Intermittent Problem – Boot Issue, getting Annoying now...

I have a two year old Alienware M15x that has had a very intermittent issue for the last twelve months or so.

This only happens occasionally, and each time I go to make a call to support (something that I have not yet done), it always (as ‘Sods Law’ states) works fine again. I still have 10-12 months left on my warranty.

When I boot up my laptop (with the charger plugged in) it will occasionally (after the Windows Logo boot up splash screen, and between the Alienware loading screen) ‘freeze’. I have to reboot it and again it may do this (sometimes it will take 30 minutes of this power on / power off cycling to get the laptop to work), sometime it will work fine after just one reboot. Now, if I boot into safe mode, it works fine, which immediately sounds like a driver issue. I have rebuilt my laptop (from the Alienware ‘image’ and also from a ‘brand new Windows 7 CD’). I have replaced the hard drive (moved to an SSD), the power supply (another official Dell PSU) and the memory (a 4Gb to 8Gb upgrade).

If I boot my laptop up without the charger plugged in then it works fine, no issue at all. Until I plug the charger in, then it will give me the ‘charger image’ (on screen display), which slowly fades (its fades a lot slower than it would normally), then it freezes (and only a hard reboot will resolve this).

I would guess that there is an issue with the power usage from perhaps the additional draw of the GPU when using ‘full windows mode’? It is worth noting that once I do get my laptop booted into Windows that I do not experience any other / further issues.

Now, as stated earlier, this does not happen all the time, in fact it is only (in general) a few times a month (though it does seem to have bad periods, like this week where it is taking me up to thirty minutes per day to get my laptop working). I know I should log it with the ‘support desk’, but I just don’t think I will get anywhere (as the issue is so intermittent).

Does anyone else have experience of ‘intermittent’ issues (or the same type of issue that I am experiencing?) What happened when you went through the ‘support desk’ route? I kind of live with it at the moment because I know it will ‘eventually work’ and I suppose I just have some predefined image of running in circles with this type of issue.

I know Alienware reps also lurk around this forum, so if they do happen to read this would also be interested in their advice.

Boz