Baffling restarts. Help!

Happened 4 times now and I have absolutely no idea what's going on.
I checked the event viewer and here's the latest event log.

BugcheckCode 0
BugcheckParameter1 0x0
BugcheckParameter2 0x0
BugcheckParameter3 0x0
BugcheckParameter4 0x0
SleepInProgress false
PowerButtonTimestamp 0

Out of the 4 reboots, (normally after rebooting I'll get stuck at the alienhead logo, then on the next reboot, OS not found, have to reboot twice to get it back to normal.) I got two 'SleepInProgress false's and two trues. The others are exactly the same.

Could it be due to the HDD overheating? I left them overnight with torrents on full blast. Didn't happen to my old battered Toshiba laptop though. Or could it be due to a faulty HDD? I replaced one of them just a few weeks ago.

Will appreciate any help I can get. Thanks!

 

What video drivers are you using - I am thinking AMD drivers , right?

The sleep in progress indicator seems to relate to some video card problems from my experience, when your system tries to "sleep", something goes wrong and the laptop may reboot from a critical stop.

The other thing to check as you get "no OS found" is to go into bios and make sure that the HDD raid is set correctly. Sometimes, if you have flashed your bios recently, it "knocks" out the settings and you have to manually reset them in bios to whatever your raid config was.

Regarding sleep problems:

I have had several reboots that sound like yours. I am using AMD drivers 10.10e and dont have any probs atm but if you have a read of my thread on the sleep problems here : http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-issues-when-using-reference-amd-drivers.html it may help you out.

Basically, closing the lid to sleep brings around a critical stop (bsod) at some point. Might not be right away but you may notice the brightness down buttons (fn+f5) will no longer work. This may not seem apparent rght off, but if you recover from sleep and find the brightness keys screwed up, chances are, the longer you leave your system running, the more likelihood of this event happening.

My mini workaround is in the above thread. Set "close lid" to do nothing....you can change when the computer sleeps if you like too...

I am using these settings at the moment and I havent had a reboot/bsod related to sleep yet.

Hope this helps!

 

I'm not very sure which driver I'm using (Dell/AMD/ATI?), how do I check? I only know I downloaded them from Dell's support website along with the A01 VBIOS. The video driver I've been using had the 8.763 prefix iirc.

And about resetting the raid array, I double checked the BIOS. Seems to be OK.

Oh, and I've just tried changing the power settings (doing nothing upon closing lid). Seems to work so far. No more unexplained BSODs, for now.

Hopefully, my good fortune's going to last.
Btw, thanks for all the help. I appreciate it.

 

If they are from Dell then its not AMD, 8.763 is Dells latest driver for the 5870 cards.

If the problem persists and you have the latest vbios and dell drivers installed, I would be reporting it to tech. These two things were supposed to cure sleep problems.

But, and it aint a proven fix, what I did to stop my random restarts (lid issue) has seemed to do the trick for me so i hope it does for you too.

Give your system a thorough testing by putting to sleep (i found the best way was the alienhead) and then resuming. I must have done this 100 times or so now on my current drivers and not had one issue of bsod/restart.

 

Everything was fine for the past few days but when I was tabbing between windows today, bam, another BSOD and restart.

There was a brief message about a STOP error occurring followed by a page of gibberish.

Here are the details from the Event Viewer following the crash.

BugcheckCode 0
BugcheckParameter1 0x0
BugcheckParameter2 0x0
BugcheckParameter3 0x0
BugcheckParameter4 0x0
SleepInProgress false
PowerButtonTimestamp 0


Is this a common M17x issue or something? Been having this ever since day 1 of my purchase. I thought it was a faulty HDD but apparently I'm wrong, either that or both of the HDDs that were built into the machine are faulty (since the tech replaced one of them a few weeks ago).

Hopefully someone can shed more light on this issue. Thanks in advance.

Btw, I disabled Sleep mode and changed the closing the lid option to do nothing.

Also, I tried going through this link from Microsoft http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2028504 to troubleshoot my problem but the only thing that seems relevant is this.

Scenario 3
The Stop error code and the PowerButtonTimestamp are listed as zero. For example, consider the following scenarios:

* The Stop error BugcheckCode value is listed as zero. Circumstances can prevent writing the Stop error BugcheckCode information before the computer restarts or shuts down. In this case, a BugcheckCode value of zero is logged. Also, perhaps no Stop error occurred, and the shutdown resulted from a power loss. For example, on a portable computer, this could mean that the battery is removed or completely drained. Or, on a desktop computer, this could mean that the computer was unplugged, or a power outage occurred.

Resolution listed in the link. (Below)

Scenario 3: The system randomly restarts and no Stop error BugcheckCode is listed, or the computer is completely unresponsive (hard hang)

To check whether this scenario is occurring, press the CAPS LOCK key on the keyboard. When you do this, if the CAPS LOCK light on the keyboard does not change when you press the CAPS LOCK key, the computer may be completely unresponsive (hard hang).

This scenario usually indicates a problem with the hardware. Another possibility is that a driver may cause this problem. To help isolate the problem, check the following items:

1. Overclocking: Disable overclocking and see whether the issue happens when the system is run at the correct speed.
2. Check the memory: Verify the memory by using a memory checker. Verify that each memory chip is the same speed and that it is configured correctly in the system.
3. Power Supply: Make sure that the power supply has enough wattage to appropriately handle the installed devices. If you added memory, installed a newer processor, installed additional drives, or added external devices, such devices may require more energy than the current power supply can provide consistently.
4. Overheating: Check whether the system is overheating by examining the internal temperature of the hardware.

-----
1. I didn't OC so that's out.
2. RAM seems OK when I ran the PSA tests. Do I need to run any extra tests to make sure it isn't defective?
3. Using the default power supply with the default configuration for my M17x, nothing extra except a mouse, and an external HDD.
4. Pretty sure it isn't overheating. Just running Warcraft III and Mozilla in the background.

 

Cant explain why you are still getting this happening. Although I did have the same kinda thing, changing my "sleep patterns" resolved it for me. Not entirely 100% sure why but I havent had a crash since doing it. (I did do a clean install of OS, mind)

Did you at ANY time have any video drivers OTHER than those released by Dell (on their website) installed? - if so, did you remove them BEFORE installing Dell drivers?

The only other thing I could recommend is to do a fresh install of the Windows OS and then you will be certain of a problem if it persists.

A fellow NBR member posted a VERY useful guide here http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...d-your-m17x-r2-full-detailed-description.html to do a clean install if you are not comfortable doing it (its really simple actually, just more time consuming than anything)

If that doesnt cure your problems, I would be talking to AW tech support to see what they say....If you have clean installed, running the official vbios with Dell drivers, and you STILL get crashes....maybe they can diagnose better than I could.

Sorry cant be much more assistance on this one, but it sounds like some video driver conflict somewhere along the lines, to me anyhow. You could also try checking the disks again to be sure before you do anything else.....

 

Thanks for the quick reply stevie.

Prior to the crashes, and after replacing my faulty HDD, I nuked all the partitions and installed Windows 7 on C:\, which was the only partition I had (nuked recovery too).

I then installed the drivers downloaded from the Dell support site (already did the A09 BIOS and A01 VBIOS update a long time ago), though not really in the exact order as listed in the guide you linked.

I guess I'll give AW tech support a call, try nuking my system for the fourth time to nil and pray it's going to be OK when I'm done. Thanks again!

 

No worries, just sorry i cant really pinpoint it - hope you get it resolved soon tho

 

I think I finally found the exact problem causing these seemingly random BSODs. I stopped Windows from restarting itself should one occur again so as to give me enough time to write down the STOP error code.

After a week or so, I finally get to experience yet another crash. Here's the error code.

0X000000F4 (0X0000000000000003, 0XFFFFFA8009BF9B30, 0XFFFFFAB009BF9E10, 0XFFFFF80002FDD5D0)

I googled a little and came across this article by Microsoft.
Connecting a hard disk drive in slave only mode leads to system halt during resume from standby

Thing is, I don't quite understand what it's trying to say in the 'resolution' tab.

'To resolve this behavior, use one of the following methods:

* For Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment (PATA) hard disks, configure your disk drive as master only. For Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) hard disks, connect the hard disk cable to a master channel SATA connector on the motherboard.
* Connect another device as a master, such as another disk drive or a CD drive or DVD drive.
* Change your PATA cables, your SATA cable, or your IDE cable even if the cable does not appear worn.
* Install Windows on a new hard disk because it is possible that your hard disk or your Windows installation may be corrupted.' -quoted from link

I never pried open my Alienware m17x before, and have little experience when it comes to 'dissecting' computers. Should I call Dell and have their technicians do it instead?

 

Bumpity bump~

 

May sound weird, but try resetting your bios then re-enable raid.
(I would pull the cmos battery, hold power button for 2 min then plug battery back in)

There 'could' be some sort of power saving conflict going on.

If this does not resolve it then perhaps a reinstall?? (although I think you mentioned you already did that... but after the bios clear that may help)

Just my 0.000000002¢

D.