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M17x R3 - GTX 780M Bricked (Beeping 6 and 8)


madastro

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Hi everyone. I'm new here.

I bought a GTX 780M from eurocom. I have no knowledge about the insides of the R3 and was afraid to do it myself. I live in Thailand and there is only one (ex-tech) guy I know that used to work on Alienware so I took it to him for help.

I followed the installation procedure provided here and it happened to work fine. Until that night that the screen starts to blink on and off several times, and then it went black.

I restarted, the screen was not turned on, no POST and the laptop produced 8 beeps, indicating LCD failure.

Today I took it to the same guy. He swapped the 780M with my old 580M and it worked, so it's not the LCD. Then he swapped back the 780M, no POST, but now with 6 beeps, GPU failure.

Then he swapped the 780M to his own R3 (with A10 BIOS), POST, booted perfectly fine. But on my R3 was still 6 beeps.

We really had no idea of what was going on and the guy refused to help me any further since he is now a very busy man, so I'm on my own from now.

Right now I'm running on my old GTX 580M.

Please help me out, I don't know what to do anymore.

Thank you.

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Thank you, J95. I'll try it soon.

Forgive my ignorance but one more question, please: What if I get dell to change the board for me, will that change anything? Or will it be a waste of time?

(For a little while I felt that it was less convenient to carry around the usb sound card, but it's ok if that is the last resort.)

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  • 4 weeks later...
Hi, enter the BIOS and disable the integrated HD sound card, the IDT chip is not compatible, instead use an external usb sound card http://forum.techinferno.com/alienware-m17x-aw-17/3702-m17x-r3-gpu-upgrade-gtx-780m-9.html#post61496
Thank you, J95. I'll try it soon.

Forgive my ignorance but one more question, please: What if I get dell to change the board for me, will that change anything? Or will it be a waste of time?

(For a little while I felt that it was less convenient to carry around the usb sound card, but it's ok if that is the last resort.)

GUYS GUYS GUYS, I have an M17x R3 and I managed to get my on board sound card working again with the 780m installed. J95, correct me if I'm wrong ok.

This is what happened to me:

I was messing around with my laptop and I decided to buy an NVIDIA heatsink and replace the AMD heatsink I got installed, because I'm frightened to JB Weld the copper shim to the heatsink, because the gap is too small. Anyways, I decided to test out what would happen if i was to remove the card and re-seat it.:ambivalence:

i.e. imitate me putting back in the card as practice for when I get the other heatsink. So I took out the card, put it back in and there was like 6 beeps/ 5 beeps/ 8 beeps WHATEVER...... I was frustrated... WTF DID I DO!?!! :62:

So I decided to stick back in my old AMD 6990m to see if that would help... STILL 6 beeps. I re-seated the card like 5 times!!! STILL NOTHING!:50_002:

I decided to pull out the mobo battery to reset the bios:

I pulled out the 6990m, pulled out the battery, waited 30 secs, put in the card, put in the battery, screw it back up, powered on and still beeping. Nooooooooooo! :23_002:

So i decided that i will take out the 6990m card again! Take out the battery, put in the battery first, so it would get power without the card being in there, put in the card and screwed back everything and booted... It worked!!!!:78:

I loaded the bios (F2) and disabled sound card, integrated graphics, set monitor thingy to peg, set workaround to always. etc... F10... On the reboot, I force powered down and swapped back in my 780m gtx. Powered it on and it worked!:77: I was relieved. It booted up normal and into windows. NO SOUND!.................... Mind u, my sound was working before.

I shutdown, booted back up. Went into bios and re-enable the integrated sound card. Hit F10 and restarted... It booted up into windows with sound and everything.:pride: (This is what I did the first time round)

So my theory:

1/ beeping like crazy???: Pullout mobo battery, pull out card. Put back in card then battery (I think this will only happen with the A12 bios, because it never happened with the A08 bios before)

2/ With old card still in the system, disable whatever u need to , i.e. sound card, integrated graphics, whatever.

3/ Replace card with 780m gtx (mind you, my drivers were installed all the time, but first time, no drivers were installed)

4/ Let it boot up like normal... shut down...

5/ Boot into bios and re-enable the sound card and it should work.

(NOTE: This worked for me. I HOPE, but I can't say for sure, that it will work for everyone)

My theory is that for the first time the 780m is installed, i.e. no card in the system -> 780m in the system, the sound card needs to be disabled (along with everything else) and once it boots up like normal (and NVIDIA drivers are installed) then the sound card can be re-enabled.

I think if u going to take out the card again, u need to disable the sound card FIRST then take it out after shutdown.

Like I said, this is just a theory based on what happened to me just now. J95 or someone, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Also, I read that it will not work for a fresh install of windows. I re-installed windows fresh from the windows 7 disc I got with my pc when I bought it. I downloaded all the drivers from Dell's site to get everything working. Please tell me if I'm right or not. I really want to make a contribution to this community.

I REALLY WANT SOMEONE TO CONFIRM IF THIS METHOD WORKS. SO PLEASE... ANYONE?

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  • 2 weeks later...
GUYS GUYS GUYS, I have an M17x R3 and I managed to get my on board sound card working again with the 780m installed. J95, correct me if I'm wrong ok.

This is what happened to me:

I was messing around with my laptop and I decided to buy an NVIDIA heatsink and replace the AMD heatsink I got installed, because I'm frightened to JB Weld the copper shim to the heatsink, because the gap is too small. Anyways, I decided to test out what would happen if i was to remove the card and re-seat it.:ambivalence:

i.e. imitate me putting back in the card as practice for when I get the other heatsink. So I took out the card, put it back in and there was like 6 beeps/ 5 beeps/ 8 beeps WHATEVER...... I was frustrated... WTF DID I DO!?!! :62:

So I decided to stick back in my old AMD 6990m to see if that would help... STILL 6 beeps. I re-seated the card like 5 times!!! STILL NOTHING!:50_002:

I decided to pull out the mobo battery to reset the bios:

I pulled out the 6990m, pulled out the battery, waited 30 secs, put in the card, put in the battery, screw it back up, powered on and still beeping. Nooooooooooo! :23_002:

So i decided that i will take out the 6990m card again! Take out the battery, put in the battery first, so it would get power without the card being in there, put in the card and screwed back everything and booted... It worked!!!!:78:

I loaded the bios (F2) and disabled sound card, integrated graphics, set monitor thingy to peg, set workaround to always. etc... F10... On the reboot, I force powered down and swapped back in my 780m gtx. Powered it on and it worked!:77: I was relieved. It booted up normal and into windows. NO SOUND!.................... Mind u, my sound was working before.

I shutdown, booted back up. Went into bios and re-enable the integrated sound card. Hit F10 and restarted... It booted up into windows with sound and everything.:pride: (This is what I did the first time round)

So my theory:

1/ beeping like crazy???: Pullout mobo battery, pull out card. Put back in card then battery (I think this will only happen with the A12 bios, because it never happened with the A08 bios before)

2/ With old card still in the system, disable whatever u need to , i.e. sound card, integrated graphics, whatever.

3/ Replace card with 780m gtx (mind you, my drivers were installed all the time, but first time, no drivers were installed)

4/ Let it boot up like normal... shut down...

5/ Boot into bios and re-enable the sound card and it should work.

(NOTE: This worked for me. I HOPE, but I can't say for sure, that it will work for everyone)

My theory is that for the first time the 780m is installed, i.e. no card in the system -> 780m in the system, the sound card needs to be disabled (along with everything else) and once it boots up like normal (and NVIDIA drivers are installed) then the sound card can be re-enabled.

I think if u going to take out the card again, u need to disable the sound card FIRST then take it out after shutdown.

Like I said, this is just a theory based on what happened to me just now. J95 or someone, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Also, I read that it will not work for a fresh install of windows. I re-installed windows fresh from the windows 7 disc I got with my pc when I bought it. I downloaded all the drivers from Dell's site to get everything working. Please tell me if I'm right or not. I really want to make a contribution to this community.

I REALLY WANT SOMEONE TO CONFIRM IF THIS METHOD WORKS. SO PLEASE... ANYONE?

I just got 780m installed on m17x-r3 3D and I followed the instructions of disabling IDT chip prior of installing 780m.

So after I installed NVidia drivers I enabled IDT back and the sound is working for me. It is not a clean Windows 7 install but it looks to me that once the NVidia drivers are installed there are no IDT driver issues.

BTW, I run into another issue that kind of got me scarred. My card was stuck at 324Mhz max. I'm not sure what caused this issue for sure but I suspect it was my power supply ID chip that had a hiccup. The bios was complaining I do not have original Dell power supply. So I unplugged my power supply and let it drain for 5-10 minutes. Then hooked it back in. No more warnings and 780m would start working properly within its full MHz range.

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I just got 780m installed on m17x-r3 3D and I followed the instructions of disabling IDT chip prior of installing 780m.

So after I installed NVidia drivers I enabled IDT back and the sound is working for me. It is not a clean Windows 7 install but it looks to me that once the NVidia drivers are installed there are no IDT driver issues.

No, although it works, I guarantee that if u pull the card out to do something like a repaste or something like that without disabling the sound card first. When u reinstall ur card again with the sound card still enabled, it gona beep and not start. To remove the card for whatever reason, u first need to disable the sound card. That's the only way it will work. Then just re-enable the card after. Trust me, I learned that the hard way. It'll beep like crazy! Just read what happened to me.

I'm happy that someone else was able to confirm that method for the sound card to work without that big USB drive always plugged in.

do you know how I can start a thread with that as the main topic?

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