XPS 15 L502x Game Crashes

Hey guys,

                I own this same model laptop and at the end I will list my laptop specs. However, I have experienced the same problem as you guys; if it is one thing I have done a lot with my laptop is re-install my OS countless times and i have noticed that at each re install the problem goes away until I have done a few updates so here is my suggestion, uninstall NVIDIA graphics driver on the whole and install the stock drive found on the drivers disc that comes with your system.

The reason for this is that yesterday I have updated my graphics driver to the latest version and I ran into the problem constantly so rolling back to the previous version seems to help, hopefully it helps you guys.

Owner of a dell XPS 15 for 9 months

Dell XPS 15 L502X

Motherboard -> Dell Inc. 0NJT03

Northbridge -> Sandy Bridge

RAM -> 8 GB DDR3 RAM

Hard Drive -> Seagate 750 GB HDD  

Operating System -> Windows Home Premium 64-bit

Processor -> Intel Core i7-2670QM CPU @ 2.20GHz

Graphics Card -> NVIDIA GT-540M (2 GB)

Optical Drive -> TSSTcorp DVD+-RW

Audio Card -> Sound Blast FX-FI [With JBL Speakers]

There's a stock drive? Or do you mean recovery disk? If anyone finds a version of the NVIDIA Graphics driver that doesn't crash as much or doesn't at all we'd all love to hear. Thanks Adam.

I wonder if NVIDIA has heard of this problem. Mostly likely NVIDIA may have. Unsure if they have said anything about this though.

you are welcome

I believe I might have it. When the time comes I will do what you have done. Thanks Adam.

maybe, however they usually post (for dell users that is) to check with dell website for recommended video drivers, so I am wondering probably the latest drivers released may not fully be compatible with the our system not just the video card.

Yeah that's what I was told to do one time.

Just to inform everyone in this topic: after having owned this laptop since Spring 2011, I can confirm to you that this is a hardware issue with the motherboard. I had for a long time assumed the issue was with Nvidia and their drivers and, despite doing complete clean installs of the drivers had not been able to prevent the Nvidia GPU to crash. I essentially gave up trying to fix it, and switched to only using my integrated card for everything (aka global settings set to integrated, always). The laptop will crash less frequently, but will still crash. It has started to occur with increasing frequency as of late on the integrated card, and that combined with the complete disregard of responsibility by Dell to fix the issue, has lead me to decide to never purchase a Dell product again. It is simply not worth purchasing a dell to save 10-15% on a computer to have it constantly have issues. I will also be doing several other things (such as filing complaints with certain consumer protection organizations) that I cannot directly state here, as my post will be deleted by a moderator.

Bottom line: the only way to fix this laptop is to continually have your warranty extended and have your motherboard every year or so.

Indeed. My problems were resolved by hardware replacements even though my computer reported no real problems in the diagnostics.

I bought this laptop just over a year ago and started experiencing these problems after a few months.

Updating drivers did not help much.

Using a cooling pad strangely did give me a few more minutes of play time (oddly enough, as overheating is never the problem and the laptop crashes while the GPU temperature is below 60 C), but obviously this did not solve the problem.

Dell customer support was very helpful and replaced my motherboard within 3 days of me calling them.

Replacing the motherboard gave me a few weeks of great gaming.

Haven't tried re-installing Windows as I haven't found anyone who claims it solves the problem, but when finally coming back to this problem I thought I'd look into the under-clocking option. Under-clocking my GPU core by 72Mhz has keep my laptop alive for the past few days and has not impacted gaming performance. I'm hoping it will last.

It seems all those who suspect this is a hardware issue are right, but I suppose Dell will keep ignoring that as they have been for the past few years.

Hope this helps someone, but I shall never buy another Dell product ever again nor shall I recommend Dell to anyone. Not after this.

Hey All! I've got the same computer Dell l502x with the troublesome nvidia 540m graphics card. Many have said that it was a hardware problem but have you ever considered if it was your AC adapters problem? Try removing your charger when playing a game with the clock settings of the graphic card set at default. If it no longer crashes then it would mean that the high performance of the GPU isn't getting enough power from the AC adapter. In my own experience, the games i play no longer crashes but that would mean I need to get a new charger. This is why many have said that modding there bios works to lower the voltages for some people because the GPU isn't getting the power that it needs! 

Hey Ppl its me again! Well I was testing my theory if it would work even when overclocked. So i clocked my graphics card to 740 940 and played minecraft. Surprisingly with my charger unplugged the game would not crash! So i was wondering if i could find a way to play with the charger plugged in. So i simply dimmed my monitor down to its lowest brightness and played minecraft with the clock setting on default or 672 900 and with my charger plugged in but my battery is also charging. Again no crashes! i played for a good 15 mins when in about 1 min it would crash! LOL im so happy! Hope this helps. Ive also undervolted my laptop to 2D 83 and 3D 85 so i don't really know if this solution works with regular voltages! But try it and see if it works. Good luck

Have you tried over clocking with the charger plugged in?

I had also discovered what you did a few weeks back, but what I found is that when on battery power the GPU just underclocks itself and hence doesn't crash because it won't let itself get anywhere close to 672 Mhz, so are you sure you are hitting those overclocked frequencies while on battery?

I might try a few of those things myself next week if I get round to it and come back with the results. Currently just clocking my GPU down to 630 MHz as I haven't been bothered to run a whole bunch of tests yet.

hello, i see you used minecraft as your test game, just note that minecraft is CPU intensive not GPU. Get a game like Far Cry 3 or Crysis to run your benchmarks. In my test when running minecraft only 50% of the GPU was in use.I see where you re coming from saying that the charger isn't supplying the right amount of power for the system to properly run; however I have undervolted my GPU but still can run my GPU on full clock rates. Let me throw a scenario for you when you first purchased your Laptop did it not work flawless without GPU issues.