M4600 FirePro M5950 BSOD atikmdag.sys

My M4600 just started having display driver restarts and now is having BSODs with reference to atikmdag.sys. I haven't changed anything recently. Any suggestions? Is this hardware?

 

This problem has been ongoing since I originally posted. I was having frequent display driver restarts so Dell replaced the system board and display board. Since then, I've still been having problems. There was another display driver restart as well as BSOD involving atikmag.sys (usually when watching video with vlc), also dxgmms1.sys (when watching video with wmp) and atikmpag.sys (when watching a youtube video). The crashes all seem to be video related.

I deinstalled and reinstalled the latest ati driver from the dell website. I also updated the bios to a08 since the replacement system board came with a05. That didn't make any difference.

I am very unhappy with this computer. I'm getting at least one BSOD per day. Anyone with a suggestion of what to try next?

 

I'd remand a replacement computer from Dell. Usually when you go through multiple component replacements they're open to the idea.

 

I received a follow up email from dell tech support asking if the problem had been resolved. I said no and told him I wanted a replacement system. Let's see what happens.

 

I would try and do a driver sweep of your GPU drivers and reinstalling them

 

I deinstalled the driver by removing ATI Catalyst and then uninstalling the driver from the device manager. The display was VGA. Then I reinstalled the ATI driver. I've done that before with no difference. Do you know of another method?

 

Okay you are having a known issue with Dell vBios cards and CCC. You can do the ghetto method of using an official Dell CCC that is stable, and extract the newest ATI driver BUT DO NOT INSTALL IT. Go to device manager and target the extracted INF files and it will update the driver while keeping the older working CCC. My Alienware M17xR2 has this issue. OR you can see if Dell has an updated vBios for your M5950.

Edit: Word of caution, flashing your vBios can possibly brick your card, proceed with caution. Hence this is the reason why I don't want to flash my cards to the latest Dell ones, just to install latest CCC is not a good excuse.

 

Thanks for the reply. I will send your suggestion to Dell and see what they do about it.

 

I'm not having much luck with Dell. They are still saying I should reimage my system.

I went into catalyst and looked at the date of the vbios. It's from 2/2/2011. Catalyst itself is from 26/9/2011.

I ran the AMD driver detect and it says the graphics hardware is Radeon HD 6xxxM Series and the best driver is catalyst_mobility_64-bit-util.exe. I have no idea if I should try installing it.

I'm unclear where a new version of vbios would come from. I thought when you installed an INF, it was just a driver.

Thanks for your help.

PS. Dell, if you're reading this, please support your product!

 

I heard back from Dell today. They said to remove the ati driver, use driver sweeper, and reinstall the intel and ati drivers. If that doesn't work, the only solution is to reinstall the OS. So I did that and it didn't fix the problem. I had another BSOD.

Please clarify what you said above. Which ati driver should I use? The ATI driver detection is what I wrote above. Will that install a new vbios?