Precision M4400 Owner's Lounge *Part 2*

In my opinion, it is better to uninstall the old one first, because Windows sometimes tends to not accept older version of driver if newer is installed.

 

I booted into safe mode and used Guru3D DDU to uninstall then installed 337.88.
It feels faster, like it should, have a feeling this is going to do it, THANKS!
The file says it is for a desktop but it does load!
The version shows up in device manager as:
5/19/2014
9.18.13.3788

It is amazing how fast widows pop open with this driver!

Are you all running this one with Win 7 64 bit?
If not try it!

 

Oups, my mistake, i posted the link for a desktop version, the version of 337.88 for laptops is here http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/75992/en-us

I have read now in dell community forum, that following newer driver should be ok as well http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/84585/

You can experiment which one is better for you (both should be fixing your crashes issue).

I hope your problem will disapper.

 

I'll try those, 341.92 was what I'd been using for about a year, and early on it worked
fairly well. I think that Win update might have installed something that was not compatible.
342 was the 2016 version that I installed a few weeks ago.
I'll try 341.61 as you suggest.

 

Installed 341.61, clean boot, opened one IE11 tab and ran a 720p video.
After 30sec - 1 min the CPU utilization drops below 10% which is what I'm used to seeing
in IE11, it seems to use the video card for MPEG decoding.

Also interesting that I'm seeing both cores at 3 GHz, (2.8G CPU) so somehow IE11 is using dual IDA.

When I play the same video in Chrome, also at 720p, I rarely see even one core at 3GHz, 2.8 yes but the blips to 3 are so fast that you can barely see them. For about a minute only one core went to 3, then the other core went also but I don't think both at the same time. CPU utilization is about double at 15 to 20% in Chrome.

 

Re-read the last few pages.. I've rambled on about temp concerns enough.. lol
Sounds like you're getting some good advice here.

One thing.,
If and when your running 1080p at length, with ambient room temps above 72F., Consider have a descent cooling pad on hand to pushing some forced
air through the base. I took a little more effort in taping together a custom slip-fit, shrouded template.
Cheap.. and worth the time.
Made from some heavy construction paper.. I Attached the template section so only the fan(s) air could flow through to the surface of the template cutouts.

This helps greatly in targeting all the available air passages, located underneath the M4400's underside, where obvious vent passages exist.

Always happy to hear back about your conclusions.
Have fun and keep us posted on what your results.

 

Update after some extended everyday use:
It no longer crashes coming out of sleep, but often Fn arrow up/down no longer
works to change the brightness. Might be an unrelated problem?

It mostly does not crash to blue or black screen in everyday use - great!

You Tube in IE11 crashes IE11, restarts often crashes again - might not be the
video driver but it has been doing this for a very long time.

I've never had so much trouble with a Win 7 64B install.

Thanks, I will reread the last few pages.

 

Just noticed that the brightness control becomes inactive when the battery is low,
this is probably a feature?

Just had a full purple screen crash, with a few lines here and there, reboot and back to normal.

 

Another random crash, popped up message "display driver stopped working" twice, then
black screen, then tried to wake up but did a crash dump. Wondering if it needs a new
motherboard or if some other driver is not right.

 

Well for me no problem at all.
I use W10 and QX9300. I do not installed any specific driver, everything I use was detected and installed by W10.

I use it daily, started a new job with it waiting for a new computer and installed virtual machines with Virtual Box (especially a virtual Raspberry Pi to use python) and also VMware player (for a virtual MacIntosh).

The weather here is crazy, 32° inside the house and, yes, the computer is hot, but no crash at all.

And with an SSD, it is still faster than plenty of new computers using some HDD...