BIG M4400 problem: full system lockup!

I know a few people are experiencing this, not sure if it's the same with the E series, but the entire M4400 will fully lock up and die, requiring a hardboot. As in, a super-freeze: lights, keyboard, mouse, applications, display, everything. No chance to remove the freeze besides doing a hardboot. I've left it on for hours after the freeze, and still no luck.

This is a ridiculous problem. Imagine typing pages of documents, presentations, creating image files, working on CAD files and then it freezes completely. No ctrl+alt+del to save you here, no "quick-save".

Why is this happening? I've had 3-4 lockups every 10 minutes at a time. Using Dell memory, and default Dell hardware.

Weird situation: It has -never- locked up while watching episodes of fresh prince of bel-air on freshprincetv.com, and has -never- locked up while playing half-life 2 for four hours straight...this is worse than a defective GPU. More like a defective motherboard here...

*E-series confirmed to be affected as well: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4056665&postcount=631

*UPDATE: So far the new system replacement from Dell is flawless.

 

Run memtest, and a HDD diagnostic (or chkdsk). Also checkout the event logs....

 

Same problem here with 3 x M4400s. We've run all Dell diagnostics and no problems show up at all. As with RAM above, it will happen at any time, not just when under full load - in fact, a lot of the lockups we've had have occured when no-one is even using the systems, they're just idle...come back from a meeting and bam, frozen. Nothing in event logs either, the lockup happens before Windows even knows it's coming.

RAM, does yours happen in XP 32, or just Vista 64?

 

Mine occurs in both.

@Andy: the lockups occur in both default Dell RAM and G.Skill RAM, should I still do a memtest86?

 

That's good to know that it's not OS-dependent (and seemingly not RAM dependent if you have tried different sticks). Definitely looking like a system board issue here...

 

Personally, to me, it's a bad thing that its not software dependant. Hardware issues are terrible!

One more thing to note: when I get the lockup, the battery charging light (with the thunderbolt in the middle) still flashes actively. The HD light is however, locked along with caps lock and wifi, etc.

Down to motherboard or harddrive issue here...or it could be any of the other devices connected causing the problem (wireless card, contactless smart card reader...) who knows?

*Locked 1x while posting this message

 

I wonder if it is a driver issue for the intel matrix?

 

Same thing with the lights here. It's not a processor issue since we have different models (8600s here). This kind of problem is so hard to troubleshoot because there is no pattern to it.

 

I wouldn't jump the gun just yet. I had a simular issue in regaurds to the system just locking up with no way of identifing the cause, when building a desktop system. I was very lucky in that the next day or two (not that Dell works that fast but) the motherboard manurfacturer released a new motherboard bios update which fixed the problem perfectly. Its unfortunet that it is happening but I'm sure a solution will come from Dell very soon.

 

Did you contact dell about the issue?