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View Full Version : Alienware M15X at a loss


DATALIENWARE
11-28-2011, 08:09 PM
THE TL;DR

I HAVE AN ALIENWARE M15X LAPTOP, IT FREEZES.





Okay, so if you think you can help solve THAT issue, here are the details as to what the actual problem is.



I bought my laptop roughly a year and a half ago, I spent $2000~ roughly on it.

After a DAY of using it, I received my first "freeze". Video freezes, audio hangs (this buzzing, repeated loop sound), keys are completely unresponsive, closing the monitor only shuts the monitor off, putting it back up reveals the video to still be stuck on the same frame, and the only way out of this is a hard reboot.

That's the general gist of what's been happening each time it freezes. I get different freezes occasionally. Sometimes I'll be watching a video on youtube and the screen will "bleed". It's quite demonic looking sometimes, the whole screen turns red and seems like its melting. I dont know what to say about that. Sound gets distorted. Quite scary.

But yeah, my laptop had never ceased to have this error during gaming/video watching. After calling dell support and riding up my phone bill, I finally went and asked them to change my video card and fan for free. My warranty was coming to an end already when I finally decided to do this.

This temporarily has solved the problem, the freezing has hardly occurred (still does though).

ONE THING however, is that if i try livestreaming however, it is almost GAURANTEED, less than 5 minutes into the game I will have the same freezing issue. It is the most PAINFUL thing to see happen, in the middle of a game, your mouse suddenly unable to move, the hanging audio, and nothing moving. It's THE MOST frustrating thing.

But until then, I will be posting this ^^^^^ above post on any forums I can and try and get some community advice.

------------------------------------------------

The above post I made on most Dell forums. Forgive the attitude I give during the whole post but, I will try to clarify somethings for this forum post.

Things I have done: I HAVE done a ton of research already, I did all the normal trouble shoooting things already:

Update bios, update windows OS, updated drivers. (as of last time i tried to fix this problem)

Constantly cleaned fan vents,

Any help would be appreciated.

LochLomonder
11-29-2011, 12:06 PM
What are the hardware specifications for the notebook? Which OS are you running? Have you checked in Event Viewer to read any error messages in the logs which may point to the source of these freezes?

DATALIENWARE
11-29-2011, 07:19 PM
Windows 7

Nvidia GEforce GTX 260M

Intel core i7 CPU Q740 1.73 GHz
6144MB ram

Yeah i have checked the event viewer. Most times it either says nothing or it only reports that my computer was shut down unexpectedly (me hardbooting it).

mjc
11-29-2011, 09:17 PM
Have you...

1. Run Memtest (http://www.memtest.org/) on it?

2. Tried a different OS...a Linux LiveCD would be something to try, it would help pin down if it was a hardware problem, because if the Linux runs without problems, then it is most likely something Windows specific causing the problem.