Alienware m9700 with SLI Go 7900 GS problems

[silverharrison]

Since upgrading to windows 7 from XP my graphics cards have started playing up. The first issue is on start up - once fully booted my cpu is maxed out at almost 100% due to something called "system interrupts". I am fairly sure this issue is related to the graphics cards because I rang the windows customer help line and they guided me through a process of determining what the problem was and the conclusion they reached was that the problem was being caused by my graphics cards. They could not give me a solution other than contacting Nvidia which would be an absolute waste of my time given they have no customer support but I have managed to find a work-around: putting my machine to sleep and then waking it up removes the system interrupt process sending my CPU usage back to a resting level of 1-2%

The suggestion that my video cards are the cause of this problem seems consistant with the fact that they are very unstable. Whenever I try to turn SLI on my system crashes to blue screen, if I try changing the video card drivers my machine often (but not always goes to blue screen). This is the problem I am most concerned about as I can work around the CPU usage problems mentioned above (I included them in this post in case the info is relevant in any way), but have yet to find a way to get my video cards to work properly - the graphics performance in games that ran fine on XP is awful. Any help would be much appreciated.

System Specs:
System Manufacturer/Model Number Alienware / Aurora m9700
OS Windows 7
CPU AMD Turion 64 Mobile Technology ML-42 2.40GHz
Motherboard ACPI x-86-based PC
Memory 2Gb RAM
Graphics Card 2x NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS (SLI)
Sound Card SoundMAX Intergrated Digital Audio

 

[thefabe]

Welcome to seven forums silverharrison. It seems a lot of these mobile graphics cards need to have the .inf file modded to work correctly. You can use one of 2 ways to do this. You can follow the directions given by this member FZ21Z here http://www.sevenforums.com/graphic-cards/26710-nvida-driver-install-start-finish.html Or you can use the tutorial here NVIDIA MobilityModder - DriverHeaven.net As you can see your card is one of the listed cards. Just take your time and follow the directions to the T, you just going to change the .inf part of the driver. Good luck and please post back. Thanks Fabe

 

[silverharrison]

Hi Fabe,

Thanks very much for your help, much appreciated. I followed FZ21Z's instructions as you suggested (I uninstalled both cards and deleted all drivers associated with them, re-installed them, altered the inf file for the latest driver with a WHQL certificate, and then installed it.) On reebootin my machine I had no CPU usage problems at all. All sign of system interrupts were gone and on subsequent boot the problem has not recurred so this seems to have fixed that problem.

However, when I tried to enable SLI my machine once again crashed to blue screen.

Thanks very much for your help so far, I'm very relieved the CPU usage problem has been fixed. Have you got any suggstions about why SLI isn't working still?

 

[thefabe]

Well my friend I'm glad we resolved one of the problems, but as for the second I'm the last one to ask for help with it. I had 2 9800 gt's that I couldn't get to run in SLI to save my life. I posted in this forum and 2 others with no solution in site. I used the 7100 version and then the RC of Seven still everytime I would enable SLI the Nvidia control panel would ask to be closed and if I did then my resoulution would revert to 1024x768 with black boarders. I spent countless hours on it till I caved in and sold the cards and bought a GTX260 superclocked card. My suggestion would be to start a new thread with just the SLi problem and maybe someone else can offer you a fix. Sorry couldn't be of more help on this one. Fabe

 

[TaraSWinTeam]

regarding your driver issues, you can always check with the manufacturer or at the Windows Compatibility Center: Windows 7 Compatibility Center home.

Cheers,
Tara
Windows Outreach

 

[silverharrison]

no worries fabe, its a bit reassuring to hear that even someone giving the advise on these sites has the same kinds of problems as I do

Ill try starting a new thread

cheers for the help