Alienware 14 WHEA Error 18 on Reboot

Good Afternoon,

I am seeing a WHEA Error ID 18 (Cache Hierarchy Error) in the Windows 7 Event Log whenever I restart my Alienware 14. The error doesn't seem to happen when I cold boot from power being off and I am not seeing any other symptoms. Temperatures seem reasonable and no crashes. The error doesn't appear during the Windows session at all -- just when I do a Start Menu | Restart.

Anyone else with an Alienware 14, i7 4700MQ BIOS A09 and Windows 7 seeing this? Tech support is stumped.

I am wondering if this is connected to the A09 BIOS update and Windows 7 as I didn't see this error until last September (I updated my bios sometime around that time I think). Restored to factory defaults with Alien Respawn and the error is still there, so it isn't any driver or application I installed.

Thanks!

 

Have you tried a clean boot?

 

This only happens with win 7. Going away when using Hotwell extreme . Many experience the same problem with just Alienware. Talk with Matrix Leader6. He knows the most about this issue..

 

Thanks Papusan -- really appreciate the link you sent, haven't found any other Alienware users mentioning this issue. I posted in his thread to get his opinion.


Alienware-L_Porras -

The error does not appear on a cold boot from power off, only when I restart the system. These errors appeared all of a sudden last September (2014) -- they did not appear before that. Again -- these errors were not appearing before September, 2014. I initially thought it was a driver or software issue, so I rolled back to factory default using Alien Respawn -- the errors persisted.

I haven't found another Alienware 14 user who is seeing this error yet (the only other Alienware user who I can confirm is seeing this is Matrix Leader6 -- I have tried to get some feedback on a few forums from other Alienware 14 owners but only one has responded (and they don't see the error).

UPDATE: I am seeing errors on Memtest86 4.3.7 in two different sets of RAM (always the same memory address 000967e9350 - 2407.9MB). I wrote Passmark to see about the possibilities of false positives. The errors happen in different quantities on different tests but always the same address space.

Sent an email to Alienware Support on the 15th but have not heard back from them yet.

 

Anyone with an Alienware 14 with Windows 7 that could do a restart and check their event logs? Trying to see if this is a common problem.

 

don't waste your time fixing it, I tried everything under the sun.....it won't go away...

see: http://forum.notebookreview.com/posts/9885526/

Now, I have managed to make it stop for a while....just go to BIOS, load setup defaults, then save and exit

now the issue will stop for a while....but it magically comes back......since I am OCD about perfection, I had to tell 7 as much as I like it bye bye and stick to Windows 8.1 which doesn't have this issue.

PS: This happened on 3 diff. Alienware 18 laptops I've had, 4800MQ, 4810MQ, 4900MQ, and now on the Extreme 4940MX

Googling the issue some people say it was a permenant damage caused due to overclocking but I can confirm it isn't because the day I got a replacement Alienware, brand new, the issue was there.....it's something that Windows 7 doesn't play nice with 6 MB or 8 MB cache of Haswell CPUs

 

BTW, if you disconnect the power cable and reboot, it won't happen

only when the power is connected it happens once every reboot

 

Decided to follow your lead and go to Windows 8.1 -- now I am seeing the same COMPAL and SENSOR errors after Windows 8 runs maintenance.

Trying to run updated drivers from the Alienware 13 line as we know that Dell isn't going to do squat for discontinued models.

 

FYI, I am seeing the same error messages on my Alienware 14.
They also appear when the power cord is attached or not. They also appear on a cold start.
For a while they went away after installing some Windows updates but uninstalling updates and testing for specific updates did not isolate a solution (or dirty fix).
I am also getting fatal error messages when using CentOS Linux latest version - here the error is not described as good as the Windows error but basically also states a fatal hardware error.

I have other computers with i7 processors and do not see the same error message on other systems. This leads me to believe that the hardware is somehow faulty. Does anybody know of a test suite to check processor cache-hierarchy?

Cheers & best!
A.