Fabzen Posted September 21, 2010 Report Share Posted September 21, 2010 Hi, last year November I got a Dell Precision M6400 Laptop which came with the Quadro FX 3700M Video Card. Although it's not a gaming laptop, I mainly use it for gaming. Well, theres my problem... When I got the laptop I played WoW most of the time, meanwhile I rather play other stuff like Mafia 2. Shortly after I got the laptop it started crashing from time to time when playing WoW (played with everything maxed out). When crashing the screen just turns black and the sound sounds very strange (like a machine gun :X) When this happens all I can do his turn the laptop off (5sec boot button press) and have to restart. I dont get an error message or bluescreen. In the beginning, so about a year ago this only happened once or twice a week. But it got worse and worse...and meanwhile I have these crashes 2-3+ a hour -.- First I thought it was because of heat problems, so I bought a coolpad, but that didnt help at all. Even playing games at almost lowest video settings doesnt change anything at all. I tried just about everything...but I cant find a solution... The video card driver is updated. Something strange aswell is that sometimes I can play for like 2 hours without a crash and sometimes it crashes right after starting the game. So if anyone has an idea what causes this error please let me know :< Laptop Details: Windows 7 (32bit) Ultimate Quadro FX 3700M 4GB DDR3 Ram Intel Core Extreme CPU X9100 3.06GHz Sorry for my English Im German :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hazart Posted September 27, 2010 Report Share Posted September 27, 2010 (edited) I had exactly the same problem on a Quadro FX 3800M in a Lenovo ThinkPad. The problem seems to be caused by the latest NVIDIA drivers, as reported at http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/W701-crash-problems/td-p/265780 . Though reluctant, I've just reverted back to the rather outdated Lenovo driver (188.98) and the problem hasn't occurred since then (for over a day now). So, please try reverting to the latest Dell driver and report back. Edited September 27, 2010 by hazart Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Fabzen Posted October 12, 2010 Report Share Posted October 12, 2010 Tried it and it didnt work :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ijozic Posted November 10, 2010 Report Share Posted November 10, 2010 Tried it and it didnt work :) I have the same laptop and the video card. Do you use speakers or headphones? It sounds more like an audio problem to me (I remember having some problems when using the laptop's underpowered speakers). Did you try to update the IDT Audio drivers? I'm mostly using the SB X-Fi Notebook on the notebook because the integrated audio is pretty bad. I recently had occasional freezes in WinXP, which seem to have stopped after updating the audio drivers, though the Windows 7 64-bit work fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ivan Posted November 10, 2010 Report Share Posted November 10, 2010 Actually, I remembered having the same problem (and the repeating sound) some time ago when playing the video games. It was caused by GPU overheating - the cooling was clogged with dust, apparently. Try to run the game and then alt-tab to the desktop to check the temperature of the gpu (with e.g. gputemp). If it gets pretty high, you know the cause. Just take the laptop, put your mouth to the both exhaust and blow as hard as you can for some seconds several times. In my case, I noticed some dust coming out of nearby USB ports, but the problem was solved. Some months after that, I dismantled the thing to replace the thermal paste and expected a lot of dust and stuff, but everything was pretty much clean. Weird. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay Gordon Posted December 20, 2010 Report Share Posted December 20, 2010 I am having the same black screen issue. I have the M6400 with the Quatro M 3700 (driver ver 8.17.12.6099) running Windows 7 ultimate here is what is listed from my NVIDIA control panel: [Display] Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate, 32-bit DirectX version: 11.0 GPU processor: Quadro FX 3700M Driver version: 260.99 CUDA Cores: 128 Core clock: 550 MHz Shader clock: 1375 MHz Memory clock: 799 MHz (1598 MHz data rate) Memory interface: 256-bit Total available graphics memory: 2553 MB Dedicated video memory: 1024 MB GDDR3 System video memory: 0 MB Shared system memory: 1529 MB Video BIOS version: 62.92.5A.00.04 IRQ: 16 Bus: PCI Express x16 [Components] nvui.dll 7.17.12.6099 NVIDIA User Experience Driver Component nvxdsync.exe 7.17.12.6099 NVIDIA User Experience Driver Component nvxdplcy.dll 7.17.12.6099 NVIDIA User Experience Driver Component nvxdbat.dll 7.17.12.6099 NVIDIA User Experience Driver Component nvxdapix.dll 7.17.12.6099 NVIDIA User Experience Driver Component NVCPL.DLL 7.17.12.6099 NVIDIA Compatible Windows Vista Display driver, Version 260.99 nvCplUIR.dll 3.4.772.04 NVIDIA Control Panel nvCplUI.exe 3.4.772.04 NVIDIA Control Panel nvWSSR.dll 6.14.12.6099 NVIDIA Workstation Server nvWSS.dll 6.14.12.6099 NVIDIA Workstation Server nvViTvSR.dll 6.14.12.6099 NVIDIA Video Server nvViTvS.dll 6.14.12.6099 NVIDIA Video Server NVSTVIEW.EXE 7.17.12.6099 NVIDIA GeForce 3D Vision NVSTTEST.EXE 7.17.12.6099 NVIDIA 3D Vision Test Application NVSTRES.DLL 7.17.12.6099 NVIDIA 3D Vision Module (0) nvDispSR.dll 6.14.12.6099 NVIDIA Display Server NVMCTRAY.DLL 8.17.12.6099 NVIDIA Media Center Library nvDispS.dll 6.14.12.6099 NVIDIA Display Server PhysX 09.10.0514 NVIDIA PhysX NVCUDA.DLL 8.17.12.6099 NVIDIA CUDA 3.2.1 driver nvGameSR.dll 6.14.12.6099 NVIDIA 3D Settings Server nvGameS.dll 6.14.12.6099 NVIDIA 3D Settings Server I play Wizard 101 and the system blacks out and audio loops until I do a hard reboot. I have contacted Dell and they replaced the motherboard, GPU, and heat sinks. I was out of town when this happened and within 5 min of starting the game the system went black again. I waited for over a month for the parts the last time so I don't really want to call them again. Anybody have any advice or thoughts. Thanks, Jay Gordon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest John Posted December 24, 2010 Report Share Posted December 24, 2010 I am having the same black screen issue. I have the M6400 with the Quatro M 3700 (driver ver 8.17.12.6099) running Windows 7 ultimate here is what is listed from my NVIDIA control panel: ... I play Wizard 101 and the system blacks out and audio loops until I do a hard reboot. I have contacted Dell and they replaced the motherboard, GPU, and heat sinks. I was out of town when this happened and within 5 min of starting the game the system went black again. I waited for over a month for the parts the last time so I don't really want to call them again. Anybody have any advice or thoughts. Thanks, Jay Gordon Try disconnecting and playing on the battery only - if it plays fine then your machine has the same problem as many other 6400 systems with the 3700M gfx (mine included). There is a problem between the PSU and the gfx card which Dell seems relunctant to acknowledge. However apparently if you insist enough you can get them to swap your nVidia card for the newer, faster and more stable ATI card. Good luck, John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay Gordon Posted December 24, 2010 Report Share Posted December 24, 2010 Thanks John, I have tried it with just the battery and I didn't get the black screen. I am going to try one more thing before I rush back to Dell. I am going to try and set the charging from express to standard and see if that helps. If not then back to the battle. Jay Gordon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest John Posted December 24, 2010 Report Share Posted December 24, 2010 I read somewhere that it was down to the PSU brick not quite delivering enough power when the 3700M GPU is in full swing - its basically a design flaw because they were trying to keep the PSU to a minimum size while still delivering just enough power to drive the whole system at peak performance and I guess they ended up making the tolerance too tight so on some systems there is just enough power and on others there is not quite enough. This is why it is fine on the battery or docking station, but on the PSU it bombs out. This all kind of makes sense from the behavour that I, and many other M6400 owners, have experienced but Dell won't admit this is a design flaw. In fact all they need to do is produce a replacement PSU with a slightly higher power output - but I guess that would cost too much money... Thanks John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Bob Posted November 17, 2011 Report Share Posted November 17, 2011 Hi, last year November I got a Dell Precision M6400 Laptop which came with the Quadro FX 3700M Video Card. Although it's not a gaming laptop, I mainly use it for gaming. Well, theres my problem... When I got the laptop I played WoW most of the time, meanwhile I rather play other stuff like Mafia 2. Shortly after I got the laptop it started crashing from time to time when playing WoW (played with everything maxed out). When crashing the screen just turns black and the sound sounds very strange (like a machine gun :X) When this happens all I can do his turn the laptop off (5sec boot button press) and have to restart. I dont get an error message or bluescreen. ... My M6400 with the Quadro 3700M GPU does the same thing (black screen, have to hold power button to reboot). It consistently crashes when I using Google Earth or NASA World Wind. I don't play games on this laptop, so don't know if it crashes during game-play. After talking to NVidia support, they said they couldn't debug the problem because they don't have mobile cards to test with. Dell won't replace this card because they say it is an application problem. Guess I'm stuck with this piece of crap video card, they want way too much money for the ATI card. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Brandon Posted January 13, 2012 Report Share Posted January 13, 2012 I have also had the same problems with the m6400. i play games as well as just browse the net and it will black screen. Dell replaced almost all of the internals and i still had the issue. Here recenlty dell sent me a replacement system, and after only having it for two days its doing it again. What can i do to get them to replace the graphics card? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Lothsahn Posted January 16, 2012 Report Share Posted January 16, 2012 You need to underclock the M6400 as described here: http://en.community....0/19595790.aspx 1) Download MSI Afterburner 2) Set unofficial clocking enabled. 3) Set clockrates to: 460MHz Core, 690MHz memory and 1150MHz Shader. 4) Make sure to set the underclocked profiler under the 2D and 3D "Automatic Profiles Management" and set MSI Afterburner to start with windows. This will cause the profile to stick between reboots. I've talked to Dell and they do not acknowledge this problem, but this fix completely solved it for me on my M6400 w/FX3700M. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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