GPU driver and black screen AW18

Anyone here having issues with the nvidia drivers and black screen with a non responding notebook ?

My AW18 dual 780m-s started acting up a few months ago when updating nvidia drivers. It install and as soon as the screen flashes for a sec all the lights turn off and then the screen goes black. Fan just idle and notebook just stays like that(when machine is cold fans speed up just a little). Even the HDD light is off. Only way to recover is force a shutdown.
Strange is that after restart windows does give a warning that there has been a forced shutdown but other then that the drivers are installed and so far all seems to work.

Have uninstalled and re-installed but same result. Turned SLI off before install and got the same result.
Its like when installing driver and SLI is turned off the primary GPU refuses to start and the notebook just goes into a frozen state.

Part of me is saying that it is driver related but am starting to think that it might be the GPU itself.

OS is win 7 64bit.

 

Wouldn't be surprised if it were a hardware issue with one or both the gpu's. I'd see if it will boot with the secondary gpu swapped over to the primary mxm slot. If it still won't boot you could try the method outlined here-

http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/3746/t/19528315

Is the laptop still under warranty? Also, will it boot reliably using onboard graphics?

 

He's right. Try swapping gpu and onboard iGPU

 

Sigh, sound the death knell for a GPU. I went through this, I did the following:

-took out both GPUs and turned on pc. In order to make sure it was working.

-put one GPU in main position, installed driver. If it worked GPU OK.

-Repeated with 2nd GPU in main slot. If one of the GPUs is malfunctioning it will show up in this test.

-If both cards pass than its a SLI cable problem.

Hopefully, your still under warranty and can get replaced. Remember, pc will function without problem on one GPU until you can get new one.

 

Amm i might have written it a bit wrong. GPU-s work. It is the driver update that but the notebook into a coma with a black screen and all fans at same speed. After forcing a shutdown (5 -10 sec holding power on button ) i am able to boot up again with the primary GPU (Driver install usually disable SLI ) into windows were i reactivate SLI and all works like nothing was wrong....until the next display driver update that is.

I might try to swap the GPU-s and see if that allows me to update drivers without setting the notebook into a coma state every time i run the nvidia update.
Might try a HDD with a fresh win install to rule out OS issue.

Lucky for me i extended my NBD warranty for a nother year.

 

Aren't you basically taking apart your whole laptop to get to the GPUs?

 

You need to dissassemble whole laptop in order to replace/swap GPUs

 

the biggest problem i have had is with antivirus blocking some of the install turn off all your antiviruses and try again

 

Sounds like the day 1 fallout nVidia driver that is burning laptops and videocards to me. I had this tested by some techs and they burnt through all the AW18's they had. So the issue was VERY easy to reproduce. 358.XX drivers can destroy a AW18 mainboard and sometimes the videocards. We have like a half dozen cases from myself alone. Thank nVidia for the day 1 fallout drivers you released and did not test !

 

A few days back i was using my AW at work and got a BSOD. notebook did not restart like most of the time on a BSOD. Also no error code. Read the text and said that issue with graphics card and contact tech support if it was the second time i saw this. Ok restarted....20 min on as i was just about to save a text document...BSOD. Same text. Restart....1h on BSOD again. After that restart i got the same BSOD right after logging into windows. It was at that time i was like " well F.... " Tried to restart again and all was fine. So far no BSOD

Strange part is it is not dumping the error to the minidump file. In one day i had 4 BSOD-d in total. Non of them were GPU load related as i was using the notebook with outlook, MS word and excel. A bit of draftsight but not for long periods.

so far no BSOD. There was a update for nvidia on my desktop yesterday so i will be able to update the notebooks drivers aswell. I bet it will just end on a black screen again.
Bad part is that if i send it to repair they might just rule it as a driver issue and send it back. The warranty does not cover software issues. Now if the BSOD would appear again that might show them that issue is hardware related.

 

Newer drivers are junk. I get that issue with 780M and 980M and GTX 980 if they are overclocked too high. Are your temps OK?

 

After building a desktop i have kept the 780m-s stock on my AW18. No OC. Temps are OK around 52°C idle and max i have seen in valley bench is 79°C.

I think i will try to use older driver to rule out hardware issues.

 

Looks like i found the problem. It was software related issue. I use Teamviewer for work a lot and have it installed on my AW18 and desktop. On my desktop it does not have the same effect (driver update). It does not allow some games to go fullscreen and some (world of tanks for example) even crashed at startup as long as teamviewer is open.
Seeing as it was messing with games on my desktop i did a test on my AW18 with TV closed and open. Every time TV was running in the background the notebook just crashed mid driver install and did not respond. With TV closed update went without a hiccup.

By running i mean that it was open but not connected to a partner

So if you have the same problem then you could try and close Teamviewer.