Dell XPS 15 L502X freezing while gaming

I am facing with this problem for almost a year. After my battery died it started to happen this problem. I have no longer battery. At the beginning it happens like only once of 12 hours gaming because I am a hardcore gamer so it means that I play for about 8-10 hours per day. After that it starts to happen more often like 5-6 times in an hour and to fix that problem nothing worked other than manually shutting down the laptop from the power button and then start it again. So before 3 months I started to search online on how to fix that problem but I never found a solution. Read the solutions below that I have tried. If someone can help me that would be cool.

And a post that I've made on 20th of December 2013 is the following:

Now the problem is getting worse. I can't play anymore games. It's just crashes on every 5 minutes. I can only play Counter Strike 1.6. Laptop just never freeze on that game and I have never had a crash on it. On all other games is just useless.

My laptop configuration:

Dell XPS 15 L502X
Intel Core i7 - 2630QM @ 2.00GHz
6 GB of RAM
Nvidia Geforce GT 540M @ 2GB and Intel HD Graphic Card
64 bit of Windows 8
Laptop Cooler @ Cooler Master X3
Temperature of my Graphic Card while gaming is not above than 70C because of my cooler.
Here's an image of the NVIDIA Graphic settings. I have never ever touched or changed any settings. These are stock ones. Voltage, clock, memory etc.

Solutions that didn't work for me.

1. At first when I faced with this problem I thought it's a Windows fault but I was wrong... When it crashed I had that time Windows 7 64bit and I thought it would be cool if I format my laptop and install Windows 8 64bit, but that problem was still. I switched back to Windows 7 64 bit and again the same problem all the time over and over ... ( this didn't work too )

I've been playing DotA 2 since it came out and I never had such a problem .. I've been gaming for about 8-10 hours per day during summer without any problems, running the game on all high specs ... but suddenly this happen... now I am afraid to play for about 3-5 hours because of this problem and a lot of people started to complain about this. I have bought a proper laptop cooler that would keep my laptop cool because as I said I play a lot ! This thing happen only with DotA 2 game the rest of the games are good like Assassins Creed IV, Counter Strike Global Offensive, Sniper Elite etc ...

I've been also googling for this problem and I found that I should downgrade my nvidia driver to 295.73 but when I installed this driver I run the game and in the first minute my game freezes and I switched back to the latest version. ( this didn't work too )

I've tried to Run the Steam as Administrator > Library > Right Click on DotA 2 > Properties > Local Files > Verify Integrity of Game Cache ... ( this didn't work too )

Right Click on My Computer > Properties > Advanced System Settings > Advanced > Performance > Settings > Advanced > select the Adjust for best performance of as "Programs" > Change > Untick "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives > Choose "No Paging File" > and set the smallest initial size (MB) as x2 of my actual RAM so it means I type there 6 x 2 = 12 as initial size and maximum x4 so it means I type there 6 x 4 = 24 > Hit set Ok but didn't fixed this but I noticed that I had better and clean gameplay. ( this didn't work too ) so I set back to default

Tried to uninstall DotA 2 completely also Steam too... hard clean which means nothing contains so too bad didn't help me out though. ( this didn't work too )

I've been searching on a lot of forums and someone said that he fixed the problem because of his avatar picture which I was kindly doubt that it will help me out so I've changed my avatar picture with something default even I removed the avatar and I didn't have nothing on it but again too bad. ( this didn't work too )

Updated my Windows with the newest updates but didn't fix the problem too. ( this didn't work too )

I've been following this thread related to DotA 2 crashes but didn't find the right solution for me *others forum link, that I don't want to link in* ( this didn't work too )

Remove all the startup programs from the msconfig ( this didn't work too )

Installed CCleaner and fixed all the missing dlls ( this didn't work too )

Only once I get the error that said Nvidia Stopped Working.. but for now I don't get this error anymore, just a random freeze on the middle of the game and I don't know what to do anymore.

Here is what's inside the debug text file that is located into the DotA 2 folder ... I've been searching for this errors too but didn't find any good solution that might help me out.


1. Cleaning the laptop from dust + changing the thermal compound 3 months ago. Temperatures were from 80C while gaming to 70C while gaming. This was like a little solution to me that worked only for a day.

2. I have been trying to run most of the games on the integrated graphic card and it happens the same.
3. Have tried to play around with the settings from the NVIDIA Control Panel but that didn't worked.

 

Hey, I got same laptop except with a GT 525M graphics card. What I suggest to you is look at this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...modded-bioses-download-gpu-voltages-more.html and undervolt your laptop's GPU. Also, go buy a air compressed can and blow it on your side vents and bottom vents. Another thing you can do is turn OFF turbo boost. Honestly, I don't notice any difference with turbo boost on or off unless it's a heavy CPU application. Turning it off will help you with the CPU temperature and make it cooler. If all this doesn't work, I suggest you to underclock your GPU starting by 10-20MHz and increase if it's still not stable.

 

Thanks for your reply. Well I will try first with the easiest one. How do I turn off the turbo boost? And I have cleaned the side and the vents. If I try to replace the modded bios I will need to buy a battery.

 

To turn off turbo boost, you need to click your battery icon and make sure when you're gaming it is always SET on balanced. Click More power options, then change plan settings, advanced power settings. Go to Processor Power Management and on Maximum processor state, both of them are set on 99% . On PCI Express, make sure the plugged in one is set to OFF. On Intel Graphics Settings, set plugged in on Maximum performance. After that just leave your computer set on Balanced for battery. Your CPU temperature should never hit more than 80-85C when gaming hard. Mine is always around 65-75C now depending how hot my room is and what type of game I'm gaming on. Also, your GPU should also be less hot due to CPU being cooler and should never hit over 75C. And what do you mean replace the modded bios to replace new battery? If you make a mistake, just flash to original BIOS.

 

"hardcore gamer" buying an XPS :facepalm:

 

Not really. I bought this laptop back in 2011 for college. I wanted it for college and bit of gaming. I had built a gaming desktop couple years back but I barely use my desktop now... so I game on my laptop mostly now.

 

As he said. I bought back in 2011 for a college. So I was studying in other town ... I cant move my desktop all the time ..

 

My battery died like long time ago. I have no battery so I think it's pointless to do that. I'll change only the options when it says "plugged in".

 

Actually it's not pointless. In fact, I'm running with no battery... it's always plugged in. Everytime I boot it gives me a message that I need to replace my battery but I don't. So doing those things that I told you before will help you a lot. Trust me.

 

For the first time in 2.5 years since I own this XPS15, I experience no more crashes.

After the usual things like internal cleaning, replacing the motherboard, re-pasting the GPU, modding the BIOS, lowering the GPU's clock speeds, trying all existing Dell and NVidia Video drivers, etc.etc.I finally see an end of these problems.

I like the XPS15 i7 Q2690/GT540M very much, but playing the only game I have was a continuing nightmare.
Sometimes it crashed after 20 seconds, sometimes after 2 hours, and very very occasionally it did NOT crash.

Now, for the first time, with the NVidia 344.75 driver, things look promising!
First of all the drivers installed without any problem, which even seemed suspicious.
Most important, my game doesn't crash anymore!
Thank you NVidia for accomplishing this. :thumbsup:

However, all this has not changed my opinion about Dell.
The Internet is full of complaints about this specific laptop problem, but Dell leaves its customers in the dark.
I am now convinced that it was a GPU driver problem and Dell did nothing to solve it.
Over the years, I probably spent weeks trying to diagnose, investigate and test this thing.
And still, the "newest driver" on the Dell site is 285.77, almost 3 years old, while NVidia itself keeps updating the reference drivers for the GT540M!

Bad support Dell!

 

********FREEZE FIX**********
The solution to the freezing ingame.. All i did was deleting Dell's programs and apps on my laptop (Specially delete "Dell support center"). Now it works fine. I hope i never have to use MSI afterburner again!

 

I'm not 100% sure, but in my case most of the time it used to give me those annoying errors it was related to the sound, not sure if it was the driver which i don't really know for sure if it is supposed to be alc269 or alc665 cause u can find both in dell site, i'm about to reformat with Windows 10 technical preview, i haven't played any games in quite some time, but the errors also happens when i'm doing other stuff IF and only IF i'm using the hdmi output or using the nvidia card, my best guess so far is some kind of crazy error between the nvidia and the realtek card.
I've tried everything, the only solution that seemed to reduce the problem was to cripple the nvidia card to low/half freq, it may be related to heating, maybe in the mainboard? who knows ...
BTW: I started to believe it is related to sound cause i've tracked using DPC latency checks and also most of the times that that machines didn't fully crash there were some weird noises along the error with some high cpu usages coming from realtek driver app.

 

It's a Realtek alc665 Soundchip. You can use several official Realtek drivers. It's better to use the official Dell Windows 8 drivers for the Realtek chip. Because there is no performance or sound enhancement in the later updated Realtek drivers. Use newer drivers to maybe fix compatiblity issues.