Graphics Problem

[crappycarper]

I am using a Dell XPS M1720 Laptop. The graphics card is NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GTX.

 

Some time ago while using the laptop it crashed. To cut a very long story short I had to reload Vista with the help on the Dell Technician.

 

However it became apparent the there was a problem loading the Graphics card driver. Every time the Technician tried to load the drivers the computer crashed.

 

Since then I can use the laptop but get a vertical set of Blue dots at start up and these dots can bee seen behind photographs and video.

 

I cannot set my laptop to the old resolution. The graphics card is listed as Standard VGA in device manager and it would appear the card is not recognised.

 

I have tried on several occasions to update the driver but it always crashes my machine. I have attached a copy of the stop code so you may be able to assist. I have removed the old driver before loading the new driver.

 

Any ideas would be most appreciated.

 

Thanks

Edited March 22, 2009 by Match

[Match]

Hi Carper

 

I had to reload Vista with the help on the Dell Technician

 

was this done over the phone?

 

Every time the Technician tried to load the drivers the computer crashed

 

This statement puzzles me? Was this at a shop? and if he was a technician the surely he didn't just leave you with an uninstalled GPU?

 

I have tried on several occasions to update the driver

 

By this do you mean you have clicked on the update tab in device manager? or have you been to the Dell site, located the correct drivers, Downloaded them and Installed them?

[Dalo Harkin]

It sounds to me that the GPU is suffering from Heat issues, not uncommon on laptops.

When you reinstalled the OS - was this done via a recovery partition?

[crappycarper]

Graphics Problem

 

Match

 

Thanks for the swift reply.

1) The reload was done over the phone.

 

2)The Technician was on the phone when the computer crashed. He opened zip files and expected them to self load. After 4 hours he could not stop the computer crashing every time he loaded the graphics drivers.

 

3) I have tried to update the driver from Device Manager with no result. I have been on to the NVIDIA website and downloaded the correct driver. When I load the driver the computer crashes.

 

Dalo:

I re-installed Vista from the disc provided with the laptop.

 

If it was a heat problem surely my problem would only happen when overheated. The issue with the Blue dots visible happens at startup.

 

I have attached a photo of the screen at startup. This is visible through the wallpaper and photo's and video.

 

Hope you can help

 

carper

[maynardvdm]

Hi

 

Go to this website : Drivers - Download NVIDIA Drivers

 

Then select your graphics card from the list, and correct OS, then download the latest drivers. Tell us if that fixes it.

[Match]

Just to add to Maynards post it might also be useful to try going into the device manager, to your Graphics card Properties and on the driver tab clicking to un-install the current drivers.

 

Windows should then recognise the GPU card as new hardware device and automatically install the drivers if that don't work

 

Do as above but the drivers you download should have a setup.exe file ignore the windows prompts and double click the setup file and it should install the drivers for you.

 

Please let us know how you get on, and what happen's.

[crappycarper]

Graphics Problem

 

I have been on the NVIDIA website before and downloades the drivers and my machine crashed. This time I went on the Dell website and entered my Service tag. I downloaded the driver to a folder in My Documents.

I opened and installed the driver. New Hardware was found and the driver installed. It recognised my GPU as GeForce Go 7950 GTX which is correct. To enable the changes I had to restart. When I restarted the computer crashed with the same BSOD as before. I have now tried several times to install the drivers but crashes each time. To be able to continue using my machine I had to do a System Restore to an earlier configuration. In this configuration the GPU is listed as standard VGA graphics adapter and not recognised.

[Tootech]

Is the BSOD error the same each time ie 0x000000050 ?

 

The official description of the 050 stop error is

 

Bug check 0x50 usually occurs after the installation of faulty hardware or in the event of failure of installed hardware (usually related to defective RAM, be it main memory, L2 RAM cache, or video RAM).

 

For reference, that info is taken from here

 

Bug Check 0x50: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

 

Looking at post no 4, and the piccy of your computer at startup - I'd say thats a hardware fault.

 

Add also not being able to load the drivers on a clean install, and nor could the Dell Tech - that seals it for me.

 

There is one more thing to check, have a look here

 

Error message when you start a Windows Vista-based computer: "STOP: 0x00000050 PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA"

 

If that doesn't help I'm inclined to think it s hardware fault and I'd get back on to the Dell tech team as they should be able to diagnose it for you.

[Dalo Harkin]

It sounds like heat has originally caused the issue, and it has damaged the GPU, whether it be the RAM on the GPU or the GPU itself.

Send it to DELL under warranty