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Activate SLI crashes Windows


Guest Drizzle

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Guest Drizzle

Hey all,

I've had my Alienware m9750 for about a year now with no complaints. Just last night, my roomie heard my computer "beep", and but didn't take too much notice of it. I was already in bed, and missed it.

When I came home from work, the computer was sitting at the Windows XP login screen, with about 1/3 of the screen drawn correctly, with the bottom 2/3 seeming to have only have of the pixels drawn. Eventually the computer would reboot and return to the same screen.

I took this is a graphics issue and booted up in safe mode. I reinstalled drivers, rebooted, and was able to log in normally. Now, however, when I activate SLI, the monitor goes off, reactivates as though the display is going to come back, but it never does. I've seen it crash to a quick BSOD, but generally it just seems to cycle between off and "on", but with no video.

Is there some driver that could have been corrupted? I've tried installing new drivers in addition to my old ones with the same effect. Nothing has happened (hardware wise) to my machine.

Running two Geforce Go 7950 MTX 512s. Running driver version 6.14.11.8070, dated November 18, 2008.

First pic is GPU 1. Second is GPU2. I notice two differences - the BIOS version, and the Bus interface.

GPU1.jpg

Gpu2.jpg

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use driver cleaner to clean out all the old drivers, then install a new one

sorry, I meant driver sweeper, I used to use cleaner, but didn't work well with Vista back then, so i can't guaranty the results

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I notice two differences - the BIOS version, and the Bus interface.

This is alright, the GPUs in SLI always have slighlty different BIOSes. Some mobos don't support more than one GPU working at 16x bus so the other one will work at slower bus. This causes no change in performance.

I doubt that's a driver issue, I am worried that one of your GPUs is corrupt and I hope you have a warranty.

I'm not an SLI user, tell me - is only one or both of the GPUs activated on default after driver install? If the answer is both, then it would be a proof to your GPU being corrupt I think.

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Guest Drizzle
This is alright, the GPUs in SLI always have slighlty different BIOSes. Some mobos don't support more than one GPU working at 16x bus so the other one will work at slower bus. This causes no change in performance.

I doubt that's a driver issue, I am worried that one of your GPUs is corrupt and I hope you have a warranty.

I'm not an SLI user, tell me - is only one or both of the GPUs activated on default after driver install? If the answer is both, then it would be a proof to your GPU being corrupt I think.

With the drivers that I'm using now, no - SLI is not activated on install. Older drivers, I think yes.

Unfortunately, my comp went out of warranty about a month and a half ago. Alienware wants $300 just for shipping and flat-rate troubleshooting, nevermind parts. Eh.

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