How to reinstall nvidia sli mode alienware m9700

[thetracker510]

well it started when i had right-clicked on the wifi (WLAN?) icon to repair being that the wifi had gone bye,bye and was now using an external net gear usb dongle.the minute i hit "repair" the screen went Black with lines up & downn in green.well didnt had a copy of xp pro that it would take (bought on ebay in working condition) so i installed a copy of windows 7,upgraded to ultimate,but no SLI nidia divers will install.updated the bios to 3.18 but still nothing.went back to XP proafter getting a copy and still the drivers install the screen goes black and i dont get a control pannel to engage the sli mode (in safe mode/VGA windows drivers?)so I've ran out of options.could this had caused one of the cards to fry?someone sayd theres a trick to get the sli to activate the first time around...does anyone knows?

 

[rahulkadukar]

First of all run GPU Z and make sure that both of your cards are running. If they are then you need to install the latest drivers from NVidia's site.

 

[thetracker510]

well i went trough all of them from nvidia @ alienware i believe.thing is I also installed the xp again without wifi and the system loaded generic crap which i've replaced with the xp divers fron alenware and nvidia (oh my old cards are the Geforce go 7900 GS with 256mb each (standard for the Aurora m9700 model).i've read afterwards also that the there was a conflict with that realtek wlan & the nvidia drivers (now they tell me..:-(

 

[darth-stu]

Its possible one of the cards may be defective
Try installing the drivers with a single card, if it fails on one then take it out and try the other

 

[thetracker510]

I hope not,but it seems that one card its down..

 

[thetracker510]

will need the two cards (will get one replaced.... EBAY!) in order to run extended desktop for my VJ application.

 

[thetracker510]

Fix it! after making sure all drivers were in order,and i had the bad card 's drivers uninstalled...i could tell it was just waiting for that card to be fixed or replaced.then i knew it was time to open the monster up and check for dried up thermal paste.sure enough it had overheated while i was trying to make the windows 7 drivers work before i decided to go back to XP PRO.anyways cleaned it up,added new thermal paste (some better stuff from what i was told at the local tech store,small tube,silver in color) then swapped the cards to see what it would do or not,reseated them,fired the Alienware up,and then re activated the card,and under device/properties selected the "update driver",it then went through some stages of the screen turning off ,then on then went in to boot,thats when i knew it had worked,no lines or dots on startup!...its fixed!!! just had to get dirty a little lol...