Guardian241

I have attempted this upgrade twice before for the 980m and both times it has failed with separate cards. I have assumed it was due to faulty cards as the Alienware would always crash after installing the .inf modified drivers, but the sellers assure me that the cards are checked prior to being sent. Is there anything I need to do beyond having an unlocked A15 bios, Windows 10 UEFI, and modified .inf files to make this upgrade work?

When talking with the seller of the 980m they asked me to update to a A16 or higher bios. Did they make a mistake?

I currently have an A15 bios that you provided me a few months ago but would like to upgrade to an A17 to try to make this 980m work. Do I need to do something else or should I just send you the A17 bios I have downloaded from Dell? edit: installing the A17 bios now and sending you the dump you requested. EDIT: I tried installing the A17 bios but it gave me a "unsupported system" message then didn't complete the install.

Thanks for the response, Klem. Would you be able to provide me with an unlocked A17 bios for my Alienware M17xR4?

So I contacted prema mod directly and they sent me the files necessary for the 980m on Windows 10 with my M17xR4. After installing I still get the same problem as when I manually edited the .inf files and my screen just goes blank and is unresponsive. Any ideas how to fix this? Have I done something wrong? Kind Regards - M

Thanks, Klem! Which file should I go for here? A lot of the inf files on that link are no longer available :(.

Hi, I recently purchased a new 980m and I'm attempting to install the custom drivers needed for it to run properly. I already attempted following this guide: https://null-src.com/posts/nvidia-notebook-driver-inf-mod/post.php for modding the .inf file to make the NVIDIA driver install but it would fail as soon as I run "setup.exe" as administrator and just close itself. Does anyone have any experience with this? Or does anyone with the same laptop / GPU have files they could send me to make this process easier? Any help would be appreciated. I currently am stuck on the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter until I get this fixed. Kind Regards. - M

Yeah the previous GPU works just fine.

I agree about the GPU being bad. I know that there's modded drivers involved but I shouldn't be seeing lines like this across my screen lol. The seller has agreed to send a replacement but I'm a little disappointed as I now have to return it and wait for the new one to arrive. I guess I'm too much of an Amazon Prime Zoomer who wants everything next-day delivery.

So I just received a 980m in the post and after installing it I was greeted by multiple system crashes on my Alienware m17xr4 and was unable to install new drivers. Is there a step in the intallation process I missed? A bios setting I was supposed to change? The laptop is already set to UEFI mode in preperation for this and upon putting the old 680m back in the system it now works again. I have heard that I need to change INI files to install drivers but I expected it to at least function without large bugs such as these. Do you think that this GPU is faulty or have I done something wrong? Thanks for any help you can give. - M

So I installed the new GPU which arrived today but my screen keeps looking like this. The 980m shows up on device manager but nvidia geforce experience can't find drivers for it. Is the GPU faulty or did I miss something?

I got a new unlocked A15 bios from @Klem and I found the most up-to-date version of the on-screen display software for my alienware. With lots of fiddling I now have the laptop running solely on the 680m and it's ready to be upgraded to the 980m when it finally arrives To make matters better, the static dots problem has disappeared! The screen is clear now and the laptop feels fantastic. I'm really looking forward to getting this 980m into it. Thanks for all of your help so far, I may bug you again if I get more problems with the 980m.

@Klem Hi, mate. Could you unlock my bios for me? I used the tool you wrote about in other posts and here's the link: https://www.sendspace.com/file/pccdc3 Many thanks. - M

Fortunately I was just being a moron and the NVIDIA GFX Card is detected in the bios but not in device manager. Currently investigating.

I flashed the my Alienware with an unlocked A15 bios ready for the 980m and reinstalled windows with UEFI as well as the other steps you mentioned. However, my 680m no longer shows up on device manager or on the bios; have I done something wrong or am I missing a step? Or will the 980m work fine when it arrives? Sorry to ask all of these questions. You've been very helpful so far so if I get stuck I just returned to this thread.

I took out the 680m and still got the same issue. I've purchased an Intel Celeron B820 on ebay for £7 which should be able to tell me if the CPU is to blame. Hopefully it's a simple CPU swap-fix. EDIT: Obiously the Celeron isn't going to be my replacement CPU if my current one is faulty. But for £7 it's a great diagnostic tool. I'd probably get the best CPU for this socket if this one turns out faulty.

I used the replacement cables. I am also worried that this may be a motherboard issue as the problem is still there when the display is using the microsoft basic display driver. I will take out the GPU tomorrow and check the system.

I disabled Intel 4000 Graphcis first then the 680m to test if it would fix the issue but niether did. Could it still be related to these devices or maybe it's something else? I've already replaced the display for this laptop and both displays had this issue.

Hi, I've recently got my hands on an M17x R4 Alienware Laptop from 2013 which I love. I've replaced the screen, keyboard, RAM, and hard drive to make it into a fully modern laptop. However, I'm currently waiting on a replacement for the 680m GPU with a 980m from ebay. My question for you all is, do I need to do anything with the BIOS to make this 980m work? Is there a way to prevent the laptop from using Intel HD Graphics with Optimus? I think the Intel HD Graphics on this laptop are currently broken as I see static-looking dots flash on the screen. (See image below for example). My theory is that because Intel HD Graphics with Optimus is still in-use while in-game, the dots are being caused by it. Thanks for any help in advance. - M