r3 Freezing?

Hello! I know this has been asked before, but it's been awhile since I saw anything about it, and it never seemed to have a resolution. I've been having issues with my r3 randomly freezing, and I have a feeling it might be due to the network card. It seems to happen sometimes when I'm streaming from netflix or if I leave it plugged in overnight downloading a large file or torrent. Also, possibly strangely, the fans kick up higher after I plug it into AC power. (Though that might be because it's charging the battery or clocks itself back up being plugged in versus on battery...?) It's a frustrating issue, and strangely it seems to be somewhat intermittent, but also fairly frequent.

Thanks!

 

Just to clarify, it only happens when the AC adapter is connected? I run into this issue too, but it happens when it's on idle, I've ruled out with hardware (HDD and RAM, with few different configs, 4, 6 and 8GB) and software (3 different fresh install of Windows on 3 different drives) issue and still can't seem to find the problem.

 

Check everything is plugged in correctly but I would say it is most likely going to be the RAM timings check to make sure they are right and run a memory test to make sure there are no errors.

Check your HDD also to make sure you have no errors.

 

I believe it's happened on battery as well, and yeah, it's happened when my machine was idling too come to think of it. I put in new ram and it's still doing it, but I haven't reinstalled Win7 yet. I read somewhere it could be network card drivers, and I haven't tried changing those yet, but... Can anyone else chime in on this issue? I have about 75 days left in warranty so I'd want to get it taken care of if I had to go through Dell.

Unfortunately it's not ram timings. (I wish it were that simple!) Everything is running off the default rating of the memory, and it was happening with both the stock memory that came with the machine as well as the brand new Samsung ram I put in there. :\ As for HD errors, it's been checked many times.

 

Have you checked the Memory for errors though? Long shot but worth checking.

Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

Similar thing happened to my on many of my laptops especially my G73JH it was a regular thing and it came down to Video Drivers. Drive sweep your drivers back to standard vga adaptor and reinstall from scratch. With optimus as well it could be the downclocking process causing the BSOD and restart.

 

Any intensive processes running? For example, virus/spyware scanner only running when on AC so straining the machine? Long shot but worth asking, as I was tinkering with an old, old, old machine recently and forgot I had Spybot on there, with the TeaTimer exe eating every ounce of CPU time possible!

 

That's a good idea. I also need to try different 6250 drivers (Wifi card); I've read that a lot of people are having issues with them locking up their machines.

 

I don't use teatimer, but I'll have to take a look and see if something is running. I just find it curious that the fan usage increases after I plug the AC adapter into the machine.

 

Your battery settings with be different to your AC power settings for a start your cooling policy in the advanced power settings will be set to passive when on battery and active when on AC power so that is why your fans will kick in, not to mention your GPU will be set to high performance as opposed to balanced and your processor management will at default be set to 100% when on AC power. All Perfectly Normal.

Do try the video drivers I would think that is your problem.

 

Oh yes, forgot about that! Thanks!

As for video drivers, I've tried multiple versions. I always uninstall, then use driversweeper, restart, then install, but I'll give it another go.

 

skip the wifi drivers... just disable for a while as a test. If it makes any diff you can then start testing with alt drivers.