Alienware M17x R1 Screen Flash/Sound Stutter/Lock Up

Hello,
First of all, this is my first time posting on the forums; so bare with me. I own an Alienware M17x R1 (the original that came out in June of 2009). I will post the specs after I tell my story. The problem has occurred slightly since I have owned it, but in a less mild form (the sound stutter that people would report when watching a movie or something). This has escalated into what I am about to describe to you.
Within 5 minutes to 6 hours of booting up my computer and launching an FPS (such as CoD, CSS, or TF2) or internet browser and without warning, my sound will begin to loop (such as if a character were to say "Frag out", the "f" sound would be in a constant loop for about 10 seconds, before turning into an obnoxious mechanical stutter which I do not know how to describe. 10 seconds after this occurs, my monitor (laptop screen, whatever you want to call it) will begin to flash in a particular color, with 3/4 of the screen flashing, and a certain portion of it a solid color that doesn't flash (the colors are various, I have seen white, grey, and red). I cannot see the original program that I was using, only the color it is flashing. If I let it continue long enough, the screen generally goes black and I have to do a hard restart. Control + Alt + Del does nothing. Also keep in mind that I can play Black Ops most times for 3-4 hours without it doing this, so I do not think it is overheating.
I have cleaned the vents, fans, heat sync.
I have updated my BIOS.
I have done a clean install of my graphics drivers and tried 4 different drivers from different release dates.
There are no events in the event log aside from showing me having to do a hard restart.
When I took it apart to clean it, I checked for loose wires and if the fans were working properly; found no faults.

Specifications:
-Alienware M17x R1-
Intel Core 2 Duo P8700
2x 2048 MB DDR3 1066MHz Ram modules
Nvidia GeForce GTX 260Ms x2 (SLI)
*Currently using 266.58 drivers.
1920x1200 LCD screen
WDC 320 GB Hard Drive
Windows 7 Home Premium
BIOS version A05
DirectX v11
Avast! Anti-Virus

Temperatures:
Idle 15 minutes-
GPU1- 48c
GPU2 (integrated card)- 37c
GPU3- 43c
CPU- 40c
MOBO- 49c

15 minutes of Black Ops-
GPU1- 57c
GPU2- 48c
GPU3- 54c
CPU- 49c
MOBO- 57c

As you can tell, I'm including a lot of information that could save you guys some time. I have basically done everything troubleshooting wise that I can think of but will be open to suggestions. I appreciate everyone that reads this and look forward to hearing from someone soon!
Thanks,
Rick

 

The answer is simple uninstall those video drivers that you have in Safe Mode -> reboot and run CCleaner to clean any remainders of the video drivers -> Install THESE drivers from Dell,come back and tell me how happy you are with your machine

cheers

 

Katalin, I will do that and let you know within a day if it still occurs. Thanks for the post!

 

No problem,it should not occur anymore if you clean the old drivers right.
Also stick to the P06 drivers in the link I posted and wait for tested drivers from Dell,nVidia ones are not optimised for the m17x,install new versions if you want to test if you run into problems uninstall and come back to the Dell beta ones following the steps above.

Cheers