help diagnosing random freezes

Howdy folks
I've been getting random freezes on my notebook and can't seem to find the cause. Nothing shows up in the event viewer and alienautopsy doesn't find any issues. As the freezes happens, i get a notification bubble that some device driver is being installed, however i have not plugged anything in. In every case i have my logitech wireless mouse dongle plugged in and sometimes my xbox 360 wired controller. Can anyone recommend somewhere to look for a potenial log or a diagnostic tool that could help track this down. I'm trying to avoid reinstalling windows as i plan on installing an SSD for a boot drive before the year is out and would like to wait until then to reinstall. Any help is apprecaited, thank you

Specs:
Alienware m17x-R4
I-7 [email protected](3.2 turbo)
GTX660M
16GB Ram
Win 7 home premium-64 bit

 

Hi, saw your post over in the Nv forum and was thinking here might be a better place

If it's a full lockup then it is unlikely there will be any good info logged. You can use 'event viewer' to look at the windows error logs, and an application called 'whocrashed' can examine them and offer advice to the cause.

I would think this is a driver problem (rollback to 314.22 to test) but the device driver notification is unusual, unless it's reinstalling the video. Does the pop-up give any more info on the device?

 

I agree with Mickey. If you have an Nvidia driver later than 314.22 get rid of it and install 314.22. This was the most recent stable driver. I installed a more recent driver a while ago and it gave me all sorts of problems.

 

Unfortunately, the freeze happens at the same time as the pop up so i can't ever manage to see what it's trying to install. I'll try who crashed, I'm kinda loath to roll back all the way to 314.22 given that newer drivers are gonna offer better ingame performace and i don't seem to have any other issues with the drivers.

 

Tried wwhocrashed but it can't tell me anything as no dump file is created. Absolutely nothing shows up in windows event viewer that hints at a crash or problem or even what device is trying to install it's drivers

 

I'm running 314.22 and gaming is just fine. A lot of the claims about needing the latest drivers are hype. Advertise that the driver has been optimised for the latest game when often it's just a profile that can be automated into any driver version. Using NV Experience you can set it to update profiles without the driver. See my post here that mentions it: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/721878-nvidia-320-18-driver-warning.html

In tests I saw a few FPS increase on the last WHQL. NV drivers have been very bad of late so for some they will work fine but the problems are more serious than just the occasional graphical glitch in a specific game when they occur.

 

I've rolled back the drivers, and removed the ones i don't need, like 3d vision and hd audio. I'll update if i have any more freezes with the device driver pop up

 

Fingers crossed :thumbsup: