M14x Randomly Locking Up :(

So I'm stupid and I accidentally stuck the windows 7 disk into the laptop the day I got it and reset it to factory settings cause I thought the disk was needed for something ^_^

The next two days were spent getting aliencontact to reinstall all my drivers and other downloads. lol

But now I have a problem... my Alienware will run for about 20 mins to a couple of hours and then all the sudden I won't be able to click on ANYTHING and get a response. Sometimes i'll be able to click on a few things but then Internet Explorer or something doesn't let me click I'll be able to move my mouse around aimlessly for a few more seconds until the whole screen freezes and I am forced to push down on the little alien head in frustration. Why is this happening to me? Oh and some more information, sometimes the audio will keep playing while the whole thing is frozen which puzzles me.

Is this a driver problem? I had an asus g73j and when it was freezing it was cause the audio drivers were in conflict with one another. Or is this a more serious problem like a faulty memory? :/

 

Try running in safe mode to see if it randomly shuts off a few mins into it.

Either that or re-format and install the drivers yourself w/ the resource cd or from the Dell webpage, that way you know you're installing the drivers you actually need.

 

Meh it happened again

It's pretty random... I was just playing sc2 fine for awhile and then it just dc/ed me from the game and then i froze when i alt tabbed... I know he used the drivers from teh resource CD and the Dell Webpage so I'm pretty sure he did it right. What else could it be?

 

There are hundreds of reasons you could be having issues - you just have to troubleshoot it or call Dell if you can't figure it out.

Start by running in safe mode, and review what things look like in your device manager. Try using 'System Restore' to revert to an earlier state.