Help with 2 issues needed

Hi guys, need some help. I have 2 separate issues with my laptop which tech support has been unable to resolve. The first is an issue with my graphics card. About once a day, windows will crash, whether I'm on the internet or playing a game. I play WoW and Fallout: New Vegas. When this happens the computer is unresponsive, and I need to do a hard shutdown. Sometimes, whether playing a game or browsing the internet, my screen will go dark for a second or 2, and then come back on, giving me an error message that windows has recovered from a graphics driver problem. I've also experienced , while playing a game, a red flashing screen, and the only cure was to manually shut down the laptop.

Tech support has had me update to the A09 bios, from A08. Also wiped my graphics driver with drive sweep, and reinstalled from the dell website several times. Think I need a new video card?

The second issue is with my internet connection. I have the 5300 card. Whether I'm at my office, my home, or my brother's house, the longer I'm logged onto the wireless connection, the slower it becomes, until eventually I disconnect. This happpens in online games, as well as the internet. The cure is to restart my computer. I have also reinstalled the chipset driver as well as the 5300 driver several times to try and fix this issue, to no avail. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Tom

 

Hi Tp,
Have you checked what temps your graphics card is running at ?

 

Yep. Dell's tech support had me run a graphics test for 5 minutes, called GPU-Caps, and the highest temp recorded was 70 degrees Celcius. The tech said this was within the normal range for the 260.

 

Yes thats not high at all. Have you tried a fresh install of windows ?

 

I just tried furmark, and the gpu temp got to 85 degrees celcius. No, I haven't reinstalled windows, really don't want to do that. Thanks.

Tom

 

85 for Fumark is acceptable , i might be completely of the mark here, but you could always try re-seating the graphics card or have a Dell tech do it for you.

 

i think a reinstall of windows is a good idea, especially for the wireless problem, i had that problem before and never figured a way to fix it. but after reinstalling windows it was fine, but i ending up upgrading to the 6300 card anyways since it was cheap and i never had that problem again.

 

Yes personally i would start with a freh install of windows and work my way from there.

 

Thanks for the responses. Does the problem with the graphics card sound like I need a new one? My warranty runs through september.

 

most likely its a driver issue, but i'm not ruling out a bad card. just try a few different drivers and see if any of them help, sorry i don't have a nvidia card so i can't really recommend a driver.

 

Ok, so I reinstalled windows, started playing wow, and got a BSOD. The message said something about a graphics driver timing out. When the machine rebooted, the error message said that the nvidia graphics driver stopped working. This is very frustrating.

 

hmm did you try out any other drivers? and tried other games?

 

You said you re-installed drivers several times from the dell site, I would run CC Cleaner to clear any out registry errors just incase. Have to tried rolling back to a previous driver version that worked ok for you? might be worth testing before replacing the graphics card?

 

I think recover your windows partition
may be usful.

 

The only driver I have used for the graphics card is the one on the dell site. I've downloaded the newest driver from the nvidia site, I'll see if that makes a difference. Thanks for all the good ideas.

Tom

 

I had this issue before on my desktop, it was a driver issue.

I would get ingame freezes with nothing responding anymore (hard reset), and sometimes just plani crashes.

What happens in windows 7, when compared to an older windows version, is that your gfx driver in case of an error will basically reload. When this happens, everything appears to be frozen.

You can try a couple of things, when everything freezes, try waiting for a couple of minutes, big chance everything will come back and you will see an icon and a message the gfx driver recovered from an error and restarted.
Also look in your Event log, to see if you can see anything more detailed in there.

These kind of errors could very likely indicate a problem with either the driver, or the graphics card itself (in your case, reading the symptom, i'm inclined to say the latter).

 

I had the same issue with the most recent gpu driver they had up on dell's website.

So... here's what I did to solve my problem: I went ahead and installed an older driver which was 186.47, A00 ( release date: 9/23/2009 ) and it can be found here:

Drivers and Downloads

I hope this will resolve your problem.

Good luck!

 

@jiggymf. those are exactly the messages I get and the behavior I observe. What I've done is gone to nvidea's site and downloaded their latest driver for the 260. I hope this resolves the issue. Thanks for your reply.

@roxy...thanks for providing me with that link, if the newest drivers don't work, I will roll back to the one you provided. thanks all

Tom

 

If the latest driver does not work, try to go back a few versions. Try a couple

 

Just a quick update to the thread After reinstalling windows, new nvidia drivers, reinstalling directx, dellianware decided to replace my graphics card. The tech came and did it this morning. He told me that the gpu had some burnt areas on it, said it's a known issue with the 260. He had NO thermal paste, and just used the remnants from the old gpu. Should I repaste? Looks easy to do. I asked him about the lack of paste, and he said it shouldn't be a problem. Can that be right?


Tom

 

Yes, you should repaste, that is not right that he did not re paste it. Buy some mx-3 and repaste it yourself or call Dell and tell them to do it considering their lack of consideration to your laptop. The guide in Inap's sig is really easy to follow.

 

Thanks Matt