Major Freezing and Black Screen Issues

Hi guys,

I have just installed Windows 7 and I'm having some major trouble with my graphics card. I had Vista installed, and just got my laptop from back from Dell after some repairs for faulty motherboard/GPU. I have wiped my hard drive and started fresh by installing Windows 7 Build 7100. All seemed good when I first opened it up, everything was nice but I noticed I only had Vista Basic color scheme. I had a look in device manager and under display adaptor it had Standard VGA adaptor listed.

I then installed my nVidia driver number 185.85 and upon restart I got a black screen after welcome screen. I then rebooted and all seemed fine. After around 15-20 seconds of use windows would lock up for a minute or so, then flash a BSOD and then reboot. I figured it was a driver issue, so I jumped on and downloaded the latest driver for my graphics card (GeForce 8400M GS) which was 186.03. This had the exact same result. Random shutdowns and failing to boot, alot of freezing when I could boot.

I have found if I go into device manager and disable it, I can run windows 7 fine but can't use screen savers or basically anything that needs graphics. Any help would be great as I woul love to keep using Windows 7. Cheers guys.

I had a check on the Dell website to see what drivers they had to offer and the one they have on there is for vista 32 bit and its like version 101...way outdated. Any advice of things to try would be much appreciated. Thanks.

It went to Dell to have the motherboard and GPU replaced as apparently the batch of GPU's were faulty or something. Anyhow it wouldn't even boot up when I sent it off and now eveything hardware related seems fine since it has come back. I ran the hardware diagnostics thing at boot up and it found no issues. I have since gone back to Vista, and even it is giving me some strange issues.

For example, I have three items in my device manager called "Base System Device" with a yellow triangle, tried to update driver via internet to no avail.

Also, after 5 mins of use or so, all the programs in the start menu simply have empty folders, and in My Computer my hard drive is not visible. Restart and everything is fine.

Have also had a few freezes and such requiring hard reboot. It seems awfully strange to me that from clean install everything appears fine and as soon as I try something, eg windows updates, driver installs etc. that I get all sorts of issues.

Hi nickbell,

The newest version for your card is 190.38 and it was made yesterday for bot 32 and 64 bit Win7

However Nvidia doesn't let you install the driver on a Dell laptop because they want to avoid issues with the Dell so they refer you to Dell, but Dell is not known for it's quick response to new drivers.

But there is good news.

There is a website where you can download the drivers and a modded inf file, allowing you to install it on your Dell.

Please make sure you read the tutorials on the site carefully so you don't mess up.

This is the link:

NVIDIA & Laptop News | Latest NVIDIA drivers and related news | laptopvideo2go.com

Greetz.

Nickbell,

I know that the WLAN of dell is by default not supported by Windows7.
And bluetooth and smartcards are also often not recognized.

But if you connect your laptop with a UTP cable to your router, Windows update will 9 out of 10 times find all the missing hardware, including your WLAN.
(most cabled LAN's are recognized by W7.)

good luck.

Have tried and no good. I reformatted, clean install of win 7. Upon startup I had low level graphics, but everything worked fine. I tried the method you suggested, followed instructions perfect. Didn't work, would not install. I re-installed the old driver that originally came with my PC (like version 101 or so) and it installed. Upon reboot, black screen. Reboot again, and I had full graphics with aero etc. Then pc started freezing up again, flashed BSOD for a split second then would not boot again. This happened also when I tried version 185.85 and 186.03. Is there other things that I must make sure I install or update when I first do my clean install.

It really seems like everything is perfect when I first install, pc is lightning quick. But when I install any windows updates or drivers the whole thing falls in a hole and freezes and fails to boot. Please help anyway you can because I am losing my mind. Another day and this laptop is getting wiped and put on eBay.

Well it seems almost time to officially give up. I have gone back to Vista, and I'm having the same issue with the nVidia drivers!! Everything is fine after clean install on both vista and win7, but as soon as I update with any video update from Dell or newer version from nVidia, then it works on reboot but then freezes up and BSOD. I installed the intel chipset drivers first, so that should be fine. Only one I couldn't install was the GM965 one as per above, but according to Dell website, that is optional anyhow. Please help I am going nuts over this thing!!