E6400 Freeeeeze :(

Here's the situation.

I haven't set my E6400 to sleep or hibernate or anything, just the screen switches off after 5min of no activity.
When i get back to the laptop it freezes/hangs a LOT. It can be anything from blue screen, complete freeze needing a hard reboot, hang for a while before active again, nvidia driver unresponsive and reloading. It changes from happening couple of times a day to not at all for nearly a week.
I had this with the last 3 BIOS versions and i've tried ALL of the nvidia drivers available.

I kept thinking it was the nvidia drivers somehow but it just doesnt matter which ones i'm running.
Any ideas as to what else could be acting up? Where can i find logs where these events would be recorded?

Thanks

 

This is a little similar to what I was seeing with Intel graphics + XP sometime last year. Eventually the Microsoft crash analyser came up with a suggested change in the 3D graphics options which fixed the problem.

What happens if you disable the display switching off? However, first try the E6400 A20 BIOS and the A14 ControlPoint system manager (released yesterday and includes a fix for an S3 issue).

John

 

Yeah i installed the new system manager just now and already had the new BIOS.
Where can i look at the crash analysis?

I can try to not let the lcd switch of to see the result but i don't want to use that as a solution really.

thanks

 

If 'just in' means new machine, then it might be worth booting the Dell Diagnostics to bang on the hardware.

GK

 

Does the problem only happens after 5 min of no activity when the screen switches off? Or have you seen crashes while you are just using the equipment? In the first case I would think that it is a software problem (like drive, maybe power management instead of Nvidia). In the second case, it may be hardware. If you have BSOD, it is good to test your ram memory just in case.

 

ah sorry....that's already a couple of months now. Still, the issue did occur from the beginning so yeah, i'll try that too.

@Cherude

No only after the screen switches off. I thought it would be drivers but i tried 'em all, wiping old driver with driver sweeper so that's not where it messes up i think.

 

My Dec '08 E6400 was unstable out of the box. New build and drivers, and me new to Vista and 64-bits had me debugging for some time. One of the first things I did was run the time consuming diagnostics... that helped me because it did not find any problems and it showed how solid the hardware could run... gave me confidence. A selective clean install solved the BSODs but it wasn't until I installed the April nVidia driver that the machine became very stable... no more video driver losing its place and dumping out to VGA.

Of course, my experience, not yours.

GK

 

I would do that too if the problems were there since day 1: diagnostic hardware parts and then make a clean install. I have seen clean installs solving issues. If nothing works, well, you probably still have Dell's warranty.

 

Yeah i'll run the diagnostics tonight. If that comes back allright at least i know there's something wrong on software level iso hardware. And if i do have to call dell i can say i already ran those.
My 3yr warranty is only 2 1/2 months old now so no worries on that side. I got is as a refurb from a UK reseller for under €600

 

Is there another diagnostics test besides the one you get with F12 at boot?
I thought there was one that took hours, this one is just half an hour.