Random Freezing M17X r3 3D

Alright So back story.

I bought my r3 3d

So 6 Gig ram, I7-2720QM, GTX 460M.

I bought it just shy of 2 years ago and about 2 weeks ago it accidentily took a diver and shattered the screen.
I also mentioned the problem I had with the redlight. (The stuck pin in the headphone jack.)

I sent it in for repair (I had the accidental coverage).

They sent it back after replacing the LCD panel, the motherboard and my powerbrick.

Now when I first bought the machine, I had a 320 gig hd, which I replaced with a 250 gig SSD and a 750 gig hd.

The original drive was set up as raid and I set the two drives up as AHCI.

Now my problem is that I am getting occasional freezes. The system locks up, no blue screen, no mouse, no keyboard, time doesn't change.

It doesn't shut off and the only thing I can do is the 4 second powerbutton reboot.

I can't find any cause with drivers, no error in the event logs I'm at a loss.

At this rate I am going to call up dell again since I still have another month or so under warranty.

Any insight/tools that might help would be appreciated.

 

I would normally say it sounds hardware related but my R4 started doing this a couple of days ago. Leave the machine at the desktop or wherever, come back to it and locked solid.

So, what has changed since yesterday I think. I had installed the latest beta driver for my NV card so I rolled back. Typically did two things at once, I also replaced the batteries in my mouse and KB. Hasn't happened since and it would happen before within an hour or so.

Call dell anyway to record the problem before the warranty expires - a pain but it will avoid a potentially costly repair later.

 

So i called tech support. Went through the steps with my replacement drives in and their diagnostic steps came up clean.
Except when the machine froze while testing so they wanted to system wipe.

I switched to the factory original drive assuring them that it still froze (which it fortunately did rather quickly after switching to the original drive.

So we start to do the whole alien respawn. It freezes and now it won't book to windows.
Of course we get disconnected on the phone. so I get rep #2

Now the respawn on the HD doesn't work and he starts to ask for install disks i was never given.

Fortunately I had made a recovery USB.

Start up respawn and at 20% it fails (system just powers down) So he tells me to give it another go but since its taking so long to do a restore.

He gives me a case number for me to call back with once its finished. Second time, i've made it to 49% and its still going.

Best part for me is in the middle off all this the second rep starts to try and up sell me a memmory upgrade.

I tell him i'd rather wait until the machine is working again before spending the extra money.

 

The saga continues.

After doing the factory install. The freezing continued. Though by this time agent #2 was off duty. So I started talking to agent 3.

He checked almost all the same things. Temp, HD health. etc.

Of course he then asks me to make it crash.



I respond with I can't make it crash. I have no idea WHY it's crashing or how it's crashing. That's why i'm calling you.

He tries to stress test with prime95. It works fine. So he simply says,

"well there isn't anything I can do at this point since we can't make it crash.
I will call back on Tuesday.
"


;


Since Saturday night, I've had the lap top running. And it has crashed about 6-7 times with times ranging from 45 minutes to 5 hours.

So I called tonight and they offered me the choice to have a technician sent out or send to the depot.

Hopefully they will fix it/replace it quickly. (Original repair took a week.)

 

Sorry to hear, this sucks. All I can say is sending it in to the depot is a complete waste of time. No way are they going to test it for long enough to see the problem. You might get lucky and they replace the correct part but it will take much longer. You have next day service so use that

You can't demonstrate it or do it to order so they are going to have to start replacing parts until it is found. This is the pain I went through before asking them to give up and replace it.

 

Oops it's been a month. I forgot to follow up.

When we last left, I had sent it to the depot to fix the screen and it came back crashing. After spending a bunch of time with techs they said we can send out a tech or send to the depot.
Not wanting to have to take off work, I opted for the depot. (Waste of time)

I received it back in about a week. They had played with some settings and on the what have we done sheet they sent back, only "Other" was checked as being worked on with no explanation.

The crashing continued and via the event log can see that they had played with the system for a few hours and it had crashed for them.

So I go back to the call center. We end up scheduling a tech to come out. I worked from home for the day and a tech comes out with:

A new main board, a new graphics card, a new hard drive. He comes out and replaces the parts, and I proceed to install windows again.
(He was supposed to verify windows booting but he was a hardware guy and had no clue on software. In his words.)

Fortunately this has seemed to fix the problems as I've been stable ever since.

So at this point the only original part left in my computer from when I originally bought it 2 years ago, is the main body chassis and the optical drive.

Alls well that ends well I guess.

 

Good to hear it finally got sorted, those depot repairs are very hit-and-miss from what I see but dell finally came through for you

 

Great to hear that you got everything sorted out, those type of issues (Random Freezes) are hard to diagnose.
We appreciate the patience that you had with us to let us work on your machine and get it fixed.