Vid card swap disaster :(, assistance greatly needed

Well so I've run into nasty situation.

The vid card in my old Sager 5760 (M57U) was dying, so after asking around here I purchased a replacement from eBay (same card, 7900 GTX, but slightly newer model), armored with the knowledge of how to extract the vbios from my current card and flash it into the new one, with the hope that it'll make everything work nicely.

I did a practice run of just overwriting my old card with it's own bios so I could see what key presses I need in case I don't have a display (as was suggested). Did this and it seemed fine. Swapped cards and got ready to boot...

Upon boot, I had a display but it was garbled. Right side had some vertical black and white lines, left side had what looked like the command prompt, but instead of seeing "c:\" it looked like "cccccccccc" i.e. it looked like it was just copying the first letter of the line a few times and terminating.

I typed the following command "nvflash.exe -4 -5 -6 g71m.rom"

It looked like a yes/no confirmation came up, so I hit yes (same thing happened when I practiced flashing as described above). But then around 4 or 5 more confirmations came up. I kept hitting "yes" and eventually the computer made the couple of beeps that I heard when my practice flash completed. I rebooted and hoped for the best.

No video at all, black screen I tried flashing it again, but heard no beeps or other indications that it happened. I swapped back to my old vid card hoping I didn't bugger the whole computer but it looks like I did. I get no video when I plug in the old video card either.

So I'm kinda at a loss here, a big one in fact. Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas on what has happened, and more importantly how to fix it?

All help will be met with eternal gratitude.

 

When you took apart your laptop, did you remove the battery and properly ground yourself?

Is the "g71m.rom" the BIOS from your old card that you were trying to flash onto your new card?

 

Battery is dead so didn't remove it, grounded myself as best I can. As a clarification, the laptop boots up, I can "hear it" (the hd and disc drive) going through the post test. Also after about 30 seconds, I believe I am in windows (disabled login sound so no help there), as I can hit fn+f2 to turn fan on high. Further I've heard the fans speed being auto adjusted, so everything seems to be fine (sans having a display).

G71M.rom is the bios from my old card. I wrote down some (pertinent?) info from the cards themselves:

Old
vbios: 26.ff
M57U/G71M-U/V1.0/512

New
vbios 38.31
M59/G71M-UU/V3.0/512

For reference, here is the link to the eBay page for the card I bought. It's from an Alienware, but from all research (and asking around here) I gather that it should work.

I'm guessing something has been screwed up in the flashing operation, but why my old card is now fubar'ed, I can't figure out.

Edit: Perhaps I'm not in windows... I tried putting in a cd to autoplay as well as plugging in some usb cables but I've heard no audio indication of those tasks, so maybe something worse has happened...

 

Whether the battery is dead or not, it is still holding a charge. You should remove it every time you open your machine. However, after rereading your post, I don't think the battery is a factor here, so no worries.

With your old card back in your machine, have you tried force flashing the original GPU BIOS back onto the card, despite it already having the original BIOS already?

 

I tried that, using the same "nvflash.exe -4 -5 -6 g71m.rom" command (I'm using a bootable usb drive per Zfactor's instructions, tried it on another computer abit ago and it still boots, so no issues there). But I haven't had any luck with that. Tried hitting "yes" just once and waiting... tried hitting yes 5 or 6 times (as I had to do with the new card) and waiting, end result is same, nothing noticable happens (no beeps, flickers, etc). Shutting down and restarting still leads to a black screen.

 

I'm going to need to research this deeper, Thacker. Here is my last inquiry before I go. Did you update the system BIOS before you attempted to swap the new card in?

 

I did update the system bios from 1.00.00 (what it shipped with) to 1.00.06 (I believe) a few days ago. It was working fine with the bios update and the old card though as recently as last night.

I appreciate your help on this greatly, hopefully you can help me avoid having a giant paperweight. For what it's worth, theriko helped me with alot of my intial questions, so he might be able to shed some light on this if/when he logs on.

 

So I just took out the video card and had a (somewhat) positive result. While the screen was white this time, it appears I got past the post test, as I could tell I booted into windows when I plugged in my mouse and heard it recognize it.

When you flash the video bios are you flashing some bios thats on the card? or is it on the actual mobo? If it's the latter maybe I can boot into dos with the usb stick now and reflash the original vbios back onto the mobo and save myself that way.

Will try tonight/tomorrow. Fingers crossed please?

 

The GPU BIOS and the system BIOS are two different entities. When you flash the GPU BIOS, you're flashing just that, the GPU BIOS.

 

As in the gpu bios is part of the mobo? I was under the impression the gpu bios was part of the video card itself, hence why I needed to flash it with the bios from my old card.

If thats not the case then I don't see why I needed to flash the bios to begin with it all.

Pardon the ignorance, I've always been hazy on bios issues. Will see if I can get it working tomorrow.

 

The GPU BIOS is part of the GPU.

 

Try flashing this vbios onto the new card

either use the included autoexec.bat, or type "nvflash -4 -5 -6 e466h0u.rom"

 

Will give it ago. I think with the video cards plugged in I'm not even getting past the post, but without the cards in, I get a post error but can get into windows.

I'll try flashing it without the card plugged in (cause as it stands with the cards plugged in I don't think I can boot into dos).

Thanks for the help, well let you know whats up.

Edit: I just realized the above would do nothing, since it's the gpu's bios we are trying flash, hence I need the gpu plugged in. I'll see what I can do, previously it seemed with the cards plugged in I couldn't get past the post test

 

No luck. Plugged in the new card, but best I can tell I can't even get to a place to be able to flash. Computer powers on but I hear no noise indicative of start up (other than fans).

Something I noticed between my card and the new one; mine had a little black paper/plastic border/frame around the cpu that covered all these little metal pins. Are those pin connections that are important? The new card had it's original thermal paste kinda smeared over some of them, which I would think could cause a short if those are important. Is this a possibility?

 

If the thermal paste is capacitive, then yes. If the thermal paste got under the black shield and came into contact with the exposed nodes and resistors, that may have adverse effects.

 

Hmm... I think both cards might be bricked then. There was already some paste on the new card, I cleaned it up alittle (could tell it was old) and put some new stuff on, guess it got on the pin connections.

I'm assuming cleaning it up won't help, as the damage would have already been done?

 

cleaning can help depending on whether any physical damage has happened, it's worth a shot, you can't make it any worse, right?

 

True that, however I've already contacted the seller and they agreed to send me a replacement. So... in that regard, do you have any tips for doing this process again. If this card doesn't come with a cover to protect those pin connections, are those readily available somewhere? Can it be improvised with something like electrical tape?

Thanks again for the continued help theriko and Soviet Sunrise.

 

You can use thermal pads.

 

So abit of an update here. I got a new card from the dealer. It appears to have the same problem as the first card, thermal compound on the pins. However I went ahead and cleaned it up and installed it anyways, here's the results...



This is the same behavior I had with the first card. I'm assuming this is from a gpu bios incompatibility. Assuming I flash the bios correctly (gonna try the one theriko supplied earlier) should that fix the problem?

At this point I really don't know if the first time I flashed the bios's wrong or if the cards got fried. I flashed with the bios I pulled from my old card (and even tested the process/bios by flashing the old card with it's own bios) and then they both seemingly died.

If anyone can weigh in, I'd appreciate it. Since I have a semi-working card, I want to my best to make sure I don't ruin the thing. Thanks.

 

If the newer card was a newer revision, then the old bios may not have been compatible. The one I linked earlier should be correct for the newer revision of the card.

 

Got some progress to show, kinda...

So as you can see, I now have a "working" video card! Unfortunately something is still massively jacked up.

Big lines totally blocking view on the right, and a mirrored image at the bottom. I'm guessing it has something to do with this card being setup for SLI, though I'm not sure why it's doing this. As far as I can tell the laptop it came from was not setup with SLI.

I've tried fiddling with the resolution some but haven't had much success. Honestly it's those big lines on the right side that have me worried. Like I've damaged my screen or the interface on the laptop or something.

Thoughts?

 

Just out of curiousity, did you try using the system before you "cleaned up" the gpu?

I wonder if it would have worked fine if you just left it alone and used it as it was shipped to you...?

 

I didn't, though in retrospect I should have. I was originally under the impression that the thermal paste on the pin connectors was causing an issue, so I cleaned that up to try to prevent the same issue from occurring.

I suppose it's possible that it could have been damaged, though I tried to be very gentle in cleaning it (I even thought the previous one might have been damaged when I cleaned it). While it's possible, I think the odds are against both cards getting damaged in the exact same way to cause the same resolution issue I'm having.

theriko suggest I hook up to an external monitor and see what's up. I'm assuming to see if it's something with the card or something with my screen/connection. I'm still hoping it's just some random SLI mess up or something. I'll post back when I connect with an external.

 

Yea..

I mean I would see if you can send it back again, claim its faulty get a new one and this time don't do any cleanup at first just give it a go as it is. At least this way if it doesn't work you know its not because of you......

Also just a thought, but it could be MAYBE a bad ground with you powersupply, or a faulty power supply, or maybe the power connector on your mobo is damaged?

 

So I just plugged into an external monitor. Mixed results.

During boot up the external monitor was FINE. No weird artifacts on the side, no duplicate display at the bottom. However once booted into windows the monitor went blank (ala no signal, though it did not display a no signal message).

So this seems to point to an issue with my laptop possibly. Maybe something like you described Garandhere. Alternately, I still think something is whacked with a setting on the card. When I go into display properties, the drop down menu defaults to "multiple monitors" and maxes at 1440 x 900 resolution. Pre-replacement card it said either "default" or "plug and play" monitor and allowed me to go up to and beyond my native resolution.

Also just noticed, I can drag windows off to the right where they are obscurred by the artifacts on the right, I just can't drag it past the mouse cursor (the mouse cursor will not move into the artifact region but windows can be placed so they are inside it).

Also this card has (presumably) an SLI slot. Could that be causing some kind of problem?

 

Hey!

I had the EXACT same problem as you! I think...

Flashed the GPU using nvflash with some ty BIOS. When I turned the screen on crazy colors flew everywhere, but nothing that could make any sense.
So, I got on my friends computer, put a working GPU BIOS on a flash drive w/ nvflash and from memory flashed it.

Just turned the laptop on, waited 30 seconds. Typed nvflash -4 -5 -6 work.rom (enter)

y

y

Wait thirty seconds, remove USB device and restart.
Working perfectly

 

Ya, it sounds like you had a bios that wasn't working. I'm wondering if the bios I have now is still not 100% compatible with what I have. Perhaps it's too new and I need some bios that was released inbetween my original one and the one I have currently.

Sadly I don't know where to find that and this is getting very frustrated

 

Hate to bump, but need to make a decision today about whether to send the card back or keep it in it's non-100% state with the hope of resolving it. Any last minute input would be greatly appreciated. Even a simple "I think it's something that can be resolved/I think it's something that is permanent" could help.

Thank you again for the help though, great community here.

 

jhicks, if you have the exact same setup, any chance you could send thacker the bios you got that resolved it?

 

theriko, so do you think it's still some bios problem? and not a hardware issue (either the card or my laptop?)

 

sounds like your bios are not working, reflash it with a working bios then see what happens. I probably suggest you return the video card back again.

 

Problem is I"m having problems finding a working bios

In discussion with the seller now, might just send it back and save that cash for a new purchase, though I hate to have a perfectly good laptop be bricked just cause it's sans vid card