Alienware M17x R3 screen skipping.

Ok, well about two months ago my computer began to lightly freeze up when doing any task such as looking through pictures, web browsing, and in some video games the frame will freeze for a few seconds. Some games however only the audio will lock up and lag behind. Even now when typing this I will start typing and the screen locks up, not just the typing but the small dell advertisement as well. I have tried everything I can think to do...I know if it comes down to it I will perform a clean OS reinstall with Alienware's Windows 7 Home Premium. But if there is any way I can avoid that I would prefer to just find a way to correct this.

On a side note I was thinking about upgrading to Windows 8 Pro as it is only 40$ and I do not have 200$ to spend on Windows 7 Professional. The reason I want to check here is because I need more then 16gb of ram as I am running a RP minecraft server from my laptop. I have played around with Windows 8 Pro on a friends laptop and it does not seem that bad, so if anyone can inform me more on what the negativity surrounding Windows 8 is about before I attempt to upgrade that would also be appreciated.

System Specs: 2760QM, 6990m 2GB, 8gb 1600mhz HyperX RAM, 500gb HDD

 

Zelda_FTW,

The main reason people hate on Win8 is the Metro UI...... Fix: Download Stardock Start8 (or something similar) and you get rid of Metro UI completely and have the start menu back.
But the fact is Windows 8 has a lot of improvements over Windows 7, while it is very similar to Win7.... so why not get it now, so you don't have to later.. patches, updates, and drivers for it are constantly getting better and will keep coming

 

Ok this is getting even worse, now in my videos and even now as I type it will just randomly lock up the whole screen for anywhere from 3-5 seconds. Please if anyone can help with this, please do so.

 

Check your temperatures :S

 

Running about 70c with an ambient of 27.222c

 

70c idle??

As far as I know, that's really high for an idle state. That's your GPU right? I think it might just be overheating and you should clean out the fans etc and check if temps go down .. I'm pretty clueless tho

 

Could improper instillation of drivers cause this?

 

I don't think so. I can't imagine being able to install wrong drivers or install them 'wrong'

I think you just gotta open it up and clean everything good, there's probably dust in there. Maybe you have to reseat your heatsink or I dno :S I've never had to do this so I'm just throwing some ideas out there. Wish somebody else would respond to this thread.

 

No one seems to want to help me at all T___T well except for you my friend