Frustrating problem with my M6600

2 days ago my M6600 started freezing. When I boot up the computer, I'll run for about 30 min. to an hour, then whatever program I'm on will say not responding and the keyboard is unresponsive. I can still move the cursor but clicking does nothing. Then the screen will either go black or weird random colors like multicolored static with lines, then finally progress to the BSOD. I have not installed any software or hardware in at least a month.

Last night I called tech support and we did the hardware diagnostic thing, not problems, and he transfered me to someone he called the hardware specialist team, or something like that. This second guy was tech support here in the US rather than India. He did a bunch of stuff, trying to update various drivers, had problems, and finally did a system restore to 4 days ago (when there were no problems) and said to call back if the problem still happened.

So this morning I called back but got the outsourced Indian support and the guy was rather unhelpful. The first thing he tried to do was have me reinstall windows. That would be probably a 5 hour job with all of the software I'd have to reinstall and configure for work so I said why don't we try to rule out simple things first.

He got on using the screensharing thing and went flying through the registry changing and deleting things faster than I could see what he was doing, then said since I don't have a software contract with Dell he can't do anything for me. He said since the F12 at startup diagnostics test didn't detect a hardware problem, it was definitely software and I'd have to pay more if I wanted help.

I just ran a scan with the windows 7 system file checker and it reported that all system files are fine, no corruptions.

What should I do? I REALLY don't want to reinstall everything just to find the problem's still there. Any idea what might be the issue? Anyone know how to get in touch with non-outsourced tech support directly?

 

Sounds like a windows issue to me... Reinstalling would be the fastest option.


IF its hardware it would be the hard drive.



IMO have them swap your system out, to be 100% sure that its not hardware. Then reinstall windows on the new system just to cover every base.

 

What BSODs are you getting? A BSOD is probably some kind of hardware issue.

A quick step (~30 mins) is to use WinDbg to analyze a minidump from a BSOD and see where the problem originated. It's not fullproof, and doesn't go very deep, but should get you somewhere.

Use the results from that to push Dell.

 

I suspect the hard drive as well (if it is a hardware issue). I do not trust the Dell hardware diagnostics to always find the problem (especially if it is intermittent or relies on the system being on/active for a while).

I've had failing hard drives produce similar symptoms. Do you see any disk activity at all while the system is in the locked state? I would expect the disk to be idle (not making any noise you can usually hear while it's working) with the hard drive LED either stuck on or stuck off (not flashing). The problem is that the hard drive has stopped responding but your computer is still working --- so your system is somewhat responsive but no apps can make progress on I/O so they appear hung. Of course, you also cannot launch any new programs (task manager or whatever).

If you have a spare drive available, try copying your OS over to it (assuming you can get it to run for long enough) and see if that takes care of your issue?

 

run memtest86

 

Just as a suggestion, I saw a Dell M6600 that truly froze, no BSOD. Turned out the power plan was set very aggressive, and I think the CPU shut down when the temp got too high. I in fact changed the power plan to balanced or something "out of the box", so no unknown surprises, and a conservative plan power-wise, and the freezing went away; so it was definitely that the laptop got hotter than it could handle, whether it was specifically CPU shutting down or something else. If you have done anything with the power plan you may want to check this.

 

Heh, for that I'd call Dell and have them re-paste the CPU or something. Having an aggressive power plan force the CPU temp too high? Crazy.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. The BSOD error code was 0x00000F4 with a bunch of other numbers in parentheses afterwards. I have an aftermarket Crucial M4 256GB SSD as my boot drive and I used HD Tune to do an error scan on it; it said all blocks were good. I think I may just bight the bullet and do a reinstallation, then if it still happens demand that they come out and fix it within 24 hrs., since this is my work computer. I do have the next business day warranty for another 2.5 yrs...

 

Please run WinDbg as per the tutorial I originally linked to. That might take you 30 minutes, and will provide significantly more information than the BSOD error code.

Of course, you could also Google the error code. The sixth result for the error code is:

That link has this message, quoted from (yet another forum thread somewhere else):

Since this is your exact problem, and the firmware update has apparently been released, so I would recommend visiting Crucial's site and installing it:

Crucial.com Product Downloads - Firmware Updates

No wonder Dell couldn't find the issue.

 

Have you updated and/or changed your BIOS settings such as the HDD mode of operation?

Scott