Have you even check this page for Vista fixes for your problems by any chance http://www.nvidia.com/object/windows_vista_hotfixes.html

Took me 1 minute to refind this page, I have all those fixed applied and the game run pretty smoot on my Nvidia 8800 GTS 512meg under Vista 64bit.

It has nothiing to do with Vista.

It's the drivers Alienware/Dell uses.

You are only allowed to install the ones they supply you, but unfortunately for us users, they are terrible outdated.

So you need to search google for some cracked Drivers.

EDIT: You could install WinXP, and then you will be rid of the Dell/Alienware supported drivers, but that leaves you nowhere.

Your issue has nothing to do with Vista. Its Nvidia/Dell(who owns Alienware). Nvidia has not put out "working" SLi drivers...ever, for any OS. Nvidia continues to support SLi but they refuse to fix any of the issues regarding it.

Originally posted by pussaykat

You could just install xp and get over it.

Exactly what I was thinking...

OP bought an Alienware.......

an Alienware....

You started getting ripped off as soon as you logged onto that website.

D.

Originally posted by daelnor

OP bought an Alienware.......

 

an Alienware....

You started getting ripped off as soon as you logged onto that website.

D.

Sad but true, you can build and set up much more powerful and better PCs for like half the price, at best. Even with a top of the line watercooler that does better than testing machines via overclocks will cost far less than an alienware, sadly.

With that said, their systems look awesome.   

I'm with the original poster here, I have a similar system,(2x 8800 Ultra SLI)  but I think I found a somewhat permanent solution to my problem. After installing the countless fixes and shuffling drivers back and forth continuously, this solution has worked for me for several months. Note, that for new games I always do install the newest recommended drivers, sometimes they are beta rivers, but this is not a very taxing process, at least for me.

My GPUs are overclocked by default, when I set the GPUs to the default 'Ultra' frequencies, suddenly the crashes disappeared. Also, I've been running with Aero disabled, this can cause some instability as well. I can't say that I'm happy, but i have no desire to go back to XP since I am dual-booting Linux and if I need stability I just switch over to to my beloved Ubuntu.

2 little letters..............  xp

vista is shit

Originally posted by melmoth1

Ok chaps. Explaining my experience may save some of you a LOT of frustration and trouble if you are intending to buy a new high-end gamers' laptop/desktop with the latest Dx10 nvidia cards SLI enabled.

If you have problems with you graphics card "stopped responding but has now recovered" you will have to trawl through gazillions of useless fixes and advice from every Tom, Dick and Harry who thinks he has the "complete solution". After several weeks of listening and trying fixes I finally understood the problem. I am not a technically savvy PC dude, but I have friends who work in the industry and who have helped me. Here is my story.

Ok, lets begin. I bought a new M9750 alienware with Dual 512MB Nvidia GeForce Go 8700M GT SLI enabled cards. I could tell you the rest of my set-up, but the main thing is these cards and the fact that I was using 32-bit VISTA.

I played LOTRO and The Witcher. I was constantly crashing out of games with the now infamous "Display driver has stopped responding and has recovered:". Sometimes I could play for 4 hours before this happened, sometimes it happens every 10 minutes; totally random.

I tried all the fixes:

(1) Uninstalled/reinstalled drivers;

(2) Uninstalled and installed new drivers (with INF files)

(3) Turned SLI off and used single GPU and/or experimented with different settings from my nvidia control panel

(4) Totally restored my laptop to factory settings;

And I avoided some of the more radical recommended fixes on the advice of a friend (who works in the computing industry with VISTA 64-bit) who said some of these fixes could actually screw up my PC entirely and kill my warranty.

Nothing worked.

Eventually I learned the problem was to do with VISTA and high-end SLI graphic cards/drivers and that it was essentially beyond my power to fix. You can see the Microsoft summary of TDR here:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/wddm_timeout.mspx

And a pasted response from nvidia here:

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=31913

So basically I bought a high-end gamers' rig that cannot play games because nvidia have not or cannot support certain cards on VISTA due to problems they were made aware back in 2006. This is not good customer service.

Alienware were very helpful and told me to try many fixes, which unfortunately I had already tried. A tech support guy at Alienware said this was a common problem because nvidia haven't been able to create drivers or fixes to fully resolve the problem. He also said it was a "strange" issue as it happens to some M9750 laptops and not to others. Summarized: no-one is exaclty sure what the problem is (hence gazillions of conflicting advice from people on the net and a muted passing-the-buck response from nvidia and microsft) and yet we are sold being sold very expensive hardware and software that doesn't do what it says on the box.

Suffice to say, I have sent back my M9750 and cancelled my order.

Now the entire experience has totally put me off PC gaming. The fact that nvidia blames Microsoft, who blames nvidia and the PC manufacturers hold their hands up and say "Not us mate" etc has just exhausted all faith I have in VISTA, nvidia, alienware etc.

Sorry to say that I given up on PC gaming due to this and will stick with lowly consoles (PS3 and XBOX 360) until it is "safe" to return to PC gaming.

Just a heads-up to all you out there who are thinking of getting that "ultimate rig" for the new mmo releases of 2008. 

Always amazes me how hard people work to sounds stupid and/or try to act like there are the first to discover well documented issues.  Nvidia hasn't managed to put together a good driver for sli for 8 series gpu's.  This has been well documented since day 1 and there will likely never be a fix for it.  Not really Vista fault (apologies to everyone that can't live 2 minutes without crying about made up BS about Vista) and not Microsofts (apologies to all that have nothing better to do by cry about them as well) but Nvidia's fault.  Asways good to share these things for all the other people that can't be bother doing 2 minutes worth of homework before throwing away their money, but then again that was pretty obvious as soon as you mentioned Alienware.

I'm sorry you had to give up on pc gaming over vista.  90% of my gaming / vista problems ended by turning off User Account Control. 

I guess if you returned the beauty to prove a point to alienware that's fine but the better solution would be to install xp.  I was upset at Dell for wanting to charge more installing xp, especially after having to deal with all the vista problems.  I seem to be smooth sailing now. 

Build a pc if you're hard up for cash.  I'd just rather have one company built with a nice warrenty on the entire package.  My fading LED lighted system FTW.

Originally posted by n25philly

Originally posted by melmoth1

Ok chaps. Explaining my experience may save some of you a LOT of frustration and trouble if you are intending to buy a new high-end gamers' laptop/desktop with the latest Dx10 nvidia cards SLI enabled.

If you have problems with you graphics card "stopped responding but has now recovered" you will have to trawl through gazillions of useless fixes and advice from every Tom, Dick and Harry who thinks he has the "complete solution". After several weeks of listening and trying fixes I finally understood the problem. I am not a technically savvy PC dude, but I have friends who work in the industry and who have helped me. Here is my story.

Ok, lets begin. I bought a new M9750 alienware with Dual 512MB Nvidia GeForce Go 8700M GT SLI enabled cards. I could tell you the rest of my set-up, but the main thing is these cards and the fact that I was using 32-bit VISTA.

I played LOTRO and The Witcher. I was constantly crashing out of games with the now infamous "Display driver has stopped responding and has recovered:". Sometimes I could play for 4 hours before this happened, sometimes it happens every 10 minutes; totally random.

I tried all the fixes:

(1) Uninstalled/reinstalled drivers;

(2) Uninstalled and installed new drivers (with INF files)

(3) Turned SLI off and used single GPU and/or experimented with different settings from my nvidia control panel

(4) Totally restored my laptop to factory settings;

And I avoided some of the more radical recommended fixes on the advice of a friend (who works in the computing industry with VISTA 64-bit) who said some of these fixes could actually screw up my PC entirely and kill my warranty.

Nothing worked.

Eventually I learned the problem was to do with VISTA and high-end SLI graphic cards/drivers and that it was essentially beyond my power to fix. You can see the Microsoft summary of TDR here:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/wddm_timeout.mspx

And a pasted response from nvidia here:

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=31913

So basically I bought a high-end gamers' rig that cannot play games because nvidia have not or cannot support certain cards on VISTA due to problems they were made aware back in 2006. This is not good customer service.

Alienware were very helpful and told me to try many fixes, which unfortunately I had already tried. A tech support guy at Alienware said this was a common problem because nvidia haven't been able to create drivers or fixes to fully resolve the problem. He also said it was a "strange" issue as it happens to some M9750 laptops and not to others. Summarized: no-one is exaclty sure what the problem is (hence gazillions of conflicting advice from people on the net and a muted passing-the-buck response from nvidia and microsft) and yet we are sold being sold very expensive hardware and software that doesn't do what it says on the box.

Suffice to say, I have sent back my M9750 and cancelled my order.

Now the entire experience has totally put me off PC gaming. The fact that nvidia blames Microsoft, who blames nvidia and the PC manufacturers hold their hands up and say "Not us mate" etc has just exhausted all faith I have in VISTA, nvidia, alienware etc.

Sorry to say that I given up on PC gaming due to this and will stick with lowly consoles (PS3 and XBOX 360) until it is "safe" to return to PC gaming.

Just a heads-up to all you out there who are thinking of getting that "ultimate rig" for the new mmo releases of 2008. 

Always amazes me how hard people work to sounds stupid and/or try to act like there are the first to discover well documented issues.  Nvidia hasn't managed to put together a good driver for sli for 8 series gpu's.  This has been well documented since day 1 and there will likely never be a fix for it.  Not really Vista fault (apologies to everyone that can't live 2 minutes without crying about made up BS about Vista) and not Microsofts (apologies to all that have nothing better to do by cry about them as well) but Nvidia's fault.  Asways good to share these things for all the other people that can't be bother doing 2 minutes worth of homework before throwing away their money, but then again that was pretty obvious as soon as you mentioned Alienware.

This driver issue is not NVIDIA's fault. I have a friend who has not been able to play any game on the PC since she bought her computer, since august, and she has a ATI card. Same Error...only its the ATIMAG driver error rather than the Nvidia one, and it only occurs on Vista so it seems.....so you do the math. Search the internet, you will find it is a problem with ATI and NVIDIA cards, both...the chances that both are releasing bad drivers, as well as all updates and 3rd party drivers not working. Windows website also acknowledges the error and there is no fix for it at the current time

Originally posted by miagisan

Originally posted by n25philly

Originally posted by melmoth1

Ok chaps. Explaining my experience may save some of you a LOT of frustration and trouble if you are intending to buy a new high-end gamers' laptop/desktop with the latest Dx10 nvidia cards SLI enabled.

If you have problems with you graphics card "stopped responding but has now recovered" you will have to trawl through gazillions of useless fixes and advice from every Tom, Dick and Harry who thinks he has the "complete solution". After several weeks of listening and trying fixes I finally understood the problem. I am not a technically savvy PC dude, but I have friends who work in the industry and who have helped me. Here is my story.

Ok, lets begin. I bought a new M9750 alienware with Dual 512MB Nvidia GeForce Go 8700M GT SLI enabled cards. I could tell you the rest of my set-up, but the main thing is these cards and the fact that I was using 32-bit VISTA.

I played LOTRO and The Witcher. I was constantly crashing out of games with the now infamous "Display driver has stopped responding and has recovered:". Sometimes I could play for 4 hours before this happened, sometimes it happens every 10 minutes; totally random.

I tried all the fixes:

(1) Uninstalled/reinstalled drivers;

(2) Uninstalled and installed new drivers (with INF files)

(3) Turned SLI off and used single GPU and/or experimented with different settings from my nvidia control panel

(4) Totally restored my laptop to factory settings;

And I avoided some of the more radical recommended fixes on the advice of a friend (who works in the computing industry with VISTA 64-bit) who said some of these fixes could actually screw up my PC entirely and kill my warranty.

Nothing worked.

Eventually I learned the problem was to do with VISTA and high-end SLI graphic cards/drivers and that it was essentially beyond my power to fix. You can see the Microsoft summary of TDR here:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/wddm_timeout.mspx

And a pasted response from nvidia here:

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=31913

So basically I bought a high-end gamers' rig that cannot play games because nvidia have not or cannot support certain cards on VISTA due to problems they were made aware back in 2006. This is not good customer service.

Alienware were very helpful and told me to try many fixes, which unfortunately I had already tried. A tech support guy at Alienware said this was a common problem because nvidia haven't been able to create drivers or fixes to fully resolve the problem. He also said it was a "strange" issue as it happens to some M9750 laptops and not to others. Summarized: no-one is exaclty sure what the problem is (hence gazillions of conflicting advice from people on the net and a muted passing-the-buck response from nvidia and microsft) and yet we are sold being sold very expensive hardware and software that doesn't do what it says on the box.

Suffice to say, I have sent back my M9750 and cancelled my order.

Now the entire experience has totally put me off PC gaming. The fact that nvidia blames Microsoft, who blames nvidia and the PC manufacturers hold their hands up and say "Not us mate" etc has just exhausted all faith I have in VISTA, nvidia, alienware etc.

Sorry to say that I given up on PC gaming due to this and will stick with lowly consoles (PS3 and XBOX 360) until it is "safe" to return to PC gaming.

Just a heads-up to all you out there who are thinking of getting that "ultimate rig" for the new mmo releases of 2008. 

Always amazes me how hard people work to sounds stupid and/or try to act like there are the first to discover well documented issues.  Nvidia hasn't managed to put together a good driver for sli for 8 series gpu's.  This has been well documented since day 1 and there will likely never be a fix for it.  Not really Vista fault (apologies to everyone that can't live 2 minutes without crying about made up BS about Vista) and not Microsofts (apologies to all that have nothing better to do by cry about them as well) but Nvidia's fault.  Asways good to share these things for all the other people that can't be bother doing 2 minutes worth of homework before throwing away their money, but then again that was pretty obvious as soon as you mentioned Alienware.

This driver issue is not NVIDIA's fault. I have a friend who has not been able to play any game on the PC since she bought her computer, since august, and she has a ATI card. Same Error...only its the ATIMAG driver error rather than the Nvidia one, and it only occurs on Vista so it seems.....so you do the math. Search the internet, you will find it is a problem with ATI and NVIDIA cards, both...the chances that both are releasing bad drivers, as well as all updates and 3rd party drivers not working. Windows website also acknowledges the error and there is no fix for it at the current time

Nvidias problems are well documented and are their fault.  Drivers are not Microsoft's responsibility, and you don't want it to be.  Nvidia and ATI make the hardware and they are responsible for the drivers because they are the ones that make the hardware.  What are the odds of both companies making bad drivers?  Considering both Nvidia and ATI have histories of not always providing good driver, then yes I'd say the odds are really good.  You do realize that XP and Vista use different drivers, right?  You're using a bunch of nothing to try to prove a point that just doesn't exist

Miagi - you're wrong, philly is correct.

Drivers are not easy to write - they are beyond most programmers in fact because they are so very low level; you have to be careful about so many buffer issues, timing issues, integrity issues.....

IT also doesnt help when these companies have closed off a lot of their proprietary information - BSD would not write a lot of device driver stuff on the linux side when companies were boneheaded about not sharing info!  and rightly so! 

I'm no fan of Microsoft but vista really is mostly just bloated - it does do several things better; uac was badly implemented - anyhow not going down that road.

it's tough enough getting a device driver perfected when dealing with a single GPU; when you start dealing with 2 GPUs, sli etc .... you run into all sorts of headaches that you just didnt test completely enough for - they have automated testing machines that run through millions/billions of tests and find plenty of errors in the processors, then once they have the errata nailed down (or at least as far as they know lol) they adjust microcode and other processes accordingly to workaround the errors as well as remove them physically in the next stepping as far as manufacturing goes (but who knows how often these companies change masks and production runs?  they know but ...  usually they are hte only ones who know their timelines and they dont broadcast it very often)

you want bleeding edge you got it - you and your friend are bleeding with frustration - your choice

notice amds acquisition of ati? they were supposed to have lovely superfast synergistic machines with gpu+cpu+assorted cache/hyper(transport) 2.0 or 3.0 whatever the spec is up to now .... gee they are a tad behind because it is NOT EASY.

stay off the bleeding edge unless you're quite well off financially OR not wussy n whiney.  there will be bugs when you are talking billions of transistors and the technology isnt mature [hell the big 3 still have massive issues and auto tech is quite mature lol]

do a lil more research or get some smarter friends ....

live and learn, live and learn

x  - who tries to avoid assembly language ...  except when using gmp on intel cpus

Well I love people who tell the OP "Should just install xp".  You can't do that in some cases, some manufactures have stopped writing xp drivers now.   So there is not guarantee that you will get all of your hardware to work under XP anymore.  I found this with HP desktops, the nvidia Chipset driver didn't have an xp driver at all, only vista.  So that might have caused more issues then it fixed.

Honestly if your going to buy a state of the art gaming rig you have to expect these types of issues.  How ever I think everyone might be jumping the gun here.  The original poster stated that the guys at Alienware have said, some of these machines have this problem and some don't it is a wierd issue.  That could mean a couple of things including that there is a hardware defect in the system themselves?  Other issues have being droned about on here over and over, driver issues, vista...etc.  Personally I don't think it is vista per-say, I really think that the technology of DX10, SLI, and vista combination is the true problem here.  Everything is to new, sorry to say but that is probably the truth.  I have a buddy who has an alienware, no idea what model laptop, with vista x64 on it and he hasn't ever had an issue, and he has sli nvidia cards in it.

Now one poster on here did mention something about not having issues with Vista x64 ultimate, and honestly I think that might have fixed your problems.  I personally have installed almost every OS since 98 legitly on my computers within a week of release.  All windows versions had there issues from day one, I remember the out crys with xp was released to replace 98 second edition, and Millenium.  People hated it, and it took a year to start catching on, or for the serious bugs to be worked out.  Vista is no different but I think the more stable version of vista is the x64 versions.  I have run vista since the day it was released, Vista x64 ultimate and I will tell you that first 2 months sucked horribly.  Now I find it hard to go back to XP Pro x32 or x64, just doesn't feel as good anymore.  My machine isn't state of the art by any standards, intel e6300, nvidia 7950GT oc, 2GB of memory, so I haven't played with the SLI, but it doesn't surprise me there are issues.  I have tried the x32 ultimate and I find less bugs it seems with the x64 ultimate, so that is my suggestion to people get x64, I mean the software is going in that direction now anyways, it is only a matter of time.

Too bad for the OP though I wish that he could have tried a few of the other recommendations on this discussion, but oh well.  Don't be discouraged by it though, just get yourself a machine that is good, and save yourself a ton, then upgrade in 2 years...do it like that.  Anyways good luck.

Here's my issue with Alienware(Dell) and the OP.

The alienware rep basically said that the product was buggy crap, but they were still going to sell it, and at inflated prices to boot.

And the OP said....ok, sign me up?

Really? Man. I have some ocean front property in Idaho I can sell you....

D.

Originally posted by zantax

Well I love people who tell the OP "Should just install xp".  You can't do that in some cases, some manufactures have stopped writing xp drivers now.   So there is not guarantee that you will get all of your hardware to work under XP anymore.  I found this with HP desktops, the nvidia Chipset driver didn't have an xp driver at all, only vista.  So that might have caused more issues then it fixed.

Not sure what your smoking but any manufacturers worth their salt still writes XP drivers since XP is still Majorly used by the common user (Vista has not translated over well to most PC users since its a resource bloated evil hog).    HP, DELL and a few shit companies  that build machines try to force you to a Buggy peice of crap named Vista may not make Drivers for their Company's crappy hardware but Intel, Nvidia, Creative, etc etc all make XP drivers.  Hell I just did a full driver update on most of my hardware the otherday and I have OMG XP. 

There's no Vista ONLY hardware available to my knowledge.  Only Vista compatible.  Dell & HP & Gateway can get away with Not Letting you have XP drivers for their pricey machines but its just a scam.  If you build it yourself you can put all the parts you want and Better for cheaper on your own machine and install XP flawlesly.  Hell you could dual boot with Vista / XP just fine.   Its a scam by Microsoft trying to doop consumers who don't know any better.  Vista is the 21st Century Windows ME. 

Oh yea just to prove Nvidia still makes XP drivers here's the link to lastest December 2007 Driver for the newest nForce motherboard.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_winxp_9.46.html

     Using any breakthrough technology can be frustrating, but seeing the Witcher in Dx10 for me was worth it.  I'm extremely excited to see Age of Conan.  Even though I had some issues at release, I've finally got a system that rarely crashes. 

     I'm using Vista 64-bit Ulitimate with Nvidia's 8800 GTX and an AMD x2 and haven't had any issues in months.  Upgrading to Vista was worth it in my opinion for Dx10 alone.  If you had researched what you were purchasing you would have realized that SLi has major issues.  Also, since the market is in a period of transition with most consumers still using XP software, most of the games that are being released are not utilizing the full potential of your hardware.  There are very few games that utilize a dual core processor and none that I know of that utilize a quad core processor.  It will take years before the new technology becomes reliable.

     For those that want an opinion about upgrading to Vista, I recommend it.  All the problems that I have had have been strictly driver based (Nvidia) and Microsoft has not been at fault.  There were some issues with Microsoft, but once you update with the necessary hotfixes and updates, very rarely will you experience any problems.

    Stay away from brand name computers!  You can find the top of the line parts yourself for extreme discounts and even if you can't put it together yourself it is far cheaper to pay someone to put it together for you than to buy from Dell or HP especially for the gaming PC's.  True you don't get customer service for the hardware, but Microsoft has always been helpful with whatever problem I have on my machine and they all speak ENGLISH!  Sony only allows calls while under warranty.  After that they charge you $30 through an automated system before you can even speak with a representative.  Building your own PC can save you thousands. 

Originally posted by elvenangel

 

Originally posted by zantax

Well I love people who tell the OP "Should just install xp".  You can't do that in some cases, some manufactures have stopped writing xp drivers now.   So there is not guarantee that you will get all of your hardware to work under XP anymore.  I found this with HP desktops, the nvidia Chipset driver didn't have an xp driver at all, only vista.  So that might have caused more issues then it fixed.

 

Not sure what your smoking but any manufacturers worth their salt still writes XP drivers since XP is still Majorly used by the common user (Vista has not translated over well to most PC users since its a resource bloated evil hog).    HP, DELL and a few shit companies  that build machines try to force you to a Buggy peice of crap named Vista may not make Drivers for their Company's crappy hardware but Intel, Nvidia, Creative, etc etc all make XP drivers.  Hell I just did a full driver update on most of my hardware the otherday and I have OMG XP. 

There's no Vista ONLY hardware available to my knowledge.  Only Vista compatible.  Dell & HP & Gateway can get away with Not Letting you have XP drivers for their pricey machines but its just a scam.  If you build it yourself you can put all the parts you want and Better for cheaper on your own machine and install XP flawlesly.  Hell you could dual boot with Vista / XP just fine.   Its a scam by Microsoft trying to doop consumers who don't know any better.  Vista is the 21st Century Windows ME. 

Oh yea just to prove Nvidia still makes XP drivers here's the link to lastest December 2007 Driver for the newest nForce motherboard.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_winxp_9.46.html

rolls eyes and watches IQ drop from reading this