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NVIDIA GeForce Go 7800 GTX for Dell XPS M170
My vid card died a few weeks ago. I found and bought this card on Ebay. I installed it on Christmas day 12/25/08. All worked well with World of Warcraft, Combat Arms, HL2 untill tonight 12/28/08. Tonight my card is doing what my old card starting doing, when I fire up a game the screen go's squirrly and hard locks. When I run the Dell Support Center vid test it hard locks. The Laptop is running now with email or posting on this fourm but I cant start a game without it hard locking. Is this vid card dead or could it be something else?
Draco s
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June 26th, 2009 14:00
I am having the identical problem. At first I thought the card might be overheating so tore down the laptop and gave the fans a good cleaning. I did find a partial blockage on one but that did not solve the problem. Dell's PC checkup was useless as if the video failed the scan the computer locked up so there could be no test results. Low level operations are normal, but log into something graphics intensive like WoW and the display goes crazy for a moment then the computer freezes. I had been experiencing lock up of the VIDEO ONLY about once a day requiring system reboot since installing the latest WoW expansion pack.
I have the latest video drivers installed which I had to get from Nvidia. I am not yet convinced this is totally a hardware problem and will be checking for possible DirectX issues before deciding how to proceed. Although nearly 5 years old, the XPS 170 is a fine laptop, not to mention a $4000 investment that still functions perfectly otherwise. (who cares the decorative LEDs have burned out). I do not believe Dell's current high-end laptop offerings include competative features enough to influence a decision to replace with another XPS right now.
Where is Dell's response? Is this a hardware failure and if so what is the likely cause? This is a very expensive graphics card to replace without proper answers first.
nynemout42
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November 11th, 2009 08:00
I am having an equally distressing problem. While setting on my dining room table, my XPS M170 developed "squiggly" lines all over the screen. They start as soon as the Windows logo appears at bootup. This appears to tell me that the malfunction is in the motherboard as the alternate boot menu in DOS is clear. The computer worked flawlessly until this point. I have gone to the extreme and wiped my hard drive and performed a clean install. Both with Dell's original restoration CD and with Nvidia's latest driver, I cannot get the display back to normal. Further, when I installed Nvidia's newest beta, it completely locks my computer up. I had to restore from an earlier date. When trying to use the factory installed Roxio software to burn a DVD, I continue to get error messages that say to check the harware acceleration (which I have tried at full, minimum and every setting in between; and to check that my graphics card is Direct 9x compatible. These graphics cards are not cheap to replace! Does anyone else have any input...this includes you too, Dell!
ejn63
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November 11th, 2009 08:00
Run the Dell diagnostics - F12 at powerup - including the extended video test .
nynemout42
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November 15th, 2009 10:00
Thanks...totally forgot that was there. Ran it twice. The first time the color bars came up there were crazy litlle extra lines and characters, but i answered yes, that there were color bars present. the rest of the test went off fine. The second time, I answered no, that the color bars were not correct. The laptop began beeping and having a fit. It began displaying solid screens of alternating colors and never went anywhere else for over 15 minutes. On the somewhat positive side, there are no "squiggly" lines all over the screen when in the diagnostics utility...indicating that the graphics issue is probably within the graphics card...right???
ejn63
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November 21st, 2009 11:00
The problem is the video card - and you will need to replace it to solve the issue.
dynamed1
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November 24th, 2009 22:00
Is there any alternative to this card, i experienced the same problem and am not to happy about spending a lot for this card.
ejn63
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November 25th, 2009 03:00
The ATI cards for these systems are quite reliable:
http://www.parts-people.com/index.php?action=item&id=3468
dedpunx
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January 20th, 2011 13:00
If you live in USA you can get your faulty laptop GPU's replaced.....check this link out.
(Link to the class action and how to claim.)
http://www.nvidiasettlement.com/
If you are unfortunate enoughto live in the UK(like me) you will probably be stonewalled by both companies.
My questions are, how long have NVidia , Dell and HP been pretending this is not an issue?
When will other countries get a replacement graphics card in their "known" faulty machines?
Tech support at DEll claimed today that just because all the American laptops with GPU issues are due to faulty chips it doesn't mean that the same UK model has the same fault...DUHHHH!