Alienware 766 Crash Problem

I recently received a used Alienware 766 as a gift from a friend. He said that it was broken but that if I could fix it, I could have it.

The computer will do of many things when I boot it up.

*It will load through the opening stuff, operate normally for a couple minutes and freeze. No error message, no nothing, the cursor stays put and control alt delete won't work.
*It will load normally, operate normally for a couple minutes and then flash me a blue screen with nothing on it and restart.
*It will work fine until I shut it down again.

Before I take this to the shop, I would like the community's advice on what is wrong with it and what could be the solution?

 

It could be the motherboard. I had a computer that would start up fine but randomly freeze after being on for a few minutes and it turned out to be the mobo.

 

Does it act any different when booted in safe mode?
What operating system?

 

Does it seem to get very hot?

 

The blue screen looks different in safe mode. It says physical dump of memory with some other gibberish but I remember the physical dump of memory part. That was the blue screen I got on my old desktop which had Windows Me. It is using Vista Ultimate which is what my friend put on there. I might switch it back to XP.

It doesn't seem to get too hot but there is a good deal of warm air coming from the vent on the side. Sometimes it gets louder but I haven't seen a correlation with crashes so far.

 

Is it 'gibberish' or a bunch of numbers and letters, does the system just reboot right away and you cannot catch the fault code?

Open the Control Panel, go to System and Maintenance. Open the Advanced
settings, then go to the Startup and Recovery section and click the Settings button there. Turn off the automatic reboot feature when an error happens. You can then copy the number down.

 

What is the hexadecimal code?

 

It's highly likely that the RAM you have installed may be faulty. Download Memtest86+, burn the ISO on a CD and then run it on the notebook for a good 1-2 hours. If it returns issues, then you're going to need to replace the RAM modules in it.

 

Yes, I was a bit Alex Trebek with my question...

 

It could be due to many reasons, prime reason could be a faulty driver.

I would do a clean install on a used computer, format the HDD and mark the bad sectors to avoid any disk errors.

Once installed I would test it without any extra software installed on it to see how it behave.

If it still crash/hang then run it in Safe Mode. Try to get a minidump/full dump and the screen shot of the Blue Screen (all hex number make sense)

Next thing would be to see if RAM is causing the issue, swap the order of RAM or just replace them from a working machine for quick test.

Motherboard would be the last thing I would assume to be faulty, though symptoms does not deny the fact that it could be MB as well.

 

I would format it but I don't have a disk to reinstall the OS. My friend has that. I booted it in safe mode and of course it's actually working when I need it to crash. I'll post again with the hex codes after it blue-screens.

EDIT: It's worked fine the last couple times so I will take this oppornunity to run memtest.

 

If its working in Safe mode then its not memory for sure, but some faulty driver which is not loaded in Safe mode. Prime reason for windows to give BSOD is lazy developers and guess who got blamed ??? => M$

 

I ran memtest and it said no errors.

 

Ah! Then findvikas' suggestion stands.

One less thing to worry about it seems. Like findvikas stated earlier (on the first page of this thread), this issue can arise from many different things. Since it appears that the RAM isn't the one causing it, I suppose you can cross that off as a culprit.

 

I was able to reproduce the blue screen. The screen was as follows:

 

Time to re-install my friend, it appear to me that a RootKit is installed in your system (Backdoor.Rustock.C)

Reboot in safe mode and see if you have this registry entry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\pe386

Also send me you machine information using
Run -> msinfo32.exe -> Save

 

also do you have any recent file in %windir%\Minidump

 

Do you think its worth running RootkitRevealer or do a system re-install, might be worth a try and catch it.

 

This rootkit is smart enough to fool RootKitRevealer, but worth trying. See if you have any minidump to share with me and have a quick look at it.

 

Hope he is up to the task at hand, well worth the learning curve of what we drive.

 

Chief Savage Man,

It will take some work but if you are up to it there are some smart friends here in the forums, included a tool to help you along.

You can download a tool here (minidump tool) ---> http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtoo...g/default.mspx

sry you 64bit---> http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/install64bit.mspx

 

that's not valid link... Copy-Paste
Yeah thats what I will do, it should give you the driver who caused it in normal scenario.

Share it with me if you are not sure how to do it, oh.. and I have access to private symbols as well

 

I cannot find the pe386. I'm a little confused about exactly what I'm looking for. Would it be a folder under the Services folder or a file in the left screen of the Services folder. I have to go now but I will send the nfo file to you first thing tomorrow.

Also, I have very little programs on the computer and a reformat and uninstall wouldn't be too inconvenient. Any files remaining are my friend's and are useless to me.

 

then save time from troubleshooting it and reimage it to fix all potential software problems

 

Once I get my hands on the Windows Vista disk from my friend, I will reinstall the OS. From what I remember, I need a drivers disk too?

 

You going x64 or x32 ?
x32 should find most of the drivers automatically via windows update, x64 may have some trouble

 

lol, I don't blame you, but should it return there is no wrong doing that can't be undone.

Good Luck

 

I will be using x32. Thanks for all the help. I'll post again after I format and restall vista.

 

x32 will be easy on you, most of the drivers are already out there. quite a lot xp drivers still work with vista

 

I have to post a random post to allow me to post URLs.


uhhhh

Ok, that's great.

 

http://www.box.net/shared/btmaeqjlsu

this is the nfo file for whoever wanted to see it

 

Have not had a chance to look at this, off Friday so will try and help you then, unless you have it solved?

edit, did he install the new OS on top of this one for this problem or a problem like this?

 

I'm pretty sure the problem started after he installed Vista Ultimate. My friend is one of those "gotta have the best" computer guys with the dual Intel Superquattro Duo XL Extreme 15 GHz 9900 GTX4s and all of that stuff. He bought Vista Ultimate the day it came out and installed it on all of his computers, including this one. He has Halo 2 for PC on here which I believe only runs on Vista, so I am 95 percent sure the problem came up after he installed Vista Ultimate. It originally came with XP Professional. On Monday, he's coming over for a party for my uncle, so I asked him to bring the Vista disk with him so I could load it up while he was here. I'll do that and post back on Monday to tell you if it works.

 

Haha cool, keep us updated.

 

Hey sorry I missed to have a look at them earlier, I just had a quick look at it. I see couple of Kernel drivers and boot drivers which does not look default to me and neither I could find more information about them on net.

I think you already decided to go with new install... that will be a good test.

 

The Vista Ultimate is only good for one install. My friend dug up the old XP professional disc. It's installing right now. I'll load up Steam games and give them a good playing as a test. I'll keep you updated.

 

That's odd, is it an upgrade c/d?
Good luck anyhow

 

It is an upgrade.

 

Welcome to Chapter 2: The Installation.

When I put the Vista disk in, I used it to open the command prompt and format it. The formatting took a while, as I expected it to. I put in Windows XP Professional. The installation loaded up fine and began to install. When it got to about 33 minutes remaining, the installation appeared to stall. I decided to let it be. My friend (drunk) comes over, see's thats its stalled and reboots it. I start it again and this time it won't even reach the installation. It BSODs with a IRQL not less or equal error, with the hex code 0x0000000A 0x40876974 (dont know the rest). I restart it, try again and this time, I get 0xFFBDE400 instead of 0x48..... I try to format the disk again but the XP Professional disc won't finish before it BSODs. I load up the Vista disk, go through the install, format the drive, and begin the install. I figured I would use the evaluation period to find a fix for the XP issue. The installation stalls at 7 percent of expanding files.
I try again. I notice that the format seems awfully quick (less than 5 seconds) and seems to leave .1 GB of space occupied. My vague idea is that there is some residual file on the HD that is screwing up the installation so I rebooted with the Vista disk and started the command prompt format again. I will try XP Professional again after it finishes. Anybody know of any issues like this?

 

After formatting the computer, I started the installation and left to go back to the party. When I came back, I was confronted with this stop error screen.

 

Do you have a spare laptop HDD ?
This is definitely a hardware failure of some kind, if it was a desktop I could have asked you to remove all hardware cards and try it. But due to laptop you can try replacing HDD for now.

 

KEEP DRINKING!

I know you passed the memory tests before but did you try to swap the memory sticks or swap them out, I have seen this fix before even when it passes a memory test. Do not know how difficult this would be on your laptop.

Also looking through your windows error codes they are from 2007?

Just trying to help prevent more grey hair!

 

I restarted the installation and setup starts right up again. It had trouble finding the asms directory and then stopped.

 

I ran it once more and got this error.

I have another laptop. An old HP Compaq nx6110 with one broken hinge and one missing hinge. I don't know if I could salvage the HD or if it would even work with this one. It's smaller but not by much. As far as memory goes, I'd have to open it up which I would need to borrow a small screwdriver from someone. I'm pretty busy today so I'll defer that until tomorrow.

 

When I restarted it, it came back to 39 minutes remaining. I googled xp installation stalled and found this
http://techtracer.com/2007/03/12/xp-installation-the-34-minute-hiccup/
I tried and got it to unfreeze from 39 minutes. I got my fingers crossed that it makes it. It's at 34 right now and its been going steady.

 

Good luck! Let us know how it goes.

 

. There was a corruption of the internal structure.

 

It restarted again and I got this (nothing else but):

I think there might be a problem with the CD. The vista one worked much better than this one.

 

This is turning into a small novel you have to love windows sometimes.

With it faulting what seems to be a different case every other attempt you almost have to believe it is a bad hdd, wondering if you have some bad sectors and it just happens to catch one or more a different times of installation, if thats possible.

As for the ram...Bad Ram will surface as intermittent or total system instability, corruption, disk errors or it may prevent the computer from booting altogether. So not ruling it out.

 

I wonder if it IS ram, just trying to get us on the same page but the system did NOT work in safe mode as well correct?