Dell Studio 1558 Video driver issue/ BIOS

Well it started once again and as the last time fury, left with the same issues. It is the quest to give my year old laptop a new video life and the battle begins...

NOTE: Any help and suggestions appreciated.

1. Started with uninstalling drivers as below steps:-

• Uninstalled Nvidia Phyx in normal mode.
• Uninstalled ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5470 driver in normal mode.
• System restarted. Entered safe mode and using Driver sweeper 3.2.0, analyzed and cleaned both Nvidia Phyx and ATI Display drivers.
• Ran CCleaner in safe mode.
• System restart to normal mode.

This gave me screenshot as below.

​

2. Now the time to install the fresh driver for both ATI and Nvidia. :smile:

• Downloaded latest driver from ATI Driver website, 11-11_mobility_vista_win7_32-64_ccc.exe
• Downloaded latest driver from NVIDIA PhysX website, PhysX-9.11.1107-SystemSoftware.msi
• Installed NVIDIA PhysX.
• Installed ATI Driver.
• Both installed without any error.
• Restarted the machine.

3. Hoping for the best and as the windows logo came, seems something went wrong and new driver not installed.

4. Still thought to let the Win 7 do its duty and load. But when clicked the AMD Catalyst™ Control center, its like remembering the old days when whatever you do your only option is to install the old version of the video driver. And no change in the Device Manager video driver version and properties .

​

5. So now left with some questions...

• Why always this happens ?
• Are the driver uninstall steps wrong ?
• What is the latest stable video driver for my laptop (Config given in sig) ?
• What is the latest BIOS for my laptop ( Currently BIOS: Ver 1.00 BIOS A12 PARTTBLr is showing in dxdiag, but Dell technical support said it is A18 which is latest. Which i think is wrong information ) ?
• Any good link for stepwise guide to check Throttling.

Wrong Links provided by Dell technical support for latest drivers

LINKS: VIDEO DRIVERS LINK Drivers and Downloads | Dell [India]
BIOS: VERSION LINK Drivers and Downloads | Dell [India]

So, before I take any further steps need some suggestions...


Thanks

 

meanwhile, I get suggestions to my laptop issues.

I saw the settings in GPU-Z.0.5.6 for the default vga in laptop, and it is DAM hot with only Firefox and antivirus running.

​

Tried once more to directly install driver from C:\ATI\Support\11-11_mobility_vista_win7_32-64_ccc\Bin64\Setup.exe. But in vain.
So finally reverted back to driver suggested by Dell... version 8.742.0.0. Atleast it is working.

 

qmrneo, let me just start by saying "Thank you" as i have read so many of your posts regarding ATI 5470 and the games it plays above 30fps, it sorted my "Games to play list" for a while . Altho i do not have a DELL Laptop I do have a very similar laptop to yours.

I too had a pain in the updating my ATI card , but after alot of google and trial and error i think ive cracked it !

Driver Packaging Version 8.85.6-110524a1-119714E
Catalyst Version 11.5
Provider ATI Technologies Inc.

Like yourself i did all of the same steps , removing drivers then safe mode then CCleaned : installed a new ati driver.... error on install, but it seemed to almost go ok. Rebooted - Cata wouldnt load !! Hmmm ok, guess i didnt uninstall something .. so repeated the process making sure it was done in safe mode also...again ... same problem. One last final attempt in vain to update my 5470 so i could play dirt 3 without this dam red sun bug ! I uninstalled it ALL again, ccleaner, safe mode ectect then installed the current driver available on my Laptop manufa' website, this must be a year old by now !!! ( no one wants old drivers eh ) so after installing that, rebooted and ta daa ... im back to square one...i thought meh might just try and update anywhoo, downloaded 11.5b from ati's site went to install , selected custom install , so i could see what would be updated ect ect, checked all of the boxes for everything to be updated and bam...it installed with a nice big green tick !!.... i wasnt quite sure if it would work but i went ahead and rebooted and im still using that driver a few days later with no problems and an increased perforamce for most new games - Happy chappy .

No doubt this will not help you ( sods law ) but i hope it wasnt too much of an eye sore to read , keep updated on how it goes

 

Try Guru3d driver sweeper after uninstalling.

 

Hi,
1st: That 93c temp is way to high for just browsing and antivirus.
You can imagine what gaming temps must be.
To me you'd be shortening the life of the chip running temps like that.
Are fans actually working in your laptop?

2nd: The reason that AMD/ATI driver from AMD/ATI site fails is because of Dell!
Dell won't give permision to AMD/ATI to add their ID to the Mobility Catalyst driver.
Basically Dell want to handle the graphic driver them self.
But this is a fail, dell doesn't update their graphic driver often enough.
Perfect example is the 1 year old driver they tell you to use.
New games at some point need newer drivers to play correctly.

You can manually mod the current day driver to work in your laptop if you poke around the net enough and read, but you shouldn't have to as it's Dells responsibility to provide you with CURRENT drivers.
Nag Dell to update their graphic driver or let AMD/ATI ad their ID to the Catalyst Mobility driver package.

 

Why you installing nVidia drivers for ATI graphics is unknown, don't do that.
Drivers from ATI website works without any problems, just install correct one.
Normal "browsing" temp should be 52-55.
If yours is 95 and you not blocking any vents, thay are blocked by dust inside the vents.
I play COD MW3 on full spec and never had more than 85

 

glad to know you followed the 30FPS.

 

I gave a try to that, but no luck.....

 

I agree , fans are running all the time and noise i can hear from some distance. And also a got solution.

 

I installed only the ATI driver from the ATI driver support site as i mentioned in the above posts. Ya for temp, its not good. I cleaned the air vents, but issue is not resolved.

 

So yesterday I will mark the day when something acceptable has happened and after half day hard work in google and posting, able to RESOLVE THE ISSUES. Also came to know some facts.

Monitoring the temperature of CPU and GPU using applications FurMark_1.9.1, GPU-Z.0.5.6, RealTemp, Core Temp and found they are really going out of boundaries with not so demanding application only. Tried to keep the vents as easy air flow as possible, but still the temperature is not in control. And then with no other option left called the DELL technical support team.

Initially they were not accepting that this is a issue. And this is a normal behavior. But how can it be at room temperature of 18-22 degree c and using normal browsing the temp can make fan yell like a motor. They told me to run the diagnostics test and pc checkup (Dell support center application) to check if any hardware failure is showing. But no issue found. And after a hour of giving facts they accepted to send a technician and replace the part. Will be sharing the details after.

Main issue : video driver upgrade.
IMPORTANT:. Please don’t think it as a complete reference. This is collection of information which i leaned and gathered during my various quests. Hope it helps all.

Let me make it a questionnaire to keep it simple and solutions to some frequent issues.

Why to keep the drivers always updated ?
It helps in improving system security, performance and stability. And it feels good to be up-to-date

Why the Dell do not update the driver on the dell support site itself ?

• Updates with latest drivers on the dell support portal will create issue for dell to raise the support bar for the upcoming issues (if any or can say almost always) with continuous updates( by ATI driver) and hence cost.
• Dell want to handle the graphic driver them self. ( correctly mentioned by smashly )

So what exactly ATI do in that?
As Dell do not add the latest driver, AMD/ATI do not add the INF to the normal driver. As i found in the latest driver for my HD 5470 ( 11-11_mobility_vista_win7_32-64_ccc.exe). Kind of some hidden understanding between the two.

What are some new steps to uninstalling video drivers ?
Definitely i have tried a lot of permutation and combinations to make them work for quite some months (when ever feel the urge to update the video drivers) and all the time came across some new things. So consolidating
the uninstall process from my previous Divine guide to gaming and something that came across yesterday.

​

Which are the driver that worked for me from ATI driver site ?
Its a download using the Catalyst Software Suite and seems to be some OCL (Open-Core Licensing) version, 11-11_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl. Apart from the individual download which give you non-ocl version 11-11_mobility_vista_win7_32-64_ccc which din't worked on my machine as INF was missisng from this setup and manual pointing to detect the driver also failed.

What should be the recommended install that need to be cheked before installing the new video driver (latest) ?

• Install latest hardware drivers from manufacturer's portal. Also install the latest INF drivers and chipset drivers.
• Install the latest .NET Framework download link and verify framework integrity from tools by Aaron Stebner download link 1 | link 2. And to completely remove the framework you can use link 3 | link 4.
• Update DirectX component to latest version or atleast DirectX 9.0c

What are the things you should check after successful installation of the drivers ?
Of course it is great joy having the drivers properly installed. So when finally it is done, :laugh:. It is a nirvana. You can then check the status as below :-

​

And Finally, you are back to arena for more mark >>>30 FPS<<<.

Thanks

 

hey qmrneo, i also have a studio 1558 with an ati mobiity radeon hd5470,the links you provided by dell names the driver for 4570 so can i download that one?? if not pls tell me where to download the latest driver i have v8.692.1 Thanks

 

HD 5470 and HD 4570 are both different series GPU. The link provided by dell are having a year old driver, so they are very old and might be having some performance issues.

First, do a old video driver cleanup using steps as mentioned in my post above. Then download the Catalyst Software Suite from here. Once installed it will download the latest driver for you ( 11-11_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl.exe).

let me know if you find some issues.

 

Time to share the temperature issue resolution. The Dell technician visited just now and almost completely disassemble the laptop to reach the heat sink.
He also accepted the fault in the sink. The thermal compound was in bad condition and the fan was also not working properly. Took some snaps of the defective component.

​

Took him 45 min to complete the job. Its just a year now for laptop and the display and sink are already replaced (complete cover saved). Now the fan is real quite and temperature are in limits. Also played The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim in medium settings, gave me 15-17 FPS without any lag or slowdown for more than 20 min. Which is real cool.

Happy Gaming :smile: