Constant Blue Screen on new Sager 5670 with ATI Driver Issues

ok - I purchased my new Sager 5670 no more than 3-4 weeks ago, and although I feel extremely techy savvy - the laptop is causing me a LOT of frustration. I know others have also experienced the same issues - and before you blast back the standard "download omega drivers" reply - let me first explain where I am at.

I have a new 5670 with ATI Radeon 9000 Mobility, stacked the machine up with 1Gb RAM.

I am running Windows 2000 Professional - service pack 3 with all updates

I am receiving a "blue screen of death" when in an OpenGL application - ie an application with _serious_ OpenGL going on. This happens in Neverwinter Nights and IUE (a small OpenGL utility to draw planets - something I downloaded to test another OpenGL application).

I have tried the following combo's :

Initially tried the ATI Radeon 6.14 driver from Sager
Tried the Omega driver - latest
Tried the Omega driver - 2 back

Currently, I am running the Omega Driver with Rage3D Tweak - and I have the card clocked DOWN to minimum settings.

I am still receiving the Blue Screen of Death. It takes a while, but it does happen eventually.

Please - someone post something that will help all of us 5670 users ! I bought the Sager ONLY because I wanted the Radeon 9000 - the battery power sucks big time (1.5 hours with 2 batteries) - and its as heavy as anything.

ok - heres an update on what I have tried so far. Lots of advice from people OUTSIDE of the forums, as well as through various threads. By the way, since no-one has posted a reply here, if this thread is in the wrong area, please feel free to move it.

1. Tried standard Sager drivers.
2. Tried newest Omega driver (2407a)
3. Tried older Omega driver (2355)
4. Tried ATI control panel 6.13.3041
driver
5. Tried very VERY new Omega driver (2443)
6. Tried latest Clevo 56D driver (dated 18th May, 2003)

Tried all aspects of above with Rage3d - underclocked down at various settings (to the minimum)

Tried reducing modes down to 640x480 - tried playing NwN with all graphics stripped down to minimum (including compatibility)

Tried everything.

I am still ripping my hair out. For all those who didn't see my earlier post, I receive a Blue Screen of Death when running an OpenGL application (Neverwinter Nights is the game I'm attempting to run - but I have tried generic utilities such as IUE and even 3DMark2001 in a loop). The bluescreen usually complains about an IRQ Less Than or Equal error with the ALCXWDM.SYS - which of course is related to the Realtek Audio driver. I have disabled the Realtek Audio - and it bluescreens with an OpenGL application but with a different hardware message (which of course is unrelated).

If I never run an OpenGL application - but instead just run Windows applications - my machine is incredibly reliable.

I have attempted to play with all of the ATI Aperture settings (happens with 64Mb, 128Mb and 256Mb).

When I installed the new Clevo driver - I recieved an issue starting the Radeon Probe Driver for some unknown reason.

Ummmm - any more details anyone needs ? Oh yeah, it crashes if the OpenGL application is run Windowed OR fullscreen.

I think that all the details I can list. Currently, this laptop is becoming more and more useless if the sole purpose it was purchased for is not going to work. I have spent at least 60 hours playing with this so far, and am no closer whatsoever to a solution....

The "Infinite Universe Engine" is located at http://vterrain.org/Packages/IUE/index.html

I went onto http://www.opengl.org and found the link there - since I wanted to look for a specific OpenGL application outside of Neverwinter Nights.

I am having the uneasy feeling that the 8887 might very well have been the way to go instead of the 5670 - I hope that someone at PCTorque might listen kindly if this is true - theres obviously a few major differences between the machines, something that when I performed my initial research I failed to uncover - since the only main difference I could see was the 16" screen on the 8887 and the ability to use 2 batteries on the 5670.

I'd be real interested if others were able to test this application as well - I have even considered dual-booting the 5670 with a Linux variant - but unfortunately my Sprint PCMCIA Wireless card won't work under Linux.

Help !

I have no problems running it on my 5670 either....for about 10 minutes or so.

Run it for at least an hour or so - preferably fullscreen with a bunch of graphics changes. Use the mouse and rotate round a lot. If you bluescreen then, you'll see the same issue I am dealing with.

Is Adam around ? Could he try this on another 5670 - maybe the 5660 is working fine, and the 5670 has a different ATI card that causes these issues ?

Or maybe just mine has a problem (I hope so !) ?

ok - it took me a while to test each one, but here goes.

Now, when I install these drivers, I completely deinstall any trace of the ATI drivers that were previously installed, boot up into VGA and install the new drivers, then restart. My first test is the previously mentioned IUE application - my second test is to run Neverwinter Nights at lowest video settings and then with all highest video settings - both at 1600x1200 and windowed.

I first installed the latest ati_m9_6307 from s-seven.net

The first thing I noticed, was that it detected my screen resolution much better than other drivers - when it booted up it immediately chose 1600x1200 @ 32bit. Others have either booted up 640x480 (the latest Sager drivers) or at 1600x1200@16bit (and I have to change). So good signs there.

Secondly, the IUE application seemed to run quite well for a significant amount of time (40 minutes, fast rendering and spinning). So then I started NwN. I crashed as before - but this time instead of complaining about ALCXWDM.SYS which the blue screen normally does, it instead crashed over ntoskrnl.sys - not much better since I don't think I can uninstall that driver eh !

So I then downloaded the ati_m9_6228 - which has the 6.13 driver instead of the 6.14 (someone mentioned that the 6.13 might be more stable) - booted it up and the driver again immediately picked the right resolution from the screen.

Again, running IUE wasn't too bad either - it seemed to work for as much time as I would let it - so I went back to Neverwinter.

However, this time I was able to play for a few minutes longer than previously - but when it bluescreened, the notebook gave a horrible shreek through the speakers. It obviously hung on something between the video blitter and something that the sound driver was pushing through - hence the previous references to the ALCXWDM driver. Scared me half to death (but it booted back up fine).

I didn't try the driver in the middle - since I thought that if the old one didn't work and nor did the new one, its unlikely that the 2nd oldest would work.

So where does that leave me currently ? Could someone please look into this - and if someone @pctorque could also please email me with any information on whether a tradeup is possible or something similar ? Unfortunately, I have a couple of issues already with this laptop unrelated to the driver - including the fact that it obviously doesn't travel very well - my watch scratched off the paint on the left corner, and its already obvious that the keys wear down significantly.

The positive notes so far include the fact that I love the UXGA screen and the relative speed of the machine (compared to my old T20 Thinkpad) but the fan noise, the weight, the ridiculous battery non-life and the soft plastic has really meant that I'd rather carry around a small desktop than this machine ! It'd probably be lighter too !

I don't mean to whine - but I was really really looking forward to using this machine. Right now, if I can't get the product I bought the machine for to work (I believe I have now tried 10 different ATI drivers and reinstalled Win2K 3 times - even installed XP once) - I can't see the point of keeping it.

Help (please) -

AltQuark

What BIOS version do you have ? I think my 5670 cam with 1.3 ? I might be wrong here !

To follow up, I tried going back to the 6307 driver and reran my IUE test - it did indeed crash it hard again. It seems that there is a "random" amount of time between startup of an OpenGL application and when my laptop is crashing.

I am starting to consider that this might very well be a hardware issue - since Adam is telling me he runs OpenGL applications all the time on his 5670....but it does seem that others are also facing the same issue ?

ok - I'm determined to try this out once and for all. Before I send back the 5670 I plan to completely reinstall the OS (sigh) which of course, requires complete reinstall of all my apps, etc etc etc.

I just hope another week or so isn't going to push me over a returns issue if it comes to that.

AltQuark

Well

I never resolved this. Tried more than 30 different drivers - and currently am resigned to a laptop that is mediocre since it runs Win2K fine, but absolutely no 3D graphics since it will immediately blue-screen.

The only choice I have now is to either send the machine back to get a replacement - which leaves me without a laptop - or to purchase a replacement and hope that Sager refunds me for the laptop I purchased a while back.

I have received other emails from other users - so I guess this is a standard issue amongst the 5670's - a pity because theres nothing else that the machine offers except from the capability of the graphics and at the end of the day, running Excel "fast" on a 3.06GHz P4 really doesn't make up for it !