M1330 nvidia driver issues

[Nalada]

When my machine comes out of hibernation I now often see coloured blocks across the top 1/4 or so of the screen (when the screen is meant to be black).

Also I had a couple of crashes - one lately when the machine seemed to have gone into hibernation - and then it suddenly crashed and rebooted.

Months later and the machine seems to have failed due to a graphics problem - won't boot. Guess those were the first symptoms.

[parvez]

I had the same problem. Suddenly laptop will stop responding and will display horizontal colours of the rainbow, restart and Bios screen also does not show up, only horizontal colours of the rainbow.

Once in a while i was starting up fine and vista had reported "hardware problem with Graphics card or GPU driver problem"

I called XPS dell support and they sent in a dispatch for motherboard replacement as the GPU comes soldered onto the motherboard.

after that no issue till now, but once Visa gave a message saying Graphics card driver stopped responding but has recovered.

I am just worried, I have the latest drivers for the GPU

Any idea whats the issue as many have found the same problem
I have not done any over clocking or anything, nor do i play games just normal IE, word etc.

[Nalada]

I am pretty sure the graphics chip is not soldered to the motherboard on my machine - I think it is the chip in a socket at the RHS when you invert the laptop (front side still to you) under the heat pipe (nearer to the fan than the other two chips under the heatpipe. A more likely reason for replacing the motherboard with this problem is that the problem could be the chip or the motherboard and swapping both reduces the chance of having to make a second visit.
[Edit - I was probably wrong when I wrote the above. It is probably the cpu which is socketed]

Another possible cause might be the cable to the screen, especially where it goes through the hinge. I tried to exclude this by testing with a second monitor on the VGA port (using the FN-Fn key combination to try and change screens) but I didn't get any signal. However, the machine might still go through the motions of booting in that case. Perhaps HDMI is the default though.

I have emailed Dell support now and hope they can fix it in the next couple of days.

[Nalada]

I also posted on this issue in the lounge at:
~XPS M1330 owners lounge~

and I see we have another victim posting at:
M1330 Display Issue (Vertical Lines on Reboot & Crash & Vertical Lines)

[Nalada]

And gimmespeed seems to be another victim: Windows Vista error? Display driver has stopped responding...

[Chuckles]

I've had an intermittent GPU problem (see my recent posts for details). It will become permanent at the most inconvenient time. Dell will replace the whole motherboard (mine was replaced while I was traveling in India). No real need to back up data for this reason since there is probably nothing wrong with your HD. Of course data should always be backed up in any case.

The way Dell had me test whether it could be the screen, cable etc is to power off and then hit Fn-power. This starts some low-level tests that are independent of the BIOS and GPU. There are various beeps and blinking lights, but then my screen showed solid colors (green, blue, red. yellow...) for a while. The support person said that this meant the screen and the connecting cable were working fine, so the problem was in the GPU.

[Nalada]

Thanks for the tip - I tried Fn-Power and it obviously went through a different sequence than a standard boot (more flashing of the blue LEDs, no beeps) but the screen ended up the same vertical multi-coloured lines. At that time the Caps lock LED is flashing and the Bluetooth LED is on.
(I am kind of hoping it is the motherboard and not the screen as I might end up with a newer revision motherboard if that is changed - and I am happy with the Toshiba screen so if that is changed there is a possibility I would be less satisfied (if it were CMO or if it had any dead pixels).
Anyway - I should know in a day or two.

[d01]

Hi guys,

have the same problem. I'm getting these multicolored vertical lines while booting. sometimes when I reset and reboot the machine I get a corrupted bios screen which would indicate Vista independent HW fault...

I'm running a dual boot with Linux. And interestingly the linux installation works fine. Which contradicts the previous observations. (Haven't run it for a longer period though...)

Vista in Safe mode runs with no problems. Vista in normal mode with uninstalled nVidia drivers runs with no problems. After I install the Dell nVidia drivers the issue comes back which would indicate a driver problem.

So now I really don't know what could be the problem. Sooner or later I will have to call the Dell Support and let them deal with this.

[d01]

It looks to me like the fan has died on mine and that's causing overheating of the whole machine... Can anyone confirm a dead fan?

[Nalada]

In my case the fan had started making some additional noise - I think intermittently rubbing on it's housing - but I don't think the problem with the graphics was directly related. e.g. the machine still had the graphics problem when booting from cold, and I don't think a transient over-heat had burnt out the graphics because the graphics problem was intermittent at first.

Anyway - Dell should be here tomorrow with a new motherboard - hopefully that will fix it.