Comp Trouble

[Anonymous]

Ok, some of you may have noticed that I don't really get into game too much anymore. Recently, my comp has decided that it will totally crash and blue screen if I play any game for about 5 mins. I haven't been able to do anything gaming wise for quite a while and it sucks.

Luckily, it is still under warranty so I'll probably have to SHIP it back to Alienware (even though their international headquarters is 3 mins from my house, I have to pay to ship it to them.)

Anyways, this means even more time out of game and bored like crazy. I try and be on TS and troll the forums whenever I can, but, going ingame is out of the question at this point.

So, if the time comes when I have to ship it out, I'll place myself on vacation. I just thought I'd let you all know the current nature of crappy situation.

[likwidtek]

dang dude..  all that money.....  

Let us know when you hear from them.

Have you tried formatting and reinstalling windows?  they might make you do that before you send it back.

(a fresh windows installation is a really great hardware test)

[likwidtek]

also undo any overclocking that may be in place.

[Ketamininja]

Right, before you ship back, there may be nothing wrong with the hardware, in which case they can't help you.
First of all, do you get the BSOD then reboot, or have you unchecked auto-reboot, so you can see the BSOD completely? You can uncheck in the SYSTEM PROPERTIES area.

A piece of software puts things in memory. If it references an incorrect bit of the memory to retreive data, then the program would get invalid results. Sometimes this can cause a BSOD. Make sure there are no strange programs running.

This applies to drivers too! Do a driver update to the essential systems, in order:

Chipset Drivers
Sound Drivers
Graphic Drivers

[Anonymous]

I tired overclocking when i first got it but it overheated the system too much so I took that off. I also, tried reformatting and reinstalling windows and there no change there, just me losing all my programs and games that I couldn't back up on my other HD. I don't mind so much since they would have done the same thing if I sent it there.

I just think there is a bug in either the CPU or the video card and that needs to be replaced. I'm sure as hell not paying for that. I'd rather spend the money to ship it back and have them do it. lol

[likwidtek]

Do you know how to check your graphics temp and cpu temp?  Alienware might have come with a neat tool that does it for you but in case it can't there are software programs like Motherboard Monitor that will do it.  (cpu) and if it's an nvidia chip you can see the temp just by going to your advanced display settings.

Check and see if it's overheating?

Are you getting blue screen errors?  If so what's the 0x00... code?  This can tell us a lot as well.

[Ketamininja]

If its overheating, I would expect an alienware, or reasonable new board, would give warnings, like an alarm, first. Things would start to go .. strange.. and switch off, or freeze, but sometimes BSOD.

[Anonymous]

Bad RAM is the cuase of 99% of my PC crashes

[Anonymous]

Well, I tried updating the drivers. Yea, Alienware is badass like that. They have this program that lets you see the current temperature and you can set alarms to go off when it reaches a certain temperature. The alarm never goes off so I know this has nothing to do with the comp temperature, it only did that when I was overclocking and I stopped that long ago.

to describe what happens:
Certain pixels on the screen become discolored in bright spots on the screen. It gets worse and appears as vertical lines of distorted pixels. Then the whole comp starts slowing down and occasionally freezes up until it crashes.

My bro is studying to be a computer engineer and he knows a lot more about it than me. He said he's tried everything he can and it must be a hardware issue.

[Lithium]

Well the obvious problem with it is that its Aleainware.

[Ketamininja]

yeah lol, that almost does describe overheating.... of the graphics card, or chipset.... but damage could have been done to those items, causing it. I say chipset, because that controls the flow of data (and graphics, and this is a grahics issue).

The same could happen from the CPU, but then I'd expect some warning. Destyn is correct, most is ram, but probably not with those symptoms... but I've seen stranger.

[Styan]

Dude, get that shit fixed :p  lol

Tho seriously this is the same problem you've been describing for a while eh?  So yea the damage is likely already done.

[Anonymous]

Are you running SLI by any chace? Cause it look like you video card is broke.

[likwidtek]

Yeah from what you describe, I would check out the video card.  Did you check the temp of the vid card?  If it's nvidia did you enable the coolbits overclocking?  (if so disable it)

Also try reseating the video card.

[ArchNemesis]

yeah dude... that's a Vid Card problem... if your getting artifacts like that it's either overheating or just general poop problems. Try leaving you case open and see if the time it takes for it to restart is longer if you REALLY wanna make sure. Hell i've done that before and put a table fan next to it ^_^