M18xR1 - black screen after 765m sli upgrade

first off, i did a search about this on this forum and online, but didn't find anything. could be the search tools and google. who knows.

anyway, i have a m18x r1 orginally with 460m sli. i bought two 765m for sli and installed them yesterday. powered up and the keyboard lights up and bd-rom makes noise like they always do, but nothing on the screen. no bios, no startup screen, nothing. no beeps either.

took it apart again to make sure everything was plugged in correctly and it was. started up with the same result.

took it apart again and put one 460m in the primary slot and started up. screen came up like normal except with generic windows drivers. reinstalled the latest geforce drivers, looked up driver mods to see if the one 765 could be recognized, reinstalled and rebooted with the 460m and 765m both being recognized now.

went to sleep because it was late and took pride that i could break down a m18x without even watching mr. fox's youtube video anymore.

so what do i do now to troubleshoot? try the 765m in the secondary slot in the primary slot?

thanks!

 

It may have been a situation with the driver not functioning correctly causing the black screen. If I were a betting man, I would bet that is why it happened. Did you uninstall the NVIDIA drivers before installing 765M? If not, I suspect that is what caused it. The OS did not know what to do or was confused about the 765M cards being there.

You want to run Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) and use the option to "replace GPU" to strip everything out completely first and shut down. You will need to mod the INF before the driver will install. The hardware ID of your M18xR1 with 765M will not be supported by the standard INF. While your 765M is visible in Device Manager, make note of the hardware ID because you will need to know that for the driver INF mod.

Using the process outlined in this post: [Quick Tips] GPU Driver INF Modding for 'Aftermarket Upgrades' you can likely figure out how to do this by substituting your hardware ID for one of those in the examples.

 

mr. fox, thanks for the quick reply.

i like to fly by the seat of my pants so i didn't uninstall any drivers.

so should i uninstall the drivers and then reinstall? with the modded .inf file i was able to get the 765m recognized that i left in the secondary slot along with the 460m. are you saying that since one 765m is recognized the other one will be too when installed?

the only issue is that i didn't even see a POST screen. i thought any video card will get you there. am i wrong? is alienware different?

thanks!

 

If the machine would not POST with 765M SLI, try it with one 765M in the primary slot. If it still does not POST then try the other 765M in the primary slot. It could be some sort of compatibility issue. It could also be one of the two GPUs is no good. If it will not POST with either GPU in the primary slot and nothing in the secondary slot, then it seems like some sort of compatibility issue. If it works with one and not the other, the one it does not POST with needs to be exchanged.

If the driver was correctly installed with the INF modded for 765M the driver will work for both 765M and you should not--should as is probably not versus absolutely not--need to reinstall the drivers.

 

So I've taken apart my m18x so many times I've lost count and I still have the same problem. I tried both 765m cards in the primary slot with nothing in the secondary slot and same blank screen. I do notice that the screen does turn on but no POST and no beeps. Just a blank screen. When I put the 460m back in it goes back to normal with no problems. Both 765m in the secondary slots are recognized and the modded drivers recognize both 765m cards with all the right specs. In the GeForce experience the bios looks correct so I don't think anybody mucked with these cards before me.

It seems like everyone else upgrades cards at will with no problems. I did see on tech inferno someone named tah003 had the same problem with the same 765m cards in a m18x but I don't know if he got it worked out.

HALP!!!

 

Did the r1 come with some sort of optimus switch? Also which brand of card did you get?

 

Yeah there is a function key switch that requires a reboot and when it does, the bios doesn't recognize the dedicated graphics cards (they are greyed out. Actually it says not available) and only the integrated intel card is available. When you get into windows again hitting the function key combo and rebooting only lets the dedicated graphics be recognized in the bios. The integrated intel graphics is greyed out and you can't choose it because it says not available or something like that.

The cards are blue so is that dell or clevo or something else?

 

They are clevo. Dell cards are green. it could be possible that the bios on the cards is not recognized. You might have to put 1 of your 460's back in and then install the 765 in the second slot and see if you can get a vbios dump off of it and then put in a request at T|I to svl7's vbios request thread and see if he thinks anything is a miss on those cards.

 

Thanks. We will see...

 

Can you link where you got them?

 

Hmm... does sound like a vBIOS issue to me, too. Maybe 765M needs to be a Dell GPU-specific vBIOS (unlike 780M). Maybe an Alienware 18 owner with 765M would be willing to dump their Dell vBIOS so you could flash it to the Clevo GPU. Could be defective cards, but not often to see both GPUs defective... possible, but not probable.

If you have an unlocked system BIOS you can change the display from PEG or IGFX to SG mode and put one card in the primary PCI-e slot. This will let Windows boot with the Intel IGFX, but will give you access needed to see and flash the discrete GPU. Just remember to set it back to PEG when you're done. The discrete GPUs will not be utilized for anything when SG mode is enabled... they'll just be visible and accessible. (Caution: do not change other display settings in the BIOS. Leave everything else alone and don't use options other than PEG, IGFX and SG for the primary display adapter setting. Your system may fail to POST if you change to something else.)

 

ok, so i will unlock the m18x bios. is that from techinferno also? i have a 460m in the primary and a 765m in the secondary that windows and geforce experience sees. do i have to put the 765m in the primary to do a vbios dump and possible flash? are all the vbios flash instructions on techinferno as well?

here is where i got the cards - Alienware 17 18 M17x M18x Graphics Video Card NVIDIA GTX 765M 2GB GDDR5 MXM 3 0B | eBay

thanks!

 

Yes to all the above questions... look in the General Notebook Discussions sub-forum for NVIDIA flashing and the Alienware M18x sub-forum for modded system BIOS threads.

However, you may not need to use an unlocked BIOS if your system boots with the 460M in the primary PCI-e slot and the 765M in the secondary slot and you can see the 765M card. If that is the case, you can flash the 765M vBIOS that way... then move it to the primary slot to see if it works. If it does, install and flash the second card.

Hey, one thing that needs to be considered that I had not thought of mentioning... Once you get this sorted, have a look at your 460M heat sinks. If they have a sticker showing 75W be aware of that if the 765M cards seem to run hot, you may need to invest in 100W NVIDIA heat sinks to keep things cool. They are still available as I just ordered some. Parts have shipped, should be delivered on Monday. I will confirm here in this thread it upon delivery, but each heat sink should also include the support plate, part # 3MHHT.

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I am also curious about why you decided to buy 765M instead of 680M or 780M. Was it a budgetary constraint? Although, 765M is a really nice step up from 460M. It is a little bit stronger than 580M/675M, but it's not nearly as potent as 680M or 780M.

 

I was getting ready to flash the vbios when I decided to use gpu-z to check the 765m. this is what I got -

is this accurate? did someone already try and flash the dell bios to a clevo card and mucked it up? does the dell bios not work with a clevo card?

mr. fox, I went with the 765m because I got two of them for $430 total. a single 680m or 780m was way pricier than that. doesn't look like a good deal now though. :cry:

 

so I flashed the vbios to the stock dell 765m one.

I haven't put it in the primary slot and boot it up just yet because now I'm getting a code 43 error.

yikes!

 

its because sli is enabled and the 765m isn't compatible with the 460m, completely normal. I would say give it a shot worst case scenario you will have to flash the clevo bios if it doesn't work. I think from that picture that looks like someone mucked up the bios already.

 

yeah, i think and hope that the different cards in different slots is the problem. hopefully i'll move the 765m to the primary slot tonight and it'll boot up, finally.

wish me luck!

i will tell you all the warnings in nvflash about device id mismatch, gpu mismatch, etc. were a little frightening. i typed...

nvflash -i1 -4 -5 -6 dell765m.rom

...and held my breath every time it asked me to confirm my choices.

i'll keep you posted.

 

so i reinstalled the 765m with the dell vbios into the primary slot and still a black screen with no beeps and no post. also the screen looks like it doesn't even power on. in other words i don't see the led's or whatever around the edges that i was seeing with the clevo vbios.

i was going to try one more thing before sending these puppies back. i downloaded the vbios from techpowerup and i was wondering if someone could pm me their own dell 765m vbios just to make sure it's the right one. i assume it is correct from techpowerup, but you never know.

anyone?

 

Did you ever get this to work. I ordered the same cards and same thing happened to me. Just going to send them back unless something gets figured out.