver, causing problems.

Driver Sweeper:
http://phyxion.net/item/driver-sweeper-285.html

275.27 beta
NVIDIA DRIVERS 275.27 BETA

 

thanks for the suggestion flynnaz.

i think i'm gonna stick with the dox 195 drivers i have atm, as i'm starting to realize how much better these are than the past drivers i've tried. i've had literally 0 crashes while plugged in, the crashes on battery power seem to be happening less frequently, the quake live problem is gone (yay), AND i've noticed a performance boost in tf2, which i deperately needed.

if i start to have problems with these, i'll definitely try those out, but for now i'm just afraid of losing what i've got if i try to change something.

i'll post back here if i end up trying those and let you know how they work.

 

Dox will be releasing new drivers today (+2 days).

 

I have been having same inconsistances with drivers. In fact I have a weird issue that if I simply install a driver I have to limit in powermizer my card to always be in min. performance/max powersave mode or I occasionally crash. As far as the latest nvidia drivers including beta any driver I install since 267.76 has error 43'd me in device manager. But when I don't put the powermizer to min perf... My card WILL crash consistantly when my GPU hits a temp of ~65C. Like clockwork. If I set to min I can hit temps above that and no crash...