M17xR3 Random Reboots

dude, the power supply is INSIDE the laptop. the battery pack you plug in isn't the power supply. I'm still pretty convinced it's that, and I left my computer on last night to download something and it happened again..

*EDIT*
I think I've found the solution. It's to do with the audio drivers..
Go to control panel > device manager > sound controllers
You should see multiple audio devices, one of them being the IDT high def audio codec, and the others being nvidia / ATI drivers (multiple)
DISABLE all of them except the IDT high def audio codec
Try it and see if it fixes it.. I'm gna leave my PC on the whole day and night tonight

Here's a Pic of what it looks like now: (the little down arrows = disabled)

 

I'm disabling the extra audio devices too to see if it works. Worth a shot right?

Mine are not Nvidia devices though. Wonder if it could still be the problem... I also wonder what these extra audio devices do???? Disabling them doesn't seem to make anything stop working.

 

I see you have the AMD card so no you wont have Nvidia audio. Hope it works out for you guys.

 

Oops double post

 

No problems yet, I'm going to keep my PC on for 24 hours straight
Yeah the extra audio devices don't really have a purpose..
Also when you install new GFX drivers make sure those devices stay disabled.

 

I apologize for not understanding the power supply is inside the laptop. I have disabled all audio devices and will also test to see if the random reboots quit. In my case I disabled the following:

Intel(R) Display Audio
ATI High Definition Audio Device

I will come back in 3-4 days to let you know if the reboots have stopped. I am used to having 1-2 a day. Strangely, none so far today, even before I disabled these devices. Thanks for the information imraan13

 

Had to call and talk to another tech today. They said the last guy left no notes on what he did so they had to run the diagnostics all over again. Joy! Another hour of waisted time. Now they recommend an OS reinstall. I'm sure that'll work... *rolls eyes*

I'm also instructed to, get this, email the tech back and they will call me. I'm feeling real confident about that since they were so helpful last time. I wonder if it's even worth the hassle to try?

So frustrating...

 

No problem,
can you post a screenie so we can see what sound devices you have?

Let us know if it restarts again. If it doesn't happen for the next few days for all of us then we know we've found the solution

 

LOL South Africa Alienware support is so irritating, for such an expensive machine they could have better support, not even Tech support online chat? :/

 

Here it is:



before I disabled the ATI and Intel audio devices... I left the Bluetooth Hands Free Audio enabled. So far, no restarts!

 

Guys I don't know if this is the relevant thread since I have a M17x R2 but I have EXACTLY the same problem. Event viewer shows the same kernel power failure. I tried a lot to diagnose it but no use.

There is a separate thread also for it.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/560350-m17xr2-random-restarts.html

My guess is its a faulty power supply. Since it spans over so many hardware profiles, it cant be the motherboard or any other system internal component.

 

How are you guys holding out after disabling the audio devices?

I almost managed to ruin my system by following the techs advice of reinstalling windows... I tried installing from the Alienware Windows 7 disk that came with the system and it wouldn't install completely but managed to overwrite my working copy of Windows... thank god I had made those AlienRespawn disks earlier. They ended up working ok.

 

First clean install on alienware is dangerous s**t. It took me 4 clean installs in a row to get it to work. I found out that the hard drive format (raid) doesn't support the windows installer. I changed the format to AHCI before reinstalling then it worked fine for me.

Good news is the audio device thing seems to be working for me. No restarts and I was using my computer for low-level stuff (firefox, bitcomet) for 24 hours straight, and it didn't work 2 days ago but worked this time.

I think we might have found the solution post ur guys status

 

Same thing i wrote for him on his thread, for those experiencing random reboots without error codes or BSOD

Do this:

winkey+pause (it will open system properties)
Go under "advanced system settings"
Hit settings under "startup & recovery" tab

On the window that will open uncheck automatically restart under "system failure".

Reboot.

After that if the error occur, windows should show it rather than reboot.

 

OK so I reinstalled the OS, disabled the audio devices, and I'm still getting the random reboots.

Despite having Automatically Restart unchecked, the system still automatically restarts with no error messages.

I'm really with the rest of you thinking it's a power supply problem. Not sure what else it could be besides that. From what I've been reading these things will just continue to degrade over time and possibly get worse. I wonder if that can be easily replaced? Do I even want to have Dell start replacing parts or will they just send me a whole new system since they can't diagnose the real problem?

 

i'm having the same proble my system is 2 month old and since i installed my SSD and a clean OS this system restarts when its just in idle Ie im wathing tv and look to the pc and thing just restarts alone with no errors

i followed the advice here uninstall the audio drivers and installed them again from dell without letting the windows installing its own drivers first, im gonna leave it 24h see it works if not a call to AW on monday is needed , im not happy a 2500£ laptop restating for no reason is not good for AW customers

 

It's good/bad to know I'm not the only one. It's complete crap that we are having to "tinker" with a $2000 plus machine... it should just work. I have three other computers in my house right now and one is ten years old and I've never had this much trouble with a system ever.

 

Its BS really. I'm glad to say that the audio devices seem to have been my problem and seems to be fixed. It hasn't happened again for me yet. Scodoublet you should also try disabling ALL drivers one by one (yes it will take time since you have to give each driver +- 2 days to guess its not the faulty one) but wow, I can understand your situation. I would have given up before doing all the stuff you have.. South Africa Tech support is appalling. I will definitely prefer custom building my own gaming PC to a alienware in future. It's a great machine when it works well, but if you have a problem, South Africa Tech support is terrible and it just feels so idiotic to have to open up and tinker with a 2000 dollar laptop.

 

Nooo thats not what you need to do.. don't uninstall the audio drivers but Disable them. in device manager you should see little gray arrows pointing down next to them if they are disabled.

 

I'm done playing around with this machine. Hopefully on Monday they're supposed to order a new one to be sent to me and hopefully that fixes things.

 

Did you disable all 4 drivers?? will i still get any sound without the drivers?

 

Yes, leave only the IDT driver on. You will get the same sound. No reduction in quality, it's because they are multiple drivers and are clashing it is causing this.. working for me so far.. if it holds up till this coming Friday then I'll know this is the solution. If not I'm going to call south africa tech support in a steaming rage. Hope it works for us.

Also I don't have an SSD but I notice there are alot of people who have problems with SSD's in their Alienwares so make sure you've checked all the SSD related stuff in the forum

 

I'm back for my report. I've been busy, so couldn't get back any sooner. Anyway, I've disabled all audio drivers except the IDT High Def Audio CODEC and I still had a random reboot/restart last night at 10:18 (looked at the clock as soon as it happened) while watching a movie off my hard drive. So, unfortunately, my problem is not solved. Man, I wish it were something easy. I'm back to thinking it has to be something wrong with the power supply. My problem is that I love the laptop too much to want to send it anywhere to get fixed and be without it. Not to mention after my first terrible experience with AW support I can't bring myself to call them and have them suggest inane/insane solutions that will not fix the problem, as many others have reported.

I just wish it was like the Dell Studio 17 that had throttling issues... Dell finally owned up to the problem, created a new BIOS (or three!) and sent free 130W power adapters to folks. Then it was all good. I'm actually starting to just wonder if I can just return it and buy something else with a good GPU. Not sure what's out there, but I hate feeling bad about a $2000 purchase. That's the worst!

 

i uninstalled the drivers and installed the ones from dell wihout letting the windows install its own that was 8h ago and so far no restarts , so im keeping my fingers crossed this was a replacement offer to xps17 due to overheating and im loving the laptop to bit apart from this silly restarts, hope AW sort this out soon.
Does anyone know if they are aware of whats happening and if they trying to do something about it ?

 

gonna leave the pc on idle all night and see what happens
ill up date again in 8-10hours time when i get up

 

they definitely know it's happening to me because I've called them about five times already lol

I definitely suggest letting them know that there's an issue. If they get enough people complaining about the same issue they'll have to figure out there's a problem here.

 

My M17XR3 also had this random restarts from time to time, so I took the DDR3 Ram from my netbook and installed it my M17X for testing. What should I say, everything was perfect after replacing the RAM... maybe you could also try. If you dont have a DDR3 RAM left over for testing, just test your system only with one DDR3 RAM installed (System should have at least 2 installed by factory).

 

Hey DuoMing, did you run any memory tests on your system with all of your RAM installed, and did it give you any errors?

 

Right guys, just got up and came to check the pc and no restart so far
left the pc on all night on idle with a torrent prog running and msn and firefox so its under low load, and so far no restart and its now been 18h since i unistalled the drivers.
ill give you an update again at 24h

 

did the same thing. it appears to work for the two of us but not the rest. I guess for them it's probably power supply, so they should just get a replacement ASAP.

 

ya its been 24h with no random restarts, gonna wait 48h and post it the way i done see if i can help others

 

yeah same here going to give it another day or two to be sure

 

3 days so far with no restarts, looks like the audio drivers solved it for me..

Just a reminder of how to do it:

- Go to Control panel > Device manager > Sound controllers
- Right click all audio drivers except the IDT audio Codec and DISABLE them
- You should see a grey arrow icon to indicate they are disabled

This is how it should look: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/834/aw1z.jpg/

 

That's so great, imraan13! I'd be lying if I said I wasn't jealous, but I am happy you've got it sorted out.

I had another restart on Sat, none yesterday. I'm in the process of checking DuoMing's suggestion of swapping out the memory. I had 2 sticks of 4Gb and I just removed the one that came with the laptop. The other stick was aftermarket that I added. So far I haven't had any restarts, but I just took the RAM out yesterday. I'll be back to post if it works.

 

Hi mate, mine has not restarted since friday as well , but i done diferent way thant you just said , i uninstalled the drivers , and installed the dell ones bf4 windows installed its on drivers and mine seems ok so far.
so all my drivers are active and reboot free since friday

 

I thought that fixed but it started happening again today. Called the tech, doing a clean install. If this doesn't fix it I want a #%@ing new machine.

 

which are the dell ones?

 

tell me how it goes

 

what i done was uninstall all the audio drivers under device manager , then without restarting the pc ( if you restart windows will install its own drivers) i installed the following drivers IDT 92HD73 Audio, then after i installed the dell drivers i restarted the computer , noticed that it didnt install any other drivers and since last friday the pc has been on all the time always running software 24/7 and no reebots so far

 

Just checking in. Believe it or not, I haven't had a restart since I took out the stick of RAM that came with the m17x R3. I'm only running on 4Gb, but it's enough for now. I had no restarts all of Sunday and Monday. Before, I rarely had a day go by that I didn't have a restart. So far today no restarts either. I still don't trust it completely.

The question for me still remains, is the problem related to the RAM, the RAM slot, or somehow the power from the motherboard to the two sticks of RAM? If I go another two days without a restart, I will try and seat the RAM in one of the slots under the keyboard so I can have the full 8Gb I need.

 

I just clean installed and installed all my drivers and software. I'm going to wait for another restart before I change anything, Ill try RIKO's method if I get it again. If it still happens after I try RIKO's method I'm going to ask tech support to replace my R3

 

Hi guys , got some news
some bad and some good
bad news my system restarted again
now the good news, been in touch with AW and explained everything they done a full diagnostics to memory and no errors. i told them about this tread and had a look so now they know there is a fault with this systems. now after reading this tread they asked me to remove on memory simm and after doing that the pc restarted again. then they asked me to swap the memory simm and the pc started fine and so far no restarts .
Now they told me to run it for a few days or until the pc rebbots again. If it doesnt reeboot then its the memory and they will send me new memory. now if it does happen again we are back to square one again .

I'll keep you posted on whats happening next.
But at least now they know that M17x R3 have this problem and they are starting to look into it

 

Woo hoo! That's great news RIKO!

I went from Sun until today (4.5 days) with not a single restart after pulling the RAM they sent completely out and putting another 4Gb stick in the DIMM1 slot. I actually just today put the original 4Gb in DIMM3 slot under the keyboard. I'm going to test out a theory that maybe the RAM is good, but there is some type of power issue if both DIMM1 and DIMM2 are used together. I've seen that happen before on a desktop motherboard (ASUS board, I believe) that had 4 slots for memory. If I used all 4 slots, there would be all sorts of problems, but if I used 3 or less slots, no problem. It didn't matter what sticks of RAM I used (switched all of them), it always died when all 4 slots were used.

So, after I tested the original 4Gb stick in MemTest+ 4.20 and in AW's own diagnostic tests, these tests showed no errors. I'm left to assume that the RAM is good, but when I had it and another stick in DIMM1 and DIMM2, I had restarts every single day. I hope that makes sense. I'll post back with more info in a couple of days. Hope imraan13 and scodoublet are faring well...

 

I'm still waiting on my replacement. They said today to expect it around Tuesday... I really hope that the next one works fine...

 

Lol that's good news, South africa tech support has constipation with replacements.. I've ran all the diagnostics and tried all of their tips, now I've reinstalled windows installing the chipset driver first.. 3 days with no restarts so far..

 

I swear to god every single time I have to contact this company it gets worse...

So the time I called up to ask for a replacement since they cant figure out what's wrong with it they agreed and said they would set everything up for me.

Everything seemed like smooth sailing except for one small detail. I told them I'd be on vacation for the next two and a half weeks and asked if they could ship the replacement to the house we would be staying in. They said that would be no problem.

So last night I go online to check the status of the replacement and guess what they had for the shipping address.... Yup, my HOME address... So here we were having to call them yet AGAIN to straighten out a problem that the last person SWORE was all set. I mean I even had to spell out the name of the road and town two times for the guy. He even read it back to me.

This whole Alienware experience has been absolutely terrible.

I've been dreaming of being able to buy an Alienware laptop for years and now that I'm finally able to afford it and I decide to go for it I'm totally let down by everything... Well when the computer works it goes above and beyond my expectations but everything else has just been crap. I haven't even had this much trouble with Comcast tech support...

I just hope I can get a replacement that works like it's supposed to and go on with my life and wake up from this nightmare! lol

One good thing about all this though is I found this site. Hopefully once I get a working system I'll have some more positive things to say instead of always coming in and posting some huge rant.

 

it happened again.. AAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm going to destroy South Africa alienware tech support. I've wasted over $30 airtime calling them to fix this S**T. Yet they keep wasting my time. They could at least send a technician to do all of this stuff and fix / replace as necessary? OR EVEN HAVE ONLINE CHAT!

OK I'm calm now.

 

Did you try switching RAM's? That or the power supply are the culprits!

 

This is just to report, not to gloat. I have had 0 (zero) restarts since placing one Ram stick in DIMM1 and one RAM stick in DIMM3 (under the keyboard). I can't guarantee that will work for everybody, but so far I'm 8 days since switching sticks around and no more restarts... Now I love this machine! At this point I consider the issue resolved. I'll still check this thread if anyone has questions, but I won't be reporting anymore. Good luck to the rest and hope this helps someone out there.

 

Now I don't want to sound rude at all but in my opinion only being able to use two out of four memory slots on your computer isn't really resolving the issue. That would still be unacceptable to me.