Brand new M11x Freezing

Had the computer on for about 5 hours now and it has just locked up/froze on me about 3-4 times. Ctrl+Alt+Del does nothing and the cursor just freezes in place... Should i suspect bad RAM? If so why isn't the machine BSOD? Do I have to enable something first that will show me?

 

Is the CPU overclocked?

 

If by that you mean enabled in the BIOS yes it is.

 

If it's an R2 then drop it down a few steps and start testing stability until you find your system's sweet spot. If it's an R1 then disable OC and make sure that it's stable without it.

 

Ok its a R1 I will try it... Now that I think about it.. May have only been happening when I stepped away from the computer for 5-10 minutes. Maybe it was locking up when the screen tried to go off after 10 minutes?

 

May be a hard drive issue...

A lot of hard drives as of recent (2 I've seen hands on in the past 6 months) (Not alienware but 1 a dell mini and 1 an ASUS) would have a unresponsive windows before clicking 2 or 3 times to a complete lockup...

CHKDSKs on the mini failed with bad sectors, and my dad's ASUS scan took 2 days to show nothing, but replacing the hard drive fixed it. Working in a computer repair shop and seeing what the mini had done gave me the right idea. (he had a refurb, so no warranty)

Point is, consider trying a new drive... and try a chkdsk. If Under warranty, call dell and consider replacement. I've seen this problem with new drives.

 

I used to have the same problem. Run dell diagnostics to check the hard drive, also use memtest86+ to check RAM.

I used both but eventually the problem on mine was lojack. I reformatted twice and installed lojack for one reformat. A freshly formatted system was freezing. In my next reformat, I actually forgot to install lojack and my system never froze. So my system never froze after that.

Also if you pass the memory and hard drive tests, try disabling all the startup programs and run them one by one to find the culprit (usually takes a while though).

 

It's pretty easy to do the startup check, so I'd actually recommend you give that a shot first - detailed memory or harddisk scans can take quite some time.

* Open your start menu
* Type "msconfig" and hit enter
* Click on the General tab, choose Selective Startup
* On the Services tab, check the box to Hide all Microsoft services, then click Disable All
* On the Startup tab, click Disable All.
* Hit apply, and reboot.

Run that for a bit and see if you have any crashes. If so, it's a hardware issue. Otherwise, it's software (which may not be as easy to fix all the time, but it is cheaper!).

To return to your normal boot processes, you can just select the Normal startup option from the General tab of msconfig - or stay on Selective and slowly bring a few services and applications back at a time to see if that breaks it.

Good luck!

 

Ok so I disabled the Overclock in BIOS and now its fine.

So I guess my question is why did they even build the Overclock feature into these if we can't run it without locking up?

 

BTW my hard drive is a G.Skill Phoenix Pro 120GB so lets hope the hard drive has nothing to do with it! Like I said though its smooth sailing now with overclock disabled.

 

Every CPU is different and some overclock better than others. Due to the R1's fixed OC settings of Enabled/Disabled it's not uncommon for some of them to fail to OC reliably.

You just replaced your memory, right? If so then I'd throw the original pair back in and stress test the system. It's possible that the new memory is flaky. If you suspect that's what's going on the throw 24 hours of memtest86 at the new modules and see if throws any errors.

 

yeah if you just replaced your memory and OC'd proc locks up I'd definitely suspect memory before the proc. Easy enough to test with the original sticks.

 

Ok thanks guys. I suspect you are correct in that the new 8GB of G.Skill RAM is probably a little flaky I will throw a 24 hour memtest at it and see what happens.... If one of the sticks turns up errors is Newegg pretty good at replacing the memory?

 

Yeah, Newegg returns are about as easy as it gets.

 

A simple re-seating of the modules might help too.

 

Quoted for truth. A lot of problems can be solved by simply re-seating RAM.

 

Sure, if he was having problems at both clock speeds.
But if his system locks overclocked but performs perfectly well when left at the stock clock, either the proc or RAM (or both?) can't keep up with the overclock, methinks.

My first R1 m11x took the overclock like a champ, 6+months of daily use, zero issues.
My second R1, not so much.