Help??

Hi Everyone,

I have a 16 month old M15x that I absolutly love. However, over the past several months I have been experiencing random hard locks, re-boots, shutdowns, and locks where the screen is corrupted, forcing me to hold the power button down. I have applied all current drivers (both from the Dell support site and the various OEMs), to no avail as it still happens. I am about to start my graduate degree, and need this laptop to be reliable. So, I decided I need to exercise my warranty and call Alienware (Dell). However, previous experience has shown me that since I can't reproduce this issue on demand (as it happens at random), they will have me do various simple to complex tasks such as update drivers, do a memory scan, which will culminate with them having me finally wipe my computer and restore to factory settings. This will take several days, and chances are will not solve my problem, as hard locks are typically indicitive of hardware problems. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I should approach this, or even experience with this issue? All I want is my comptuer to work, I am not looking to "game" the system, I just want my M15x to work.


M15x
Core i7 720M (stock clocks never overclocked)
4 GB DDR3 1333 (stock)
nVidia GeForce 260M (stock clocks, never overclocked)
500 GB 7200 RPM HDD
Blu-Ray Reader
1080P Screen

Thanks!

Rich S.

 

You didn't mention it in your post, but I'm assuming you have already tried reinstalling the OS. Have you also applied the latest A09 BIOS? I had a similar problem with an MSI laptop. The keyboard and touchpad would just lock up, while the system was still running fine. A motherboard replacement eventually fixed the problem. If you're getting screen artifacts as well, perhaps the video card is the culprit. Another issue could be overheating. If you are under warranty, there's no reason that Dell should not replace the motherboard at the very least. I got my motherboard replaced after my touch-panel stopped working, and all that needed replacing was a ribbon cable. Go figure, I guess just call back and talk to a different person. It's really the luck of the draw when you call Dell. Some techs want to help while others can be difficult.

 

Hi Kosti,

Thanks for the reply. I am running A09, and don't want to have to wipe the drive and re-install the software, as that would take days.... But I may need to as that is one of the "basic" troubleshooting steps that Dell techs seem to take. I have quite a bit of stuff on my M15x, not counting games.

I am fairly certain it is not overheating, as I am pretty meticulous about cleaning the fans. My M15x actually has already had 2 motherboard replacements shortly after I got it, and I was not around when the last tech did the install. The first tech did a -poor job about putting the thermal compound on the CPU/GPU. However, the locks up typically occur while I am just surfing the web and basically idle, not while playing games, which rules out overheating.

Some of the lock-ups did show graphics blanking out, flashing once, rebooting, and just hard locking with no graphic corruption.

I was going to call today, but didn't get the chance, so I will prbably call tomorrow after work now. I am dreading this, as the last time I dealt with support, it took almost 6 weeks to even get them to do the repair. They would give the runaround, and finally when I asked to speak to a supervisor, they did something.

Man, dealing with support really sucks. Why can't my M15x just work???? ARRRGGGGHHH!

Thanks again!

Rich S.

 

It could also be the battery causing this. Have you tried disabling it, better yet, removing it, and trying the system out for a while just on AC power?

 

which nvidia driver are you using i found this http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...river-nv-257-38-m15x-m17xr1-discuss-here.html

try to search the forum i found several related thread talking about the hard locks.

 

^^^ nice job.. I was just about to link him to this thread...

I don't this it's a hardware issue... I believe its a driver conflict issue because I had the exact same thing a few weeks ago... I backed up the hard-drive, cleaned it completely and reinstalled Factory Settings.... working flawlessly again. Hope this helps. CHEERS

 

Battery? That is something I wouldn't have thought of. Although, I am not sure why that would cause lock-ups. However, it won't hurt . I haven't called tech support yet, things keep coming up preventing me from calling.

I am using the latest nVidia driver from nVidia's website 270.51. However, this issue has occured on the last three driver revisions from nVidia that I can recall (could be even more versions).

I may go ahead and do a complete wipe and re-install of Win 7 before I call, but I am really not looking forward to re-installing 150 GBs of software Plus all of the backups from my home server will be nullified, but I really need this laptop to be stable for school. I just don't want it to crash while writing a paper or somethign and loseing everything, that would suck

Since whatever is causing the issue is occuring below the Windows layer, Windows doesn't have time to log an error or even generate an error message (or BSOD) when the issues occur, that is what is leading me to believe that it is a hardware problem. I am just not sure if it is video or some other component. Thanks!

Rich S.

 

have you disable automatic restarts(control panel, system and security, system, advanced system settings and startup and recovery), and have u checked event viewer for any kinda trial???? i had a similiar problem, but i have an ati gpu and what ended being the culprit was a faulty ram stick

 

When my MSI was locking up I did some googling and apparently some people reported that bad batteries would cause their systems to lock up (on various systems, not MSIs). I know it sounds strange but lockups are sometimes hard to diagnose and pretty much any piece of hardware in the system can be the culprit. In my case it was something wrong with the motherboard.

 

when this sort of thing occurs, i tend to think hdd corruption. (well that or a bad stick of ram)
it's one of the first things which should be ruled out.

if the data is important to you, you may want to do what i did... it's not free, but if you're like me... it's cheaper than loosing all your data.

buy a second hdd, and buy a hdd dock or internal to external enclosure for a 2.5" sata hdd.
replace the hdd, install windows on the new hdd and xfer your important files.

i assume you've tried the extended diagnostics tests found on your drivers disk? (bootable)

try using crystaldiskinfo to check your hdd's smart status. if you've been having lockups due to hdd failure, it should be marked on the smart info.

 

Hi Xeroxide,

Thanks for the info! Data is important, but I have it all backed-up to my Windows Home Server, so it is not such the loss of data that I am worried about, more of the time required to re-install all of my software. I could do a complete restore from my Home Server all the way back to March 2010 if I wanted too, but that would just be recovering the same Windows install that I currently have.

I downloaded CrystalDiskInfo, and it reports 'Good.' The last time I was having issues with the actual HDD (not in this computer ), it manifested after a crash, and resulted in BSODs.

I have run the Alienware diagnostics, as it was one of the first things I did when the lock-ups started. Each time it comes up fine, with no errors.

Really the most annoying thing is that it is completely random, and only happens about once or twice a week, sometimes it has gone a few weeks without happening. Plus it has never happend when the M15x was stressed, only when idle. I am not doing large disk transfers, or running any intensive applications.

Thanks to all of the responses I have recieived, and taking a step back from the situation, I would have to point to either a power --> RAM --> HDD issue. All of these can manifest as hard lock ups.

RAM and HDD tests have shown no problems, but I really don't know how to check the power system in a laptop. If it were a desktop, I could plug in my handy-dandy ATX tester, but that don't work here. Any ideas!

Thanks everyone.

Rich S.

 

My guess is that your 260m is dying... call Dell and convince them to send you a new card.

You need to persuasive and patiently... explain them that it happens randomly and that the tests didn't show any results. Also that you're on the latest BIOS etc.

There's the possibility that they wan't to examinate the system by themselves as it's a hard to reproduce problem. In this case they would pick up the system and keep it for a whil (10-14 days, assuming it's the same procedure as where I live) But in this case they will wipe the HDD anyway and reinstall the OS.

Anyway be patient and explain them exactly what you've already done. When you've got a really incompetent rep at the phone, call again or talk to a supervisor.

 

exactly what came to my mind when reading the post.
As other members have said disable auto restart, see if you get the blue screen and what kind of error it give you.

if you get a blue screen try searching online for the error it gives you,
i also suggest trying some temperature monitoring software and making sure the reboots arnt caused by overheating.

 

hmmm,
does anything show up in the event viewer?
try running whocrashed
and getting it to analyse your crash dumps. it doesn't always point to the right place, but it may pick up on something.

when a computer has seemingly random lock ups, it can be the most frustrating to diagnose.

 

when i tested the my ram everything came out good, my system came with 6ram (4+2) so i ran it with the 4 and it ran good, called dell and they offer to test the system themselves and so i shipped it out and on the return order it said the replace the ram (2 sticks)

 

Hi Xerixide (and everyone else ),

Again thanks for the help! That is the biggest portion of this problem. These errors are occuring at too low of a level for Windows to respond. There is literaly no time for an error to be recorded, or for Windows to respond. There is no BSOD, there are no error messages, even log entries, and running whocrashed reports that there is no information.

I have disabled automatic restarts, and it makes no difference. Most of the time it just hard locks, a couple of times it seemed to just shut off, and then after about a minute start up again. Usually I have to hold the power button down and force it to restart.

Irionically, the crash happend just before I made my initial post to the board, but hasn't happend since. It is random and annoying. I have long suspected that it is my nVidia card, as they seem to have a quality control issue, and I also don't know if the last tech that replaced my motherboard a year ago properlly applied the thermal pad/paste, so it could be heat damage. However, I also would think that if it were a video card issue, wouldn't it manifest during a game? Another issue (i don't know if it is related), is that sometimes the card will not switch into "game mode" and runs at the 2D speeds, and game performance is horrid. I then have to re-boot, and that resolves it. Quite annoying.

Thanks again!

Rich S.

 

Like I mentioned before, I suspect the GPU as well. I had mine replaced by Dell because of the same symptoms. First the crashs happened more or less rarely, and never when at 3D clock, but after a while it did also happen during games... but more often while browsing or idling. In the end it happend everyday 1-3 times, that's when I called Dell.

 

An alternative would be to do the above - install a fresh operating system on the new drive, and try it. If you still get crashes, then it wasn't the hard disk, and you can go back to the previous install when the problem is fixed - and the new hard disk can live in an external housing. If the crashes go away, then you know you probably haveto do a reinstall. FWIW, I suspect the problem is not your hard disk.

Good luck,

Joe
Joe