Totally random lockups? :/

I'll call tomorrow and ask for an exchange bad for dell

 

Looks about right. I get as high as 66 on CPU and 70 on GPU with FurMark..

I note my fan then goes faster around these temps and it cools down a bit.

 

Agreed - nothing wrong IMO either. You are in fact stressing the system to 100%, its going to heat up.

 

Hi all,

Im having this problem as well.. super depressing as its only 1 week old. It hung while the com was idling at desktop (freeze screen).

Did diag on the HDD and RAM but all looks well. Even swapped HDD and ram. + reformated like 5 times.
Bottom line - Could it be a mobo problem?
I also noticed that my window 7 boot screen freeze for 2 secs before it resumes the normal animation and I got static noise from my right speaker.

M11x R2 - i5 4GB Ram

 

My Win7 boot screen does that too. With a Momentus XT no less. I've never had and freezes or BSODs though.

 

I've seen two random lockups. No BSOD, but a hardlock. Both times it was transferring a single, extremely large file across wifi, and both times were within a few minutes of each other. The system has been very stable otherwise. My last laptop had wifi-related bsod with an intel wifi part as well I suspect their drivers kinda suck.

 

what is the wireless device in the m11x R2 ?? I can see sort of two.. maybe three driver thingies.

Intel wifi, and some broadcom virtual wireless and... which drivers is it we update again ??

 

the wifi is not the problem to me, i formated all my hd included oem partitionm and dell data safe partition, i think is software problem like a dell datasafe or some data backup software, i tested for 2 days and no random lockup for now, like a firsts days when i got freaking random lockups every hours.

 

well, first of all, first post and i want to thank you all for your extremely useful posts!
i got my r2 a week ago and i am in the same boat. random lockups. sometimes on wakeup (though i haven't seen this happen ever since) but especially many lockups on file transfers (usb and wifi) as well as during games (starcraft2). i am clueless...
tried resetting to factory defaults, installing different drivers for gpu, perform all the updates from the dell site. the complete diagnostics came back clean.
i consider myself no stranger to pc hard and software but this is extremely annoying and i am seriously thinking about sending the whole unit back either for refund or complete replacement... but i love the thing to pieces

 

I had to download SC2 many times because M11xr2 stuck. Seems like the problem is something with the Wifi card, when I transfered massive data it hanged inclusive in Windows 7 Secure Mode with Network, but it wasn't happened with ethernet.
I'm going to call Dell again, the problem is diagnostic show all ok and it's difficult -or take some time- show the problem.

bad

 

unistall dell data safe and see what happens...

p.d. unistall macafee too

 

I made a clean install of windows 7 with dell disk and then I installed only the drivers, so Dell data safe and Mcafee aren't in my system. I think it's a bad unit I think the problem is isolated to wifi card and maybe bluetooth card, but dunno. I'll call tomorrow again.

 

Updates~

I did some tests on the M11x (3Dmark,PCMark & Vantage) countless times to get it to crash but it stayed strong -.-

Since my last post, im getting video distortions in youtube etc and the freezing is becomin more frequent. Called the dell techs and they will be comin to fix it.

Hopefully they give me a new set =(

 

New motherboard they will fit most likely.

 

Did they replicate the problem ?

 

The tech came this morning.
Didnt even bother to boot the com to check. juz change the speaker, ram, Mobo and a heat sink. No questions asked lol.

However the static noise or crackling noise was still present thou. So techie check it again and discover the i/o sound port was damaged instead of the speakers. After much chit chatting, they decide to replace the whole unit -.-3weeks wait againz.

So far, the system hasnt crash YET (5hrs and running) ~
Boot screen (Windows animation) still freezes for a sec before resuming normal.
No video distortion YET
Laptop feels cooler especially bottom left area *tech mentioned that my heatsink wasnt fitted properly even thou i didnt notice the increased heat*

Hopefully the replacement set wont be as problematic as this.

 

I dont have any of the problems you describe there EXCEPT for the larger data over WIFI! It freezes not every time but it seems to clearly be something with either the Wifi card or the drivers for it, or a mix.. but it also seem to be everyone who is affected by it... anyone found a solution?

Btw I never ran with the stock install, formatted it on the first boot, no Dell or anti virus software (except for the alienware control panel)

 

Does everyone with the problem have the Dell 1520 WLAN card? Are you all using it in N mode or is anyone seeing this in G mode? If you are seeing it in N mode, can you tell me what specific router you are using and what your router specific N settings are, specifically around MIMO (if your router has any)?

Thanks.

 

If you had the random lock up issue on WiFi, can you please PM me with your service tag and exchange order number or DPS number? I'd like to capture your unit for F/A to see if engineering can figure out what is going on here.

Thx.

 

Also, for those of you experiencing lockups or problems when you are not knowingly transferring large files over WIFI, are you using an application that would likely be sending large amounts of data over the network and are you doing so via wireless or is anyone seeing this while hard wired to the LAN?

Just to confirm, you are NOT overclocked and you are running the Dell video drivers, right?

 

I have the 1520 card yes and am running it in G mode paired with a Linksys WRT54GL router.

I've experienced these hard-lockups in two scenarios:

1) Transferring large files over WiFi
2) Upon initial launch of the Steam client (this too was transferring data over WiFi and possibly initiating a couple of game updates)

Reverting to the February 1520 driver seems to have helped but the Steam lockup was with that driver so I don't know that it's 100% resolved. I am running a 7300 overclocked but experienced the issue at normal clock speeds too and so I turned OC back on. I'll PM you my service tag.

Has anyone with an Intel WiFi card experienced this issue? I'd gladly upgrade to a 6200 or 6300 if that would fix it.

 

Using m11x r2, i7, 500gb, BT, W7H and have experienced about 6 lock ups in 2 weeks. 4 times have been when downloading large files, either steam or vpn into work. 2 times have been whilst Steam was running and a game launched.

I have the DW1520 Wireless-N WLAN Half-Mini Card. I have removed wireless drivers and reinstalled, tried with Alien FX disabled and still have had a lock up.

Just removed Dell DataSafe after reading some other forums to see if that resolves it.

First lock up was out of the box downloading about 10 applications from ninite.com.

Anything I should be testing to see if not a driver or software issue?

Just to clarify, the freeze is a complete system lock up. Cannot go to sleep mode with the power button and only way is to hard reset by holding the power button.

 

I have an N apple router, mine is not overclocked. It happened downloading drivers from dell and surfing the net at the same time, downloading stracraft 2 (7,6 gb), or tranfering a big file in my network. Secure mode with network and normal windows 7 operation. I tried transfer the same file via wired network and worked fine.

 

I too can confirm that I've had no lockups when transferring files over a wired network connection.

 

Sorry, a little late to the game. I have had my system for about two weeks now, but have not hardly used it at all. Finally got to configuring it over the past two days, and two seperate times, while transferring large files over USB, from an external hard drive, my system has completely froze, and became unresponsive. The odd thing is, the mouse finally began to move, and the status bar of the file transfer was still moving, albeit very slowly, but still moved. Nothing else on the system would respond to anything, could not click on anything, and ctrl-alt-del did not even work. The keyboard was totally unresponsive. Only way to get out of this, even once the file transfer was complete, was to power the system off. Other than during large file transfers through USB, my system appears to run fine, including while gaming, and my system is not OC'd at all. Completely stock settings.

A side note, in case anyone was wondering, the first time it locked up, the Stock Dell Nvidia driver was loaded. Since this was the first one, with all the optimus issues, I loaded the latest NVidia prior to the second lockup. So, the video drivers do not have any affect on this issue at all.

 

I was sitting in my room, about to play a game, when something else dawned on me. The large files I was transferring to my system were both Steam games, that I had downloaded when I was home on leave, and backed up to an external hard drive. In one instance I was copying the backed up file so I could perform the install from the local machine. It was Empire Total War, which was somewhere in the area of 17GB. The other time I was installing another >10GB game on Steam, and doing so directly from the USB hard drive. During both instance I was connected to my wireless in my room, at G speeds (Netgear router, and the Dell card), but during the second one, a connection to steam was active, even though the files were being copied from the hard drive. You could see there was a lot of communication back and forth to Steam during this time. I only mention this, as I see a lot of people believe this may be tied to the wireless cards, and wanted to note the particulars in my case.

 

Update: Dell changed my wireless card. The problem persist, so I called and they will change my MotherBoard.

 

This weekend I'll be replacing my Dell 1520 with an Intel 6200. I'm hopeful this will resolve the issue completely. I'll report back...

 

I've been having random lockups as well, tho it turns out I have a problem with my ram since one of the memory tests failed during diagnostics. Do I just contact dell now? Or is there something else I can do to repair it myself?

 

Contact Dell, otherwise risk voiding your warranty.

 

So I contacted tech support, and some guy patiently waited while I reset my ram sticks and tested each of the ports. Now the memory test error (2000-0123) didn't come up. Mm... Hopefully I'm good now. He did advise me to stay away from optional window updates.

 

Sometimes reseating your memory is sufficient to resolve quirks like that. If it comes back, please call support and get it replaced.

 

Please let me know if this resolves your problem. If so, this is will pretty much confirm an issue with the 1520 driver, which is what I'm not suspecting. Has anyone else reverted to the Feb driver? Does this fix the random file transfer lock ups for you as well but you still have the Steam launch issue?

My original thought about the MIMO and the N router doesn't seem to be holding any water, so disregard that...

 

does anyone suspect the nvidia drivers to affect the lockups? I have had 3-4 lockups today alone!! totally random, always with a web browser open though. could be a flash thing too?

its really annoying. 3 hardlocks and 1 bluescreen.

 

It's always possible that any driver might cause lockups, but it would be pretty evident if it were a specific nvidia driver causing a bluescreen and we'd be seeing reports from people reflecting that.

What driver are you using?

Are you overclocking anything?

 

See my replies on page 8 of this thread, but it happened to me with two different video drivers installed.

 

Got the 6200 installed today and transferred ~ 13GB of data via WiFi with no lockups at all. Transfer speed also seemed to be faster. No issues with Steam yet either but I'll monitor for a few more days.

 

OK, talking to engineering about this issue in detail...

 

This is very disappointing for me. I never would have thought that upgrading my bios from A01 to A05, upgrading my SSD and reinstalling the latest drivers from Dell's site would lead to a degraded performance...even after doing a clean install. This crap used to happen with my Dell XPS 13" which made me run to the Mac platform. I just recently turned back to Windows specifically for the M11x.

 

hi guys, i have this same problem on my r1 where it freezes out of nowhere, I ran system diagnostics and it found nothing, so I ran the test for system lockup and it said all tests passed

please help

 

Turn off OC for a few days and see if that helps.

 

i'll try that, thanks

 

mine locks up randomly with or without OC

 

wife reported that our m11x hangs after hibernation...

 

I had no lockups for days and recently had one after uploading photos and home video online. I connected my iPhone to my M11x and everything froze up. I restarted in safe mode and disabled the free fall sensor. Everything seems good now.

 

I got my M11x last week, so got it now for a week, and i experiences the same kind of random lockups...

The last one i got was at 00:35 today, and i was downloading tv episodes over torrent on a 50mbit cable modem connection, at the time of freeze it locked up while i was transferring over 1.2mbit/sec over a 1520 dell wireless.

Since i saw this thread, i will only use the wifi and see if i get more lockups like this... because i use a mix of wired and wireless connections... i will report if it only happens on the 1520.

I am not overclocked (it's disabled in the bios, i got all defaults value in the bios anyway) at all. Got the lockups with my original Momentus 7200.4 that came with the laptop and also with my new Momentus XT.

We might all have a common point here, as many reported using the dell 1520 card with large file xfer or fast connections using the whole bandwidth.

I am in G mode with the network card, and sitting like 3-4 feet away from my D-Link DGL-4300 router, connected at 54mbit with 100% signal.

 

When i work with wi-fi network i sometime catch lockups, dunno what is that

 

Looked 2 pages back, so dell wi-fi module is crap? I see many users have problem with it.

 

I have been getting lockups on my M11x, but only when it is idle, and the screen has blanked. I have to do a hard power off. I recently just did a clean install from the Win7 disc, with all the latest drivers downloaded from Dell's support site. A05 bios too (but I was getting the same thing with the A01 bios)

I think it only happens when I am in nvidia mode. Then again, it may have happened in Intel mode also.

I can confirm that I have NOT gotten any lockups when transferring files, either from USB or wifi.

U4100 cpu (not overclocked) 4gb, win7 x64
nvidia GT335M Intel 4 Series Express
DW1520 (connected to G at home, N at work)
DW5620 mobile broadband card
365 bluetooth

 

I have transferred a couple of gigs over the dell wireless while playing online games and havent had problems. I was downloading an ubuntu dvd iso of about 4GB from my university network and was gaming on battlenet. I didnt notice the lag and no drop in fps due to my wireless being maxed.