T61p 6460-DVU - nvidia driver unloads itself randomly

[danh]

I'm an experienced desktop support person with a couple mass deployments of laptops under my belt and this is driving me insane:

We recently purchased about 12 T61p laptops from CDW. They are this spec:

T9300(2.5GHz), 2GB RAM, 160GB 7200rpm HD, 15.4in 1680x1050 LCD, 256MB nVIDIA Quadro FX 570M, CDRW/DVDRW, Intel 802.11agn wireless, Bluetooth, Modem, 1Gb Ethernet, UltraNav, Secure chip, Fingerprint reader, 9c Li-Ion, WinXP Pro

We upgraded the ram to 4GB.

The problem I continue to have is the Nvidia driver randomly unloads itself and/or crashes, and does not show up in the Display control panel anymore, instead of saying "Nvidia XXX on Thinkpad LCD" it says " on ". No video acceleration anymore. Windows draw like a 286.

Sometimes the issue fixes itself with a full system shutdown, sometimes it doesnt. It's happened on the dock with a monitor installed, and off the dock without one. I've tried the newest Nvidia driver for the 570M on Lenovo's site, no difference. Also tried the newest presentation director, and newest BIOS update, no difference. It's happened on more than one of the 12 we purchased, multiple times.

I thought it might have been a corrupt image I made so I started over with the IBM recovery CDs. All I did was install XP SP3, MS office 2007, and a few other random apps, none of which had anything to do with the video card. It did it again, unloaded the driver. shutting down and restarting made it go away that time, but for how long?

I'm unsure what else to check at this point, so far i've ruled out that it's our corporate image of the laptop, because it does the same thing with a freshly restored one (after SP3 was installed).

Switching monitor resolutions or profiles with Presentation Director seems to be a catalyst for it to do it, but it does it without changing any resolutions sometimes as well.

I've tried unloading the nvidia control panel software but just using the driver, and that seemed to make it happen less, but it still does it.

The only thing I havent tried is completely uninstalling presentation director and not using it at all. I'm thinking this may be an issue with presentation director and the nvidia card in this laptop, but I have no idea.

Does anyone have any advice for me? I've already talked to lenovo and their support is worthless. They just ask me to send them the laptop. It's happening on multiple laptops so that isn't going to help me. CDW's support was slightly more useful but it's still a dead end.

[Quagmyre]

My T61p is pretty much the same configuration that your laptops have.

What I'd try and do:

1.
Reinstall a laptop which is known to have this issue with a clean XP SP3 image (preferrably from a slipstreamed CD)

2.
Install all drivers, using the versions from the Lenovo website. Don't install any display-related ThinkVantage software. For the first shot, it would be best to install no ThinkVantage software at all, with the possible exception of Fingerprint reader software, HDAPS, and the Power Manager.

3.
Once the NVIDIA driver has been installed, call up msconfig.exe and
remove all NVIDIA-related startup stuff (nwiz, NvCpl, NvMcTray)

4.
Disable the NVIDIA driver helper service (nvsvc32.exe)

5. Reboot and see whether the problem persists.

[danh]

I'm trying to avoid having to start the entire system over again from an original XP cd, if I was sure it would fix it I would go that route.

#3 and #4 were done by themselves (without the previous steps) on the test system today. Rebooting it didn't solve the problem, it intermittently acts like it has no video driver. At this point now even shutting down and starting it does not enable the video driver again. In the past I'd uninstalled the nvidia driver and installed the one from lenovo's site, which seems to temporarily restore function back.

The curious thing is that I'm using all the default configuration from Lenovo that comes with the laptop from the factory , it's the default video driver (there are newer ones, but they never seemed to solve the problem).

What I'd try and do:

1.
Reinstall a laptop which is known to have this issue with a clean XP SP3 image (preferrably from a slipstreamed CD)

2.
Install all drivers, using the versions from the Lenovo website. Don't install any display-related ThinkVantage software. For the first shot, it would be best to install no ThinkVantage software at all, with the possible exception of Fingerprint reader software, HDAPS, and the Power Manager.

3.
Once the NVIDIA driver has been installed, call up msconfig.exe and
remove all NVIDIA-related startup stuff (nwiz, NvCpl, NvMcTray)

4.
Disable the NVIDIA driver helper service (nvsvc32.exe)

5. Reboot and see whether the problem persists.

[Quagmyre]

I assume you tried everything without the Presentation Manager installed?

Did you run PC doctor on an affected system? Maybe there's a glitch in the graphics subsystem. That it happens on several laptops does not exclude this possibility. Maybe the graphics chips were taken from a bad batch after all.

[danh]

I assume you tried everything without the Presentation Manager installed?

Did you run PC doctor on an affected system? Maybe there's a glitch in the graphics subsystem. That it happens on several laptops does not exclude this possibility. Maybe the graphics chips were taken from a bad batch after all.

Presentation manager is uninstalled on the test system at this point. I ran PC-Doctor 5 a bit ago and it found no issues. I updated the video driver through the system control panel's Nvidia listing (why this is still listed in control panels as working when it's not I don't understand) and i've rebooted about 5 times after unloading the nvidia control panel, so far it hasn't came back, but I will keep messing with it until it does

[danh]

I just want to post a reply here as I've found out why the problem was happening, after spending at least 2 weeks troubleshooting it.

We use a setting in XP's boot.ini file called the "/3GB" switch. This switch enables programs that need a lot of memory to have access to more physical ram than without it, and restricts windows/drivers to 1GB of memory (i may be wrong on this, but this is what I've been told).

Unfortunately, as we found out - this Nvidia Quadro FX 570M card doesn't like this setting, and it doesn't have enough RAM to boot properly when the computer starts. It then uses the generic "VGASAVE" adapter that windows uses when the video card isn't functioning properly.

There's a tweak to still be able to use this /3GB switch called the /USERVA switch, detailed here on microsoft's site: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316739. I used /USERVA:2950 in the boot.ini and the card is functioning properly again.

Hopefully someone on google reads this thread and doesn't waste as much time as I had to trying to solve this problem. We never had this problem with the ATI X1300/X1400 in the Thinkpad T60, though.

[Quagmyre]

I just want to post a reply here as I've found out why the problem was happening, after spending at least 2 weeks troubleshooting it.

We use a setting in XP's boot.ini file called the "/3GB" switch. This switch enables programs that need a lot of memory to have access to more physical ram than without it, and restricts windows/drivers to 1GB of memory (i may be wrong on this, but this is what I've been told).

Unfortunately, as we found out - this Nvidia Quadro FX 570M card doesn't like this setting, and it doesn't have enough RAM to boot properly when the computer starts. It then uses the generic "VGASAVE" adapter that windows uses when the video card isn't functioning properly.

There's a tweak to still be able to use this /3GB switch called the /USERVA switch, detailed here on microsoft's site: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316739. I used /USERVA:2950 in the boot.ini and the card is functioning properly again.

Hopefully someone on google reads this thread and doesn't waste as much time as I had to trying to solve this problem. We never had this problem with the ATI X1300/X1400 in the Thinkpad T60, though.[/url]

Nice finding, good job
Might indeed save a lot of people from doing that quest themselves. Thanks for sharing.

[barrywohl]

Nice thread.

It does make me wonder about all the inertia to avoid the migration to Vista.