Alienware 17 WHEA Logger Event ID 18 (Fatal Hardware Error)

It's been a while since I was on here (approx. 2 1/2 years ago)... I had purchased an M17xR3 mid 2011. Everything had been running well until the day after Thanksgiving when my graphics card (6990m) died (or possibly slot on motherboard). Dell sent a tech out with a 580m card, but then my computer wouldn't even power on at all, so we sent the tech home without resolution. Long story short, Dell ended up replacing my R3 with a brand new Alienware 17, which I am immensely grateful for. However, in the beginning after I reinstalled Windows from scratch, I was getting at least one WHEA Logger Event ID 18 (fatal hardware error) error per day. This was while in Optimus mode. Then I switched to non-Optimus mode and the WHEA Logger events disappeared completely. Then today I looked at Event Viewer again and saw I had close to 10 of the WHEA events on 12/28 and 12/29, then nothing until 1/4... Then nothing since then. I know that WHEA Logger events can be caused by an overclocked CPU, which I do have (4900MQ, overclocked from factory)... and I did update my BIOS version to A07, but that was before I reinstalled Windows, so I have no idea if the system was generating WHEA events before I updated the BIOS from A06 to A07. My question is, is anyone else getting these errors with the 4900MQ processor? Should I be concerned about this? I'd also like to point out that my system runs very stable: no lockups, no sudden restarts, no BSODs of any kind, sleeps and wakes from sleep without any issue. From researching this, I know it can be caused by an overclocked CPU. If anyone can help or shed some light on this, it'd be very much appreciated.

All drivers are up-to-date and temps are normal. 3DMark 11 score: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4900MQ,Alienware 068R5X

Thanks in advance.

 

If the system is showing that error but nothing is acting weird I would say that you shouldn't worry about it.

 

Okay, will definitely do that. Thanks so much for the response.

 

I've been looking into this event as well.

I've been monitoring my event viewer to try and pinpoint when this event happens, and for me, it happens once upon boot - but it only seems to be when the machine is on battery power. I can have the machine in Optimus mode hooked up to the juice and I do not get this event at all.

I'm wondering if it has something to do with power management whilst on batterty and something is affecting the CPU during that initial boot. All power settings set to max for battery. Googling proved to be pretty fruitless. I have run a full PBA and all hardware passed, also ran Memtest for about 6 hrs / 5 passes and no problems.

As per the OP, my machine appears to be running perfectly - no crashes, no lock-ups etc.......it's just annoying.

 

Same here on my Alienware 18, with out without overclocking the error happens whether on the Intel Graphics or the nVIDIA Graphics doesn't matter. In my case, if I am on battery power and reboot, the error doesn't happen but if I'm hooked up on the AC Power it happens once every restart. My system is running fine it just annoys me that there is an error in the background all the time.

I initially though I solved it by updating the drivers but I was wrong, the cursed error came back after a while. Doesn't happen on Windows 8 only on 7

 

I have WHEA errors from the beginning, I was worried about them as well, but I haven't noticed any issues.

 

Possible this Event problem comes from Hotwell in cooperation with windows. I have Hotwell processor with intel graphics totally disabled because of 120hz 3D monitor. I do not have this event message. Must be because of this conflict ..