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View Full Version : Dell XPS Gen 2 video card problem??


spectre32
03-23-2006, 10:21 AM
Well no sense beating around the bush, lets get to it:

Background:
I have a Dell Inspirion XPS Gen II to whihci aquired about a year ago. I bought it as a desktop replacement and thats what it has been doing since i have gotten it.

Old Problem:
As with everyone else and there mother i used this thing to play BF2 on and there was the ever present video card drivers issue. Well after screwing around with various drivers i finally got ahold of laptopvideo2go. 77.30's series and ,for the most part, everything was satisfactory. I was still having problem on reboting, inthat when i would reboot the LCD would just turn off and i would need to wait roughly 5-10 minutes and then reattempt. using this method i would have about 99% success rate. I tired other moniters and got the same sitution. I reverted back to the newest dell drivers for it(shipping) and the same problem was still happening. I called dell and they made me run though some bullshit hardware scan via DOS, and it pretty much told them that my issue was a driver setting and not a hardware problem. Since I have XP Pro from school and not the orginal XP home that shipped with the PC they could offer me no more tech support. They attempted to recreate my sanario but they could not do it. I put the issue to bed and let things alone, and use the 77.30's. for a while with the same issues, but I could still play my games.

Reccurance:
My buddy was playing Word of Warcraft on my laptop and he was seeing how far he could push it. I was still using the 77.30's and all of a sudden everything went blank, and that was it. I have to revert back to the orignal(drivers) ones and then, about what seemed like the same time, dell released there new XPS laptop drivers. I reformated my computer and started from scratch using them. Yet again i could not play BF2 but I I had shifted to CS Source so everything was ok. Every so often the "reboot and nothing on my screen" would happen but this was not occuaring on the same basis. Now I have shifted back to playing BF2 and i'm in even worse problems. I tried the older 77.30 and upon restart I get a white screen and i gotta wait 5-10 minutes. Once its booted up everything is fine and BF2 runs. Once I exit BF2 and try to play again, BAM nothing. If I try to restart after that, i get the same deal. I have tired numerious drivers ranged from 77.xx to some of the newer 8x.xx from XG and laptopvideo2go.

Summary:
Soo.. I guess my questions is could this be simply a hardware issue? did something get damanged along the line here and i do really need to call dell? I'm just pissed that a laptop valued at $3800 can't run a simple friggen game with out having a seziure.

Any help would be appericated

Yoob@NBF
03-24-2006, 10:13 AM
When you say the system goes blank you mean the screen turns white or black? If its white then this is an ongoing issue that was resolved for the most part. I dont recall what the solid fix was but for some it was a hardware issue while others it was driver related. Run a white for white screen of death or white screen to find related materials.

I once had the same issue because I owned a XPS2 so if you have anymore questiosn feel free to post it here.

contrvlr65
03-24-2006, 04:59 PM
Spectre, what bios are you running? A03 caused white screen reboots for me,upping to A04 solved the issue.Also try newer drivers from my sig.Good luck

spectre32
03-25-2006, 09:50 AM
Well thanks for the input, but I ran the dell 32bit Diag, and the thermal tree was throught he roof. There sending someone to my house to replace the Mobo.