DELL Laptop Gamers... wtf?

[RoadClosed]

I have a Dell latitude that is causing me headaches. I wanted to supplement a game to play on my laptop while I was in the airport recently. The Game is Diable and I keep getting the screen of Death when I think certain DirectDraw or Direct3d games are accessed. I have to be honest I haven't tried glide but some newer games only support direct3d so I would like to resonlve the issue. I did notice when I reduce the screen resolution before playing I get to play longer before the game blows.

I have a newer latitude with an Nvidia chip, I have done a lot of updating before posting this:

New Video drivers for the Nvidia
New Video Bios
New Motherboard chipset
New machine Bios
All windows updates, including DirectX9
etc...

SO I am wondeing if there are any other dell users out there with similar problems. The issue is not just related to Diablo, I loaded up HL and tried that. As soon as I turn on 3d Exeleration.. BAM. I may be leaning toward buying new memory? Bad Nvidia chip? Before I spend a few hours on the phone with Dell I thought I would pole you all for any tweaks. OH I almost forgot, I can play Age of Empires just fine?? But it's a very new game compared to the others.....

Thanks in advance.

[raisor]

At my company we use lots of Dell Lattitudes and constantly have problems with over heating, hard drives crashing, and mouse cursors moving by themselves. All problems that Dell is aware of on the older c500s and c600s but didnt resolve because of their new line not having them. I would bet that your issue has to do with over heating of the processor. Just a guess but if the bottom of the laptop gets very hot just before it BSOD's then this is the issue.

There are attachments you can buy to resolve the over heating issue but I would just get a new laptop if I were you.

[RoadClosed]

I would almost agree with you but.... I use this laptop 24 -7 and the only crashes I get are when I load a 3d excellerated game. In fact I often push the limits on the laptop since I use it to scan things and manipulate large date files with ease. It's got me perplexed. It does run hot I have to admit but I have never used a laptop that didn't operate fairly hot.

Dell laptops are ok but not on par with the desktop line. That cursor thing is annoying on older one's, but them my panasonic does it too.

That's not to say the nvidia chip isn't overheating in 3d mode though. That's hard to tell for sure.

[The3ntropy]

I have worked on several laptops, 9 out of 10 dell laptops that are having problems are from heat related issues. Gaming would be pushing the limits on all of the hardware especially the graphics chip; and the cd rom drive would be spinning as well. My advice, put a fan underneath or behind the laptop, leave it off for a good hour to cool off, keep the fan on, turn the laptop on and immediately start up diablo or some other game. If the problem still persists then we can work from there, but there is a very good chance that if it is a dell the problem is heat related.

[RoadClosed]

I should add this:

Diablo comes with a vid test mode to set the game up.

It tests direct draw the direct 3d

From a cold start it works fine... up until direct 3d. Blue screen.

Shut it off again. Start up. CHeck outlook. Load AO. close everything. Load Diblo Vid test, get to direct 3d. Bam.

Restart. Load Diablo. By pass vid test and Initialize game. Go through menues until the game world is initialized and Bam

OK. Restart again. Send error report of system recovery to MS again....

Turn vid card down to lowest resolution load vid test. Direct 3d runs a little longer and doesn't bam right on direct 3d test but eventually .... bam

Error report again

Keep desktop at low res. Load diablo, bypassing vid test and it plays. For a while, I am hacking skeletons then hit esc by accident... BAM.

load again on putting windows back to high res. BAM

Back to low res, game works fine but sometimes changing a map or going through a portal BAMs that card. This time I have even hit esc a few times and got back in.

I have played this games on lower end systems with not as much memory or vid memory. Perplexed. I want to think either the vid is overheating or running out of memory in the 3d part but I just don't know. Are there any good 3d testers out there?

Trying the leave off for a while mechanism.

[Showtime8000]

I can't seem to think of any other reason except for a faulty driver. I'm sorry if I missed it, but what video card are you running?

Try this:
http://www.opentechsupport.net/forum...ic/2789-1.html

You MAY be suffering from the The Unhandled Exception c0000005 error, but it is kinda old.

Also, check the integrity of your memory. One bad stick can be causing your problems, and Dell is quite notorious in slipping in "refurbished" modules in there.

As a last resort, try flashing your BIOS, and if that doesn't work, your computer is definetely overheating. Give a power supply a try.

Good luck

[White_Eskimo]

wait...i am a big fan of Counter-Strike and i use to play it 24/7 and my brother played it on a DELL Latitude L400 which my moms company gave it her. Anyways, i remember the laptop being very hot at times after long periods of play and i also remember the computer just randomly shutting itself off after a while of continueous play. Anyways, it might have been from the over heating (dont care it was a company computer ...plus i am only 15 so it wasnt even mine). Anyways, he had his CS/HL graphics on Software mode and he had his resolution turned down all the way and the problem still didnt go away. Now that cs 1.6 is out, playing CS on the Latitude is a complete joke...Anyways, i think the moral of this story is dont expect to play hardcore video games on your little laptop that is suppose to weigh only 1 pound.

Just my 2 cents....Good luck...let me know if you find out the solution to your problem, i just wanted you to know that there are others out there with problems like yours

[amorphous]

I have a dell inspiron 8100. I had a few issues with overheating and found this little program that lets you tweak the fan settings very nicely. No problems with overheating since. Also I upgraded to xp/pro and resolved a couple problems with some games I was playing. Might be worth a try.

edit: I just went and found the website with info on how to set this program up for dell computers. Here is the link.
http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan

[The3ntropy]

You mentioned several driver details, have you tried to uninstall the video/monitor drivers, reboot, and allow windows to use the default ones, NOT installing the supplied /or downloaded ones?

from http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp
NOTE: GeForce2 Go and GeForce4 Go mobile processors are not supported in this driver. Please contact the notebook's manufacturer for graphics drivers for your notebook PC.

Just thought of this too, with a mobile or 'go' nvidia chipset graphics card you CANNOT use the drivers from nvidia.com

One other quick thing too, do you have any other third party applications running that could directly affect performance? Anything from an AntiVirus engine(s), to a firewall, to XP SP1?

[RoadClosed]

Thanks for all your responses.

The Driver I am using is from Dell not nVidia. I will try windows default. I am considering blowing the entire installation and starting over. Here is what I did last night for reference...

I was stuck updating a core accouting system so I got out the Dell and lowered the video resolution down to the lowest possible.

I loaded Diablo and played for an hour and a half. Got my Paladin up 3 levels with NO issues. Hmmm. So I happily exited and still nothing. Hmmmm. Then I needed to do some work and set my XP video slider back to the resolution I use and hit the apply button.

BAM

So I reboot and change the slider and it works. Now what does that tell me? Nothing exept maybe the game is just not compatable with my video driver even though I am using Direct x 9?

Oh and my "little" laptop has a GeoForce video, 512 Ram and over a 1 ghz processor. It should be able to handle older games like Diablo 2 and Half Life. Heck I used to play half life on a 3dfx and 333 mhz.

I could buy the over heating story if the damn thing didn't lock up right away on the video test that comes with diablo 2, even after a cold boot.

I'll go over this whole thread again and double check everything but I am ready to chalk this up as... one of those things that just sucks... live with it and get another game.

Here is some more details

General
Dell Latitude c840
mobil intel pentium
4 - m CPU 1.80 Ghz
789 Mhz
128 MB Ram (hmm thought I had more?)

Vid
GeoForce4 440 Go
IRQ 11 Bios: 4.17.00.55.c1
TV encoder type: integrated (MV)
AGP 4x 32mb (not much I agree)
this screen also reports direct x 8.1 or greater.

Driver details say:

Date 2.10.2003 driver version 4.2.5.8