M14x and Steam problems

So i've had my M14X for just over a week now and as much as i like the hardware i've had a few problems that i'm willing to look past (such as the GPU not working for the first few days) but now my problem is with Steam. It seems to never want to work correctly. It will occasionally work and load a game but then when some games load they are forever stuck on a loading screen or they just crash and cause the Steam client to crash along with it.

Anyone had any of these problems? As you can imagine it's a very annoying process to be going through when you just want to play a game on your gaming laptop and it won't work. I was round a friends house last night and i spent almost 4 hours trying to get a game to work and it didn't even load up or when it did it would hang and crash.

Is anyone else having these problems? My desktop never had any problems such as this so i really don't know what to do. I've deleted the .blob file, i've restarted my machine after every crash, i stop programs running in the background, i whitelist every game i can possibly whitelist, I've got the most recent drivers (295.xx) I've reinstalled Steam several times and i've verified each games cache within Steam. Origin occasionally launches games but also not all the time.

I'm really at a loss, i honestly don't know what else i can do to try and get games working.

My specs: M14X i7 2670QM (turbo boost off), 1.5GB GT555M, 128GB Crucial M4 SSD, 500GB HDD, 4GB 1600MHz RAM.

Thank you in advance for any help i get, i hope it's something with me just being stupid.

Edit: The BIOS is A08 and there is no overclocking on the GPU.

 

Ok so i've deleted all the files, everything including the game data. I've reinstalled Steam and still the problem still persists. Steam is installed on my secondary HDD rather than my SSD (I use that as my C: Drive) I took apart the laptop this morning to make sure that the HDD was connected correctly and it hasn't slipped out of place as sometimes the drive disappears and it seemed that the connection was tight and there was no way it could've fallen out.

I'm willing to try anything to get it working - as you can imagine after spending over £1000 on something you'd expect it to work. As i said in the OP i've had it for over a week now and i've only managed to get about 2 hours gaming out of this machine TOPS the rest of the time me using this machine has been trying to get it to work - something that hasn't been an easy task. I really don't want to call Dell up and return this machine as i really like it but it seems to be looking that way.

Over 60 views and not one single bit of help? Please, please, please can someone suggest anything - I'm at a loss and i really don't know what to do. I've never once experienced this on my desktop so i don't know what to do. Can someone please shed some light. I've searched google for countless hours and still nothing.

 

Might sound daft, but specifically what games are you having difficulty running, what error messages are you getting? Do you have Windows on one HD and Steam on another and the laptop is having issues with the 2? Have you checked for virus's?
Windows up to date?

Sorry for all the questions, but it seems VERY unlikely that everyone with an M14X manages to run games but yours can't. Having had issues with my M14X with games on and off, the issues always seem down to software, NOT my laptop.
EG... Deadspace 1 works, but Deadspace 2 needed ALL .exe files whitelisting with Nvidia.
Total War, needs the most up to date Video drivers, however then needs a fix editing in the script files for the games, Except Shogun, which will run on Max, except DX11...
The Witcher 2, which people go on and on, that our laptop CANNOT run past Medium, yet using a variety of specific settings you CAN run on Ultra, same with Skyrim.

Crysis 2 is the ONLY game I have been unable to run and it seems, this was due to it being a CD/DVD game, I later returned and intend to try on Steam at some point, but again for some reason, it wouldn't pick up the Nvidia card...

Hope above helps

 

I have run into installing/reinstalling steam game issues in the past. I must say that I don't trust it. I have had it reinstall games with addons (when the whole purpose of uninstalling the game was to dump the addons and start fresh) despite me going in and deleting files manually after the uninstall.

Also. . . I have never known ANYONE who has run steam off a different drive that doesn't have windows on it. . . so I can't say for sure. . . but that COULD be an issue. Again, not positive, but Steam is already a very finicky program to begin with, so it would not surprise me in the least if someone said that was the cause of their problems.

 

steam gets funny if you dont run it off the c drive for some reason also is the hdd where its installed were the cd drive was? maybe a sata one speed problem

 

The only problem I have with Steam is that half the time the layout is all messed and/or the images don't load.

But I bought Deux Ex:HR AND Portal 2 for under 30$ a few weeks ago, I won't complain.

 

i had similar problems until i ran check disk through windows. never had a problem with steam again after that.

 

Well my m14x completely died last night i turned it on and at the log in screen i was greeted with an error message something about a 'RDC' being unavailable so rather than try to fix it i just went through a complete reninstall of windows.

Steam being on my E: shouldn't be a problem as i'm doing the same in my desktop. I'm going to assume everything is ok now but if i get similar problems i'll call up dell and see what they can do about it. I don't want to return it (and i probably wont) even though it's given me all these problems i'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and assume it's just mine.

 

I'm pretty sure I run Steam off of my D: drive at home, but Steam can be finicky sometimes. Try installing Steam on your C: drive and using Steam mover to move the actual games to the D: drive.

Steam Mover - traynier.com