***EVGA Precision X and Windows 7/8/8.1 and especially 10 bricking systems***

yeah thats one annoying "feature" of inspector i could live without i just got used to using batch files, that way i can switch clocks faster and also have them applied right at boot

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

I've seen a number of posts regarding the P650RG booting to a black screen "the next day" now. Is it possible this may also impact the RG since it uses a MUX to dGPU mode.

 

The MUX is new to Clevo... it wouldn't surprise me if its glitching. I can tell you that Clevo sure knows how to make a mess of their sBIOSes... My P377SM-A shows a black screen until Windows starts booting... Its obviously an EFI bug in my case...

 

Entirely possible, since in Optimus-enabled machines, the dGPU connects to the LCD panel via the iGPU. Maybe that's "protecting" the LCD.

Come to think of it, I don't recall reading about any Optimus machines having this problem.

 

Agreed, Optimus prevents this from happening.. This was definetly the case in mine and @mariussx's laptops were safe in Optimus but bricked in dedicated...

 

I now know of a Clevo P570WM owner - @Kpaxx - that had his screen ruined almost immediately after installing the latest EVGA Precision X. I have removed it from my own system.

 

What driver did he have at the time of install. And what os?

 

I don't know. I am hoping that he sees that I tagged him and can answer that question for us. @Kpaxx - please tell us about it.

 

Your Clevo reseller replaced your motherboard and found the screen also not working, correct? Only working with an external display?

Had you ever had Windows 10 installed on that machine?

 

Mine was a different stress test, same result... Zm

I know you were asking kpax, but my screen, video card, and mother board was replaced...

 

Hummmm....

I have been testing 358.87 with new precision x and no problems so far.
I ran this one not to long ago.

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/6553069

 

I closed the other thread so everyone can use this one now.

 

Your laptop is working right now correct?

 

Hummm, sorry to hear that

 

Kpaxx, I had the same issue. Motherboard/LCD had to both be replaced (Alienware).

 

Can you make a new summary @Mr. Fox ?

 

So wait, after 6 months of efforts from everyone and documenting this monstruous engineering fiasco, notifing Nvidia/Micro$$$oft there is actually no solution besides staying with W7/8.1 ?

 

Yup

 

If you happened to order a Windows 10 machine (Clevo 650RG in my case), it sounds like there's no way to safeguard against this
Avoid Precision X and cross your fingers that Windows 10 / nvidia drivers don't overwrite the EDID somehow?

Edit: It sounds like downgrading to Windows 8.1 once you've had Windows 10 on a machine still yields a dead LCD for some people.

 

To my knowledge Micro$loth has never once acknowledged the issue or participated in finding a solution. Mr. Hotshot, Gabe Aul, ignored my messages about the problem... never acknowledged them. Dell/Alienware and NVIDIA were very responsive and tried to help. They could not reproduce the issue. At least not until I discovered an issue with Precision X and they tested my theory by installing Precision X on their end, then *BAM* they got hit almost immediately.

So, they naturally blame EVGA and consider the case closed as far as I know. My Alienware 18 got the EDID corrupted without Precision X installed. I was not even done installing all of the drivers for Windows 10 when it got messed up. On my Alienware M18xR2 I was having to re-flash the LCD almost daily under Windows 7 and 8.1 after the initial damage was done by Windows 10. On a whim I decided to remove Precision X and the problem went away immediately. Alienware and NVIDIA were notified and both were able to reproduce the problem almost immediately.

I'm not the only one that had it happen on a machine without it. Something about Precision X causes a problem once Micro$loth has created a vulnerability and risk of having a corrupted EDID appears to be much greater. It should be noted that Precision X (and GeForce drivers) include a pixel/refresh rate overclocking feature. It does not happen with AMD and (to my knowledge) Catalyst drivers do not include that kind of feature and Precision X does not work with AMD GPUs.

So, long story short, the underlying cause is not Precision X. Nobody knows what the root cause is, so unless Micro$loth quietly fixes it and pretends to know nothing, applying Windows Updates that prepare any system for Windows 10, or Windows 10 itself, presents a risk. I think it is safe to say that Dell/Alienware and Clevo are not to blame. That leaves Micro$loth and NVIDIA, and we know neither of them are going to admit to any wrong doing. Using EVGA Precision X on anything other than EVGA GeForce cards is outside the scope of their responsibility, so we cannot expect EVGA to care. They don't sell laptops or MXM cards.

Bottom Line: If your machine is working correctly, don't fix it. Windows 10 Millennium Edition is a piece of trash anyway. DX12 is not relevant yet, so there is no compelling reason to install it. I know curiosity is a drawing card... totally understand that part. Curiosity is what turned everything upside down for me. And, as they say, " Curiosity killed the cat." When you hear, " Here kitty, kitty" do not respond and you might be OK if you have disabled Automatic Windows Updates. Do that with Group Policy Editor or a registry hack and enjoy your machine.

 

Thanks for tje summary M. Fox.
What about installing W10 fron iso (from scratch) would that change anything? Without PX of course.
What about the alienware laptops coming out of the factory with W10 and nvidia cards?
have we identified after which batch of W10 Nvidia drivers did the problem start?
Have you tried with older modified nvidia drivers ?

 

Looks like the '@' in your user name messes up quotes with our fancy new Xenforo software.

Most of that was covered in the thread I closed. On both machines the bricking occurred on a clean install. It happened to me using the current NVIDIA drivers at the time W10 went RTM (353.62). I am using my own pre-Win10 345.20 driver mod on Windows 10 right now with the M18xR2 because anything newer causes 780M to severely malfunction with bad throttling on all 3 Alienware systems with 780M GPUs. Haven't had any problems since removing Precision X. I am still running it now on the M18xR2, but I've lost all interest in my Alienware products since NVIDIA is leaving 780M broken with no drivers that work correctly since 345.20. I cannot use any drivers that support current games because my GPUs throttle like crazy with newer drivers.

I had some weird glitches with the Panther also. Screen brightness and display scaling were acting really goofy, never stayed set where I wanted them to be, among other things. I ran it a little more than a month and decided it wasn't worth the risk to keep on my best computer, and since Win10 had absolutely nothing of value to offer I got rid of it. Now, I am not using Windows 10 on the Panther at all. I have yet to identify a good reason to use Windows 10. There is nothing particularly compelling or good about it... just the third in a series of crap OS releases from the Micro$haft Mafia. Seems like everyone at Micro$loth that knew how to make a good OS suddenly got stupid after Windows 7.

 

I was wondering the same since I haven't heard of any Skylake users having the issue with their pre-loaded Win 10.

 

Yeah, I don't know about any of the new Alienware systems with W10 and Skylake, and don't really care much one way or the other since they are BGA and not relevant to my personal interests. It seems like this cancer only attacks the better Alienware and Clevo machines for the most part... those not crippled with hybrid/Intel GPU. It's unfortunate that the mainstream garbage seems to be exempt from the curse. Maybe that should be expected since W10 is designed for mainstream garbage.

 

Or not using EVGA Precision X on Windows 10.

 

Or, Windows 7...
Or, Windows 8.1...

My M18xR2 is triple-boot 7/10 and Mint Linux. EVGA Precision X was re-bricking my LCD every day on both of those Windows OSes after Windows 10 opened the gate to the pits of hell.

Mint Linux was installed so I could re-flash the EDID quickly and easily. I also wanted to see if Linux was ready to ready to replace Windows. And, as suspected, it's still not good enough to do everything I need it to do. Although, I do like it a lot and wish that it was.

Every day I had to connect a good spare LCD to boot the machine, hotswap the LVDS cable to the bad display and flash it. It would generally be fine for two, maybe three, reboots or cold boots and then it would get corrupted and need to be re-flashed.

 

Literally in the same boat as you. I'm a huge gamer and I like/must use Skype for school/etc, and both of those things just don't quite cut it on Linux... Although, gaming is definitely improving on Linux, which is great.

 

To continue to add my personal experience for whatever it may be worth to other people (as started over the the Alienware thread):

Mr. Fox was kind enough to reflash my display, received it back and unsurprisingly, all was well. Went through many contortions trying to get the system (Alienware m18x-R2) to boot in full UEFI as some people had posted that they were able to circumvent the issue with an external monitor by booting full UEFI. Found out (as Fox had warned me) it really isn't possible to get Win7 to boot full UEFI due to a dependency on a legacy VGA BIOS call (but heck, I like to confirm things for myself, and I'd already gone to the trouble of setting up the damned GPT disk so why not try it? ). Figured, well, even if I can't get Win7 to boot full UEFI, I have the system configured to boot that way (requiring flashing the nVidia eeprom and some other shenanigans I won't get into), I can just pull the display cable, hook up an external display and if this does work to circumvent the "no/bad display" issue, I should still get the frozen Windows Startup screen on the external display. No suck luck; 8 beeps no POST. So I would conclude at least my model of the 18x cannot, in fact, boot to external display under any circumstance. Partially good, as I now have no motivation to suck it up and switch to Win8; bad, because if the problem recurs I'm right back where I started with no means to fix the damn thing myself.

But, since I refuse to keep a four-figure paperweight, I go ahead with the restore (after clearing all traces of Precision X and HWInfo64 through a Ubuntu system) using the Legacy Support enabled feature in the BIOS (as I said, I had this GPT disk already set up, might as well use it). {{*Note: HWInfo64 has not been implicated in any of the reported issues, I just happened to install both programs at almost the same time and was feeling paranoid enough to axe them both for good measure. If you've used that program in the past and enjoy its features, I wouldn't worry about it; for me, I wasn't giving up anything I'd grown used to and I was concerned to eliminate any possible reinfection vector.}}

Good news is, I'm now five days out, back on my previous Win7 install, fully updated and running fine - typing this message from that computer. Well, not fully updated, I see nVidia has another new driver out; not sure I'm going to bother at this time. And for my two and a half months without my system, I did get at least one perk - as a part of the debugging, I swapped the video cards which required re-pasting the heatsinks. The troubling temperatures I was getting that lead to my downloading Precision X in the first place are now a thing of the past, thanks to good old Arctic Silver. Of course, now I see I really need to repaste the processor to get it back in line with the new gfx temps... XD

Thanks again for the assist, Mr. Fox, and here's hoping I continue to not need further and similar assistance again.

 

Is it ever proven that Evga Precision X has been involved in dead LCD even WITHOUT win 10 or Win 10 updates on laptops with clean Windows7 / 8?

 

@Ethrem , what about MSI Afterburner? I mostly use it for its OSD functionality and can't imagine living without it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated? Thanks.

 

They are rolling out a cumulative update today for Win 10. It fixes display driver issues for Surface book Pro 4 but they won't say what it fixes in Win 10 PCs.

 

@PC GAMER Use Nvidia inspector for Oc and Hwinfo64 + RTSS for OSD functionality.
Edit: I forgot that GTX 880M SLI is not suitable for proper OC. Forget Nvidia inspector. LOL

@Jericho2015 http://www.infoworld.com/article/30...-windows-10-version-1511-triggers-errors.html

 

HwInfo causes a bit high latency spikes compared to MSI afterburner

 

I just bought an Alienware 17 and im so scared to discover this problem... my specs are in my signature, Im on windows 10, latest nvidia driver 359.06 and no problems so far. i hope it stays this way...

 

How many users have a 120hz screen and have been bricked so far?

 

As long as you don't use EVGA Precision X you should be fine.

 

Thanks...

Newer Driver & Windows 8.1

Been fine for a while now using it, so thus my question.

 

Think there is only one but I'm not 100% sure. Used self Win 10 for two weeks with EVGA installed and in use before I went to Win 7.

 

My Alienware 17 screen bricked a few day's ago, 8 beeps after doing a Nvidia update, I didn't think anything of the update until now, I was using windows 8 pro with a 120hz screen, might be irrelevant but I tried using my L702x's screen and now that's gone too.....

Would it be possible to flash a modded BIOS to these that skip the LCD check? Just a thought, my system was in a raid so I don't know how to get the data off it :/

Mr.Fox Don't lose interest in these beasts XD I've been following yours with my M18x R1 for years as best as I could, but I'm in the process of sorting out a mod that should breath new life into it hold on

 

Did you had EVGA PrecisionX installed?

 

I just checked and no I don't, I have used it but it has had a clean install since then I think... maybe? Or may have uninstalled it.... It is on my L702x and my desktop, the L702x having Fermi GPU should be safe?
I'm currently copying the data from my laptop to my desktop, found a broken laptop that my mum gave me after she stood on it and broke the screen and hdd (she was pregnant at the time, had some help ) and used to screen from that to get past post, it boots, even though you can see the liquid through the cracks XD managed to hook it up to an external monitor.
According to HWinfo this broken screen is a Digital Flat Panel (1024x768) (serial number: 3) XD grabbed from some gen 3 i7 HP thing that came with her BF 0.o
I'm still trying to get my head around this EDID stuff, so I can get at least my L702x going again
My L702x's screen is a samsung LTN173HT02-D02... Reading T456's post on the old thread it looks like I'd go with this as my screen SEC5044 !?AW eDP LTN173HT02-D** Winbond 25X20BLNIG except mine is a Winbond 25X20BLIG there is no 'N' the screen in my AW17 is a B173HW02 V4 which I would guess would be the same as AUO219D ! LVDS B173HW02 V1 one is LVDS and the other is eDP?

Sorry about all the edits, I'm new to posting, and being social in general I just know it's bad to double post

Edit: looks like I was running driver 359.00, according programs and features

Edited Edit: Just got to page 226 in the windows 10 thread -.- it's 2 am here and I am so over reading XD I have 2 BAD_EDID strings in my registry, both in their own sub folders under Default_Monitor and the first one is the same as Mr.Fox's 1&8713bca&0&UID0 I don't do enough in the registry to know if that is a specific monitor that is connected or if it's one that has been previously connected, or if it matters. I searched for EVGA in the registry editor and one string showed up called plugcfg_In but I don't think that is relevant, doesn't look like I've had it on here for any traces to be touching ****. Looks like I'll have a stab at using Lynix when I wake up, I've never used it before and so far everything looks like gibberish, I'm sure I'll figure it out though

Also on a side note has anyone read this?
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/jj133967(v=vs.85).aspx

 

When i baught my lapotp this august, p377sma, i install windows 10 directly from usb. and i also instal EVGA PrecisionX and was using it for monitoring temp while playing. I never had any issues..but i uninstall it a few weeks ago.

 

Thanks to Nvidia, Microsoft and Alienware. I will be getting a top tier Alienware 18 as replacement. This issue was the last straw and Alienware decided to finally stop repairing my lemon and replace it.

Edit: Forgot to mention, major thanks to EVGA

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...levo-lcd-panels.779449/page-270#post-10126360


Dear Faiz23,


Here you will find the suggested configuration for the replacement unit:

Alienware 18

Intel® Core™ i7-4940MX processor, 4-cores, 8MB Cache, Overclocked up to 4.4GHz w/ Intel TurboBoost

16GB Dual Channel DDR3L at 1600MHz

512GB mSATA SSD Boot + 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s

Slot-Loading Dual Layer DVD Burner (DVDR/RW)

Dual NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX™ 980M with 8GB GDDR5 each (NVIDIA SLI® Enabled)

18.4" WLED FHD (1920 X 1080) TrueLife Display

8-cell Lithium Ion (86 wHr)

Windows® 8.1 Pro, 64Bit, English

802.11ac Dual Band 2x2 AC WiFi + Bluetooth 4.0

Silver-Anodized Aluminum


Please review it. If you agree with the configuration please reply with your approval within 24 hours in order to continue with the process.


Thank you for your time, we will be waiting for your reply.


I hope you have a wonderful day.


Michael_Dell

Dell | Alienware Technical Support Specialist

 

at least SOME good is coming out of this mess then for some users

 

Warranty paid off big time since my original 1 year expired a year ago and I am on the extended 4 yr warranty good till 11/2017. Sucks for folks who have to pay for it on their own.

 

So I've started reading again you can disregard my link -.-

 

extended warranty FTW! im safe until feb 2019

 

$1637.99 for barebone Alienware 18 base. $500 for 512Gb mSata SSD and 1 TB, $170 for Windows 8.1 Pro, $150 for 16gb RAM, $1000 for the CPU i7-4940MX and $850 for dual cards. No tax and Free shipping comes out to $4310.99 with a free game and $3 recovery disk.

 

not going to lie I'm jealous XD My warranty is out nice job though

PS: is frying my L702x by putting in the stuffed 120Hz from the AW 17 plausible?

 

I wouldn't buy AW18/AW17 even for a exchange from M18xR1. Old models build quality is much better and 880M still works same as in AW18.