HELP an old Ranger

[IVHOTEP]

Well a big Helo to  you all, especially all of you I remember from the late notebookreview. Special greetings to all of you that still may remember me=) and to whoever made the wise decision to make an archive.

 

I am a bit older now and had other issues since so instead of going through all that archive I supposed to ask here.

 

I just love this laptop, sure its old but for my purposes its still very good. I love the looks, the feels...all the others I ever saw were just meh, Ill pass..

 

Last time I had trouble with my Ranger was 2020, the amd card went so I got into the upgrade bonanza thing....980m, 120hz, unlocked BIOS, ram, heatsinks, liquid metal, pwm bypass switch, u3 mod cooler and God knows what else.

Knowing I will eventually have to reconstruct my steps I always did some kind of backup files, photos and wrote down a few things but it never seems enough info. I just forget.

All went quite well for 3 years, especially temps, ice cold under all the load  I gave it.

 

Then a year ago I noticed a thin vertical line almost in the right corner of the display. I have an matte N173HHE-G32 REV. C2 one.

Then after a while I think another ones to the left and right far end, after some time another one. Then it BSODed. Crap I thought and went back to the 60hz display after updating gpu driver. Never touched the vbios or anything else since the card, 980m, was installed.

That was all good untill two months ago I got powerdowns, freezes of sort and the thing was dead.

I mean I have tried everything I knew and was able to remember and came to the conclusion the motherboard died.

So I got a new one from USA, about 200 euros, seemed legit, looked good and really unused.

Nice to be able to still source those, took a while since it arrived and I had time to mess with it but..

Put it all back and..voila!...it works!

I was surprised that I did not have to reinstall windows. All was there except office license which I had to pay again.

BIOS is A14. stock one I guess.

All worked fine for a few weeks and then...strange display behavior, lines of all sorts and then black screen. 8 beeps. The display was dead.

I put back the 120 Hz again and it works with only that first vertical line I noticed before.

 

Now here's where I am puzzled...there is no more service TAG. I read somewhere that I had to write it in the bios the first time I powered it on but ofc I didn't.

So that means no more unlocked BIOS!?

No more PEG? But my display works in some weird mode? FnF5  gets me the message in the pic below.

If it is SG dedicated card would fire up when under load? It doesnt. So I need to reinstall gpu drivers?

HW info and bios recognize GForce card but device manager says Basic Microsoft Display Adapter.

Now I don't know where to start, no more 60hz screen for backup and i am afraid I don't mess it up and lose my nerve.

 

So any suggestions will be appreciated!

 

Thanks!

 

[IVHOTEP]

obviously I need a GPU driver update but still wandering if I should do something else before that.

[Maks0098]

@IVHOTEPDo you have any error codes for your video card in Device Manager? maybe she's dying

 

and do you currently have a laptop running in SG mode with a 120 Hz screen?? Do you have two video cards (Intel and Nvidia) displayed in the BIOS and in the device manager in Windows?

 

and do you have any windows 8 fast boot or legacy enabled in boot in bios?

 

if you currently have two video cards displayed, you can try resetting the BIOS settings by removing the CMOS battery (on my 17 I used a negative screwdriver to pry off the battery and insert something paper/cardboard under it and run it without it to hear 5 peaks and next time the laptop will turn on with resetting the BIOS settings). but I’m not sure that this is worth doing, since Legacy mode may turn on and the laptop may refuse to start with a video card inserted into it, and then without it (I have no experience experimenting with a 120 Hz monitor, so I’m not sure), because monitor 120 Hz. You can also flash the unlocked BIOS and enable PEG manually, perhaps I would do this first.

[IVHOTEP]

On 7/10/2024 at 2:24 AM, Maks0098 said:

@IVHOTEPDo you have any error codes for your video card in Device Manager? maybe she's dying

 

and do you currently have a laptop running in SG mode with a 120 Hz screen?? Do you have two video cards (Intel and Nvidia) displayed in the BIOS and in the device manager in Windows?

 

and do you have any windows 8 fast boot or legacy enabled in boot in bios?

 

if you currently have two video cards displayed, you can try resetting the BIOS settings by removing the CMOS battery (on my 17 I used a negative screwdriver to pry off the battery and insert something paper/cardboard under it and run it without it to hear 5 peaks and next time the laptop will turn on with resetting the BIOS settings). but I’m not sure that this is worth doing, since Legacy mode may turn on and the laptop may refuse to start with a video card inserted into it, and then without it (I have no experience experimenting with a 120 Hz monitor, so I’m not sure), because monitor 120 Hz. You can also flash the unlocked BIOS and enable PEG manually, perhaps I would do this first.

Hi!

In Device Manager it only says "Basic Microsoft Display Adapter", no error.

it is a 120 Hz screen with possible issues, lines as I said. FnF5 does nothing as it should, 120hz display is on edp connector so it will not run on integrated graphics.

bios boot is as it was when everything was fine, uefi, no legacy, fastboot...

 

[IVHOTEP]

So I am very sorry it took this long...was on vacation, then some other work...then vacation and some third works

 

So where I left off, I went and modded the latest gpu driver to have it installed and it would hang and crash in the middle of instalation.

bsod = PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

Did that a few times.

When I did the diagnostics from bios it would crash at once, probably the display test, I think it goes first.

 

Had an command prompt do the scan and it did report parts of the system it could not fix.

 

So I did a clean windows install and to my surprise it came out good, 980m in device manager from the box, !??#, with some older driver, 388,13 version.

How did it find that beats me but it works.

 

Another thing I noticed, when restarting all those times, I went into bios and on the security page there is "service tag" line, which I saw before, but this time I noticed that it was highlighted and pressed enter. So it said "Enter service tag", which I did and now its my old tag.

As I wrote earlier, I was under the impression that only the first time you go into bios after new motherboard install did one have an opportunity to enter that.

 

The correct answer is: you get one chance to enter service tag, but not only on the first boot.

 

So unlocked bios is again an option but I had no use of it before and I am not doing that again if all works fine like it is.

 

Hope I closed this thread😁

 

 

[IVHOTEP]

Oh and for some reason not one instance of the Alienware command centre I have found on internet worked.

Good thing I still had the original Alienware resources CD