9750 with 8700m video card - brand new - freezing on WOW

get modified drivers from laptopvideo2go.com and get like the 169.09 drivers for the m9750 and they work great...

Try to load another game and see if that works.

If it's game specific, go to the game's website and search their forums.

Just got my m9750 last Monday and I'm having the same issues. I ordered mine with the 2 8700's as well, and with a RAID 0 hard drive setup, but only with 1GB or RAM and ordered 4 GB from crucial.com for about 200 dollars cheaper.

I have been having the same problems. More often than not it's after prolonged use but when you spend this kind of money on a machine, you expect it to perform. I've had mine for a week now. 9 days actuially, and it's totally frozen/locked up about 10 times to the point of having to press and hold the power button to shut if off and restart it. And when I say locks I mean screen locks, sound locks, can't alt/tab or ctrl, alt, del. TOTAL lockup

Needless to say I'm less than pleased. I've talked to Alienware several times and the first @$$hat said I had a virus and had me do a system restore to the day I got it. all that did was annoy me. talked to a guy this morning and he was a little more helpful, by remote accessing my laptop and downloading all kinds of windows and Dx updates. haven't had a chance to try it since then but as soon as I see some results I'll post again.

Oh and this has happened with WoW AND UT3 so I doubt it's game specific.

Sounds like drivers to me...

When the AW systems leave the factory, they flash a new OS on the hd to remove all the testing software. Sometimes this quick flash is corrupted and will cause issues that can be resolved with a fresh install from either alienspawn, or a fresh install from the windows disk.

That's the first thing I'd try, not just a system restore... I'd also get the latest version of all the drivers for the fresh install to make sure there are no driver conflicts.

If that doesn't work, and you've run all the windows updates and you have all the updates, I'd monitor the temps of your vid cards, and cpu.

Alright well I have also downloaded the latest drivers from Nvidea AND alienwares site and it still didn't work. Since I bought the RAM elsewhere at this point I've taken the 4GB I ordered from Crucial out and put the 1GB back in that it came with. I'm going to do a full reformat tonight. If the problem presists I'm shipping the POS back, as at this point my patience is running thin.

Also it's not a heat issue. Last time I called Alienware they downloaded a heat monitor that shows the temps of the CPU and video cards and they are running even a little cooler than normal. Got a nice coolermaster notepal cooling pad that stays cool to the touch so I'm pretty sure heat isn't an issue at this point.

did you get modified drivers or just regular nvidia drivers...

Honestly a friend sent me the link to the direct download from Alienware so I'm not sure. I was just trusting his judgement as he is pretty computer savvy.

alienware drivers are most of the time out of date... laptopvideo2go.com drivers are modified with INF's that help with gaming... just find some for your OS and something that works with ur 8700 cards remember to install the drivers for both video cards or they wont work right...

and drivers could cause the whole system to lock down like this?

Driver problems can cause freezing, but it's likely something else...

With memory, you usually get a blue screen and a memory dump, but you can run memtest to make sure your memory is good.

Make sure when you reformat you load the latest SLI chipset drivers, mobo drivers, and the latest vid card drivers you can. And of course there are different drivers for XP or Vista, so make sure they're the right drivers for your OS.

Sorry you're having this problem, issues out of the box are real pissers.

Just a question: are you running Windows XP or Vista? Have heard about some compatibility problems with XP and GeForce 8700 series in UT3, because of some slow downs. New drivers may help, if they exists.... Well, your problems are sounding like heat issues to me.

Or... astenic grafic card (or other components) may be? You may lower your playing resolution and take of or down grafik card effects. Please post your system details like CPU, grafik card(s) and RAM speeds and other stuff for comparing.GreetZ

Wait a bit... I'd read, your are playing WOW and I guess up to 99.9% online, right? Could it be due of your low or instable internet connection? It may cause some frame losses which looks like a slide show. How fast is your connection cable at your provider? You may check your internet setting or at worst change your internet provider. Are you playing by WLAN or wired cable network?

the only way to see if it is a heat issue is to download ATItool and run it and see if the cards are heating up... but the 7950GTX will probably be hotter than the 8700 cards... but your new m17x with 8700 cards may have the same issue too... since they probably will be the same drivers for both... if you are gaming alot then the 8800 cards are worth the extra money...

My system specs -


[1] Area-51® m9750

Operating System (Office software not included): Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
Notebook Tuners and Remotes: Without Media Center Remote Control or TV Tuner
Video/Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® Series - Dual 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8700M GT - SLI Enabled
Enables DirectX® 10 Graphics and up to 100% Performance Increase!
Chassis: 17" WideUXGA 1920 x 1200 LCD with Clearview Technology - Stealth Black
Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7200 2.0GHz 4MB Cache 667MHz FSB
Memory: 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 667MHz – 2 x 512MB
System Drive: Extreme Performance (RAID 0) - 240GB (120GB x 2) 7,200RPM (8MB Cache) w/ Free Fall Protection
Optical Drives : 8x Dual Layer Burner (DVD±RW, CD-RW) w/ LightScribe Technology - View Demo
Wireless Network Card: Internal Intel® PRO Wireless 3945 a/b/g Mini-Card
Sound Card : High-Definition Audio with surround sound

I think this may be SLIGHTLY different from mine as it's changed already since I ordered it but the only thing different I think is the hard drives. I got the 320 GB HD RAID 0

I work for the cable/phone/inet company and have about the fastest cable inet I can get with my employee package allowance so I doubt it's that

Now the RAM I ordered it with 1GB, ordered 4GB from Crucial and installed it right away. Yesterday I put the 1GB back in and it still locked up so that rules out crucial being the culprit.

Put new drivers on it last night as well and the same problem happened. If it's a video issue though would that cause the sound to lock up as well? I've also heard a slight issue with xp and these cards but don't know the exact symptoms

BTW REALLY appreciate all your feedback huys. keep it coming please.

yeah xp could be the issue... I dont rely on alienware for drivers I always use modified ones because they give me the best performance... If you have sp3 loaded on their then that could be one issue since people are having trouble with the new update as well.... maybe with vista you wont have an issue...

m9750 btw. :P

and gaming is specifically what I got it for. good gaming machine and portable.

Also I got the drivers from laptopdrivers2go or something like that. My computer tech friend remote accessed it and helped me with it

Again though would drivers cause the sound and everything else to totally freeze with the video? It almost sounds like a processor issue. basically it's coming down to this. I'm gonna try a few things over the weekend with a friend of mine and see if we can get it working. if come monday it's still doing it, the thing is going back to Alienware and I don't want it repaired. I want a totally new machine. I think with the money I paid thats a fairly reasonable request