M17xr4 random showdown/throttling?

So this started yesterday and I cannot find anything wrong with hardware, drivers are all updated, windows updated selectively. No new software/driver installed for over a week now.

When I playing a movie, it plays perfectly fine, till I do something like press wireless button to enable/disable wireless card, system goes through a sudden slowdown with garbled display for 1 second and then recovers like nothing has happened.

It was overdue for a clean install, so I did it last night and the issue is still the same. No difference from clean install

Laptop is m17xr4, i7-3630, 16gb matching pairs of ram, 256gb Samsung p830, 750gb hdd, 7970, bdrom.

Hoping someone else has gone through similar issue.

 

High mm no one experienced this ?

 

Any dump files? Try whocrashed to see what might have caused it? Checked your temperatures?

 

Is it only happening when you press the wireless button or does doing pretty much anything cause it? As DDD suggested I would check the temps but that usually won't go away after a few seconds unless the temps are dropping dramatically which usually does not happen in a few seconds. If you have already done a clean install then honestly it sounds like it could be hardware related. You could try reseating the cable that connects your media keys although I don't really see that causing a major problem either. Sounds like something is taking longer to initialize then it should be possibly?

 

No crashes or errors, so no point in who crashed, temps are good, playing bf3 for 4hrs straight gave max temp of 70c on gpu and 64c in CPU, without the cooling pad.

It happens randomly, for example playing vlc, I open a new tab in chrome/Firefox/opera, it will give slowdown and jiggering in video for a split second, it has also happened once when I opened a folder on second hdd, pressing wifi on button gives this sometimes, it also happened once when i pressed eject button. The issue is, it happens randomly.

Right now it's a clean install, so doesn't look like software related, previously had ati driver crashed and recovered few times but that happened maybe twice since march 2013. Since clean install, not even that.

Completely baffled here.

 

role back to earlier driver..see if it works...

 

I had a similar problem with my R3 where it would randomly reboot without any warning during games, web surfing, etc...there was no pattern to when it would happen. I found a random thread somewhere (can't find it again) that suggested removing the ram sticks from under the keyboard. I had 4x4 GB of ram (matching) so I checked all sticks with memtest (before removing) and the ram sticks passed with no errors. I took out the 2 sticks from under the keyboard and have not had a single reboot since (approx 2 months).
If you have 4 sticks of ram i would maybe try this and see if it helps.

 

I think you guys are getting it wrong, the PC is not rebooting or shutting down. He says that if he opens a new tab or presses a FN key the PC will stutter for a second and then continue working as usual. I can only recommend to run a hardware test with the AlienAutopsy or PSA and see if that brings out anything. That same lag happens to me on another PC I have if I try to raise the volume or lower it while watching a movie or video. It may be due to the OSD appearing.

 

Things tried so far:

- Clean Install
- Remove Ram from under the keyboard
- Chaged Ram from slot 3/4 (at the base) with different one
- Replace SSD with a different one
- Ran SSD only, removed the HDD
- Different charger
- Changed Wifi card

Issue seems to still stay the same, whether on the charger or battery. Games are playing just like they used to, no issues with BF3/Civ5 6hr constant use. No issues with video playback as long as none of the media keys are touched or I try to browse folders.

Spot on, this is pretty much what is happening. But nothing I have tried so far works, issue still remains the same, any media key pressed or browsing folders causes the stutter for a second and then its all normal.

This issue has seriously baffled me. I am not sure what dell can do, other than replacing motherboard/gpu's at this stage. Will call dell tomorrow and see what they say.

 

Have you tried reflashing the BIOS/EC?

 

No I haven't tried flashing bios yet, don't know how it skipped my mind. Will do so tonight before I call dell.

Thanks for the reminder.