Alienware M18x R2 with ATI 7970m Crossfire, Black screen with perfect timing..

open laptop looking at keyboard Primary card  is left side center is CPU and right side is secondary card .       If you remove secondary card and  issue persists then  if I remember correctly the secondary card should work as a primary but would require you swapping the heat sinks/backing plates around  to   use secondary card as a primary, but only if you feel comfortable doing such.

UPDATE: this information about my experience maybe help other people, so listen.

I remove the crossfire cable, and I have the SAME identical problem, this mean, MAYBE, have a chance is only the cable (I hope, but is strange the cable is broken.. but I hope is this) and not the card.

So now my next step is leave the secondary card, and try, if go, cahnge the secondary with primary and if is go, is just the cable, but I donth thing Im so lucky.

But just what I wont to say, if the crossfire cable is out, you dont have ANY message like CABLE NOT CONNECT or other.

89FORDPROBEE:

About the LAPTOP can work without the 2 card in, only with the integrated video, ARE YOU SURE OF THIS?

You have direct experience or is just a opinion?

With DELL nothing is sure, I just wont understand if I sell my card I cant live some days or weeks only with the integrated video without any discrete cards installed.

And i wont understand if the PC is set for discrete card, I leave the discrete card and i forget to change in windows the option, if the PC automatic chenge to integrated card, ora if it cant and after the PC just is frozen and I cant do nothing if i dont install one discrete card for enter in windows and switch.

I know maybe the look is stupid problem, but some time if you have bios problem and need to reset, the default option is set to discrete card, and if I dont have discrete card IN this became a problem.

89fordprobee, thanks for your help, Im very hope is just a cable problem but i dont thing Im so happy, and i dont listen any other case about the cable is broken...

We'll I can't speak for this machine directly with onboard only but my m17x r1 worked fine with both cards removed on onboard video till it was repaired.

another thing is I'm not sure machine will post with just secondary card installed  if problem persists with everything you done I more tend to lead to the primary card being the culprit  since second card is a slave and is used when needed and in windows environment usually it would  to be  used till graphic power is needed

Honestly your not alone and to be honest I said same as you when my m17x was a complete  failure  but since I have purchased 2 more alienwares and 2 inspiron laptops  and so far after  2 years the inspirons are solid the old m11x after hinge was repaired thanks dell for recall and my m18x which I gonna have to call dell since second card is got issues but I'm under warranty till 2016 or 17 I can't remeber so it's not a priority.

anyway you can check eBay or the webs and find a new card  good luck and if you. need anything else don't hesitate to ask .

I was reading this and I think that all dell alienwares have 2 years standard warranty.  They do in the US and UK.

actually this thread is a few months old now.. but the standard US/Canada warranty is 1 year....  .. other countries have other guidelines and rules  that i cant speak for since thier is tomany, along with lemon laws etc. of different countries

I think I have the same problem.  Was it just a cable?  Or was the solution to remove one of the cards? Please fill us in on what happened.

I came home one day to a blank screen.  Could't get back into windows, although it posted fine.  After some troubleshooting, I found that I was getting video memory integrity errors.

Pulled everything apart, tested one card, still errors, then just the other, and it wouldn't detect (was working on integrated video I guess).

I swapped the cards/heatsinks, everything seemed ok, so I put it all back together, did a clean install of windows (formatted drive), and everything is fine until I install AMD drivers, then I get a blank screen right when I should be getting to the login screen of windows.  If I boot into safe mode, it doesn't let me remove the drivers, but I can remove the devices through Device manager, reboot, and it's fine in normal windows, but again without AMD drivers.  I've tried a few different drivers, including the default ones windows will find through windows update and the ones that came on the Alienware resources disk, no dice.

I'm going to check to make sure the x-fire cable is connected correctly on both ends, but will probably end up removing the x-fire cable, which by the sounds of it won't help, and then my next step is to try removing just the 2ndary card (which I believe was causing the v-mem integrity errors) and test with a single card.

I've heard of people 'baking' their cards to fix solder issues caused by heating/cooling the card, so once I determine that it's really just a bad card, I will try this to see how it goes.  Will try to remember to update here.

I have the same issue you are having and I have spent a week on replacing fans moving the gpu to slot 1 and 2 and installing drivers and Os's   windows 7 ,7 ultimate 8 and 8.1 all crashed when installing the gpu drivers after a fresh install.  I ran the onboard diagnostic and everything passes I ran diagnostics on dells website and everything passes.  The Gpu's both test good by themselves with drivers but when u add a second gpu with the drivers installed u get a black screen and there is no way to fix it.

Im lost and im not getting answers.