8600GT will crash for about 10 seconds or so while gaming and then recover, any ideas?

I have an Inspiron 1520 notebook with the Nvidia 8600GT graphics card, and under normal operation it works fine but when I try to play more demanding 3-D games and what not on it sometimes it will occasionally crash and recover about 10-15 seconds later. It is very annoying and I get smoked on COD4 online when this happens and it has been happening for a couple weeks now. Is this a software problem or could it be a hardware issue? I know it isn't related to heating as I have a Belkin cooling pad that works wonders. Thanks in advance!

 

maybe check if you have the lastest drivers for the graphics card.

 

your card may have a stuttering problem which appears to be somewhat common among Nvidia Geforce 8xxx cards, Nvidia has said they are working on a fix but are yet to come out with one. Here's a thread about it

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=207594

 

It could also be overheating

 

If it is the stuttering issue, it should be replaceable under warranty, correct?

 

I tried to chat with dell today about this, and this the honest to god answer I got from the chat session.

4:02:03 PM Agent CSS_TIFFANY_109511
Nicholas the video card you have does support the game but not for a long period of time.
4:02:20 PM Customer (me)
Are you kidding me
4:02:26 PM Customer (me)
A half hour is not a long time
4:04:01 PM Agent CSS_TIFFANY_109511
No it's not a long time but it's to long for the video card to support that game.
4:04:11 PM Customer (me)
I mean I don't mean to be rude
4:04:18 PM Customer (me)
but where are you getting that answer from
4:04:44 PM Customer (me)
because there is absoultly no way they would design a video card to only last a half hour before stuttering out
4:05:00 PM Customer (me)
I think it is due to a possibly faulty video card

 

WTF? I can't believe a rep told you that. Absolute BS. That is ridiculous.

 

I believe its overheating.
when it cools, it goes back to normal, right?
and does it display something like...

"nvadsadasdasdaswhatver.dll recovered from... blablaa" ?

 

It just says simply in a little box in the bottom right corner in the task bar. "The graphics card has crashed but recovered. After voicing my irritation with Dell they said they are going to replace the graphics card and hopefully that will take care of this issue.

 

when you get the new card make sure to install 169.01 i think it is from laptopvideo2go.com...huge performance jump...or more like noticable

 

I had the same problem, just update the drivers to 169.xx.

 

I've read again and again that you can't upgrade the graphics cards on these laptops. I always took this to mean that they were in some way integrated with the motherboard.

I'd be interested, therefore, to know how the technician goes about replacing a bad card. Somehow, I suspect that it doesn't involve replacing the motherboard.

 

xx = ??

I've 8600M GT on Vostro 1500 which has same problem in NFS MW w/ Vista HP

 

I had the same problem as the OP, except my video wouldn't recover unless I hit Alt+Tab to go back to Windows and then move back into the game.

The problem happened with Half Life 2, and I was able to figure out the problem is with Windows Desktop Manager.

The problem is that hl2 disables WDM, and every now and then Windows asks hl2 if it's OK to turn it on. When that request happens the graphics crash. Solution was to turn off WDM while playing

You may wanna try that, but it would be a good idea to check Windows Event Viewer and check for errors and warnings that happen at about the time your game crashes - that's how I discovered my problem with WDM.

 

Windows Desktop Manage service ??

 

My bad, it's 'Desktop Windows Manager'
To disable, Click start and on the search box type services and hit Enter.

Once the services windows shows up, right click Desktop Windows Manager and select Stop. Once you are done gaming you can re-enable it the same way.

Hope this also works for you guys.

 

xx = 28 in my case..
169.28

Btw, this happened to me with HL2, JediAcademy, COD4 and Crysis...

Problem seems to be gone, I used to play for around 10 minutes, then crash every 5...
which got utterly annoying.

Hope this can be of help

 

Thanks, i'll try them

Anothe Q: Should I uninstall the current driver in Safe Mode ?

 

do this:

uninstall the driver in standard mode...
then, unplug the ethernet, or internet cable or wifi
then restart,.. you can restart in normal mode,
run driver cleaner
(select nvidia) and press start

restart again...
install the 169.28

restart?
change ur res back to normal
and thats it.

 

where's the link for driver cleaner ?

 

its just the drivers , i had exact same problem with cod4 and updated to 169.04 and latley 169.28 and its not happened once since

download the driver and the modded inf, and follow this guide exactly and dont miss any steps

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=11997

good luck

 

Do I uninstall the previous driver ??

 

yes sir.
<10 words?>

 

Polsta, how does COD4 play on your laptop (we have the same one)?

Have you tried any other games, and can you recommend any to me?

I'd also be interested to know your settings please, thanks!

I'm just a little worried about the power of the graphics card, and the resolution of the screen (i haven't actually got my laptop yet).

 

Tried a fair few drivers over the last month with CoD4 (which accounts for 99% of my gaming). Currently on the 169.28 - seem to be the most stable even with an OC of 600 Core, 440 Memory.

 

How do I get laptopvideo2go to work.

 

Download the driver AND the modified INF file from laptopvideo2go, extract the driver and replace the included INF with the one you downloaded and run the Set-up.exe

Instructions are on laptopvideo2go

 

Sorry, I'm newbie

Do I install new driver manually or using nvidia setup ?

Thanks.

 

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