Alienware Aurora R4 BSOD, Freezing, Unexpected Shutdown, etc. (Problems & Solutions)

 I ordered my Alienware Aurora R4 on August 14, 2012. Me and my brother were really excited and can't wait for it.  One week later, we received the Dell U2410 Monitor (August 22, 2012), and it looks really nice the design was perfect and it made us more excited even more. We watched people unbox their Alienware on YouTube and we see some positive comments so far. Two days later we received the system unit (August 24, 2010). The package is huge and the Purolator delivery guy asked me to help him carry it inside. It was really nice, I can't wait to open and unbox it, but I had to wait for 4 hours since my brother is at work and we wanna open it together. We opened it, and we did not expect it to be so big and nice. We measure it and It can't fit to our computer desk so we went to ikea and bought a new computer desk. When we got back home, we asked our friend to help us build the new desk. He's really good at assembling ikea furniture, he finished it  without a hassle.

          Finally, it's time to set it up! We unboxed it slowly and carefully since we waited for this and doesn't want to scratch our new computer. It's done! We turned it on and it asked us to choose our language, compter name, all the common computer start up stuff. We tried to play music then we realized it didn't come with a speaker. "It's okay, it's just a speaker." So we went to BestBuy and got a decent Logitech speaker for $79. We plugged it in at the back and it didn't work. We thought it's the speaker so we tried to plug in our iPhone headset and still no sound. We tried to plug it in the front then it worked. We thought there's a problem with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 555 because it was plugged there at the back, it turnes out we just have to change the sound settings to Stereo because we're not using a surround sound system.

          Yaay, everything is done! We did all that in one day (August 24, 2010). Since it's friday and we don't have work Saturday and Sunday, we tried to install StarCraft 2. We still have time to play and we played two league games online, everything were perfect. The graphics, smooth fps and it didn't heat up. After playing for one hour, we quit the game and just left computer to eat. When we came back, the screen were off, we thought it's on sleep mode so we just left it there and went to bed.

          The next morning (August 25, 2012), I tried to move the mouse. It's not waking up, I pressed the keyboard and it's not responding. The Alienware head light was on and the fan was on. We don't know what's going on so we called customer support. We waited in queue for 15 minutes and finally, someone answered. He asked for our service code number right away and since it's our first time calling Dell's Customer Support, we had no idea what it is. The guy was friendly enough and told us where to find it. We told him the problem and he said we should hold the power button to force the computer to shutdown. We asked him what's the problem and he said he'll find out. We want to Alienware support and he gave us a code so he could control our computer remotely and check for the problem. He deleted the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 555 Driver, went online, downloaded a new driver and installed it. He restarted the computer and he said it should be fine now. The manager asked us to answer a quick survey, and of course, we gave them a positive feedback for helping us. A few hours later while we were watching a video on YouTube, the computer freezes up in front of us. We can't move the mouse nor the keyboard. The monitor went to sleep mode saying "Entering Power Save Mode", no signal detected. We thought it was the monitor so we called Dell Customer Support again for the second time. A guy answered, we explained what happened. The same routine happened again but this time he deleted and updated our sound driver as well. He also checked if it was due to overheating, tested it and result turned out negative. He tried to update the Alienware BIOS and in the middle of nowhere, he got disconnected on the phone. We can still see him moving the mouse, but after a while, even though the update was only 25%, he disconnected and left the session. We thought he's gonna call back, but he didn't. So we called Customer Support again and a new guy answered. All he did was canceled the download and check the computer drivers and that's it.

          We thought they know what they're doing so we trusted them and thought everything will work normally now. Another hour passed, the computer was frozen again, only this time we were just listening to music. The monitor went to sleep mode and the system unit shuts off. The light on the hard disk indicator was still on and blinking, so we know it's still on, but we can't do anything. We called Customer Support for the fourth time, a girl answered. She asked what happened and we told her that the computer suddenly shuts off by itself. She then said "What do you mean shuts off?", she sound really rude. We said "We were listening to music and then the computer froze and shuts off and we don't know why. It happened more than twice now." and then she said "No, it didn't shut down. What happened?". She keeps insisting that it didn't shut down as if she was here. My brother said "What do you want me to say? That's what we saw. It happened in front of us." She then asked us to shut it down by holding the power button and unplug the monitor and the system unit, open the side and check if the Video Card was intact. She then asked me to make sure that everything was plugged in all the way. I checked and followed what she told me. She also told us to unplug the computer from the power surge protector and plug it directly on the wall. We followed everything she said. "Is there anything else I can help you?" she became friendlier and told us "I will call back on Wednesday (August 29, 2012) and see if everything's working fine. We did the survey and gave her a good rating. Five days have passed and she didn't call, and in those 5 days the computer worked normally. At last, we finally solved the the problem. We thought it was caused by the power surge protector. In 5 days, it was fine. After all that's happened everything's working now.

          (August 31, 2012) I went to Facebook and tried to upload some pictures. I clicked browse and then the computer stops responding, it freezes up again. The monitor went to power save mode and the system unit shuts off by itself. What was going on? I restarted the computer like they always tell us and and went to Dell's website and run Dell PC Diagnostics. Test finished up with

- Tested and need attention: (1) 
Network Card: 802.11 n WLAN
USB Status Test Cannot Run Cannot get device property.
• Search "Help and Support Center" 

- Tested Successfully: (91)

          We called Customer Support again, waited for 20 minutes this time and then a guy answered asked for the service code and we explained what happened. He replied "It says here on our note everything was fixed and fine.", we told him,"No, the last person who helped us and told us she will call us back to check if everything was fine didn't follow up." (But even if she did call, we would have told her that everything was fine because in the last 5 days, it worked perfectly.), and he said "Okay, okay I'l check... Would you hold on for a moment?" Okay, we said... He left us on hold for another 20 minutes despite that we already waited on queue. Why would they write on their note that everything was fixed? He answered and said sorry for the wait and he said we should backup all our data and he will re-install the OS and everything again. We backed-up our files, he asked us for the Windows 7 disc, we followed everything he said and took us about 3 hours on the phone with his trial-an-error. Even though it was like that, he was very nice unlike the first girl we talked to. Everything was restored, and then he said "I'm gonna give you another code and type it online. She will help you update all your drivers as I she knows more than me." Thank you so much, we said. He left the phone, we answered another survey, we gave him a 10/10 rating. Now, we're just waiting for her to update our driver. She was one of the nicest customer support. She finished installing all the drivers around 10PM. We told her thank you and she says bye. We didn't get any survey this time and hopefully after all this calling, waiting, explaining, following instructions, troubleshooting, everything was done.

          (September 1, 2012) Around 7AM, we installed StarCraft 2 again. We played like normal, everthing was fine until I played music. It crashed again. Although this time it restarted saying "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly." Again? We're so tired of dealing with Dell's Customer Support over the phone. We said, nah, forget it, let's just call them next Tuesday. We don't want to waste our long weekend calling them, then wait in queue and put us on hold.

          Today, Tuesday (September 4, 2012) around 7:59:44AM, while we were watching StarCraft 2 battle on YouTube, the computer freezes up again. My brother said, "We should call them later when I get back. Just press the power button and restart it. There's nothing we can do for now." We restarted it and it started up normally. I went online again, and then in less than a minute after the restart, it froze up. But now the screen turned blue and it restarted again. After the restart we got this message:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 4105

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 116
BCP1: FFFFFA800ECF84E0
BCP2: FFFFF88016066AE4
BCP3: FFFFFFFFC000009A
BCP4: 0000000000000004
OS Version: 6_1_7601
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 768_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\090412-18470-01.dmp
C:\Users\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-43571-0.sysdata.xml

Read our privacy statement online:
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If the online privacy statement is not available, please read our privacy statement offline:
C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt

Isn't this supposed to be a NEW Computer? Why is it acting like this? What should we do? Here's the computer's specification:

Alienware Aurora R4, Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3820 CPU @ 3.60GHz 3.60GHz, 8.00GB Memory (RAM), 64-bit Operating  System, PLDS BD-RE DH-8B2SH SCSI CdRom Device, ATA ST1000DM003-9YN1 SCSI Disk Device 1TB, ACPI x64-based PC, 8x Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-820 CPU @ 3.60GHz, NVIDIA High Definition Audio, Intel(R) C600 Series Chipset SATA RAID Controller, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 555, Thermal Cooling, etc.

We'll call the Customer Support again later but maybe we'll get answer in this forum. Hope someone who know's what's happening can help us. After all this, it's not exciting anymore... sigh

It seems like this two is causing the problem: 

nvlddmkm.sys 

dxgkrnl.sys

Screen goes black then long delay and BSOD with the nvlddmkm.sys as the problem. 

This usually happens while playing video game, watching flash player videos and playing music.

On Tue 04/09/2012 7:58:49 AM UTC your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\090412-18470-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: nvlddmkm.sys (nvlddmkm+0xC3BAE4) 
Bugcheck code: 0x116 (0xFFFFFA800ECF84E0, 0xFFFFF88016066AE4, 0xFFFFFFFFC000009A, 0x4)
Error: VIDEO_TDR_ERROR
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\nvlddmkm.sys
product: NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 285.76 
company: NVIDIA Corporation
description: NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 285.76 
Bug check description: This indicates that an attempt to reset the display driver and recover from a timeout failed. 
A third party driver was identified as the probable root cause of this system error. It is suggested you look for an update for the following driver: nvlddmkm.sys (NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 285.76 , NVIDIA Corporation). 
Google query: nvlddmkm.sys NVIDIA Corporation VIDEO_TDR_ERROR

On Tue 04/09/2012 7:58:49 AM UTC your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\memory.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: dxgkrnl.sys (dxgkrnl!TdrResetFromTimeout+0x214) 
Bugcheck code: 0x116 (0xFFFFFA800ECF84E0, 0xFFFFF88016066AE4, 0xFFFFFFFFC000009A, 0x4)
Error: VIDEO_TDR_ERROR
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\dxgkrnl.sys
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: DirectX Graphics Kernel
Bug check description: This indicates that an attempt to reset the display driver and recover from a timeout failed. 
The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system which cannot be identified at this time. 

I found a list of soulution that I think might work:

Solution 1:

Right-click on Computer, go to Properties > Device Manager
Expand "Display Adapters", double-click your videocard
Go over to the Details tab
The menu that can switch between which details to show, change it to "Hardware IDs"
TAKE NOTE OF THE "VEN_####" AND "SUBSYS_########", do NOT close the window
Expand "System devices"
There should be at least one "High Definition Audio Controller"
Find the one with the same "VEN_####" and "SUBSYS_######" as your video card
DISABLE (Not uninstall!) it
Reboot

People's comment: "Did this about a month ago, haven't had a problem since. I hope this works for you, too."

Source: http://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-debugging/190306-bsod-nvlddmkm-sys-dxgkrnl-sys-help.html

Solution 2:

About this file

nvlddmkm.sys is part of your Nvidia® display driver installation, and it is located under the following path:

C:\windows\system32\drivers

Blue screens of death crashes (STOP errors) associated with this file usually occur on all popular Windows platforms: XP, Vista, and even Windows 7. Crashes might occur randomly or at different situations such as playing video games, playing music, immediately after installing Windows, while trying to install new video display drivers, or watching flash videos.

Other reported problems related to this nvlddmkm.sys are that it involves in slowing down Windows startup process.

How to solve the nvlddmkm.sys BSOD
Warning! - Don’t manually try replace that file under any circumstances by another one. Many users try to download that file from random sites, and then they experience other problems. It just doesn’t work that way.

In order to solve the problem you need to make sure that your Nvidia® display driver as well as all your system drivers, and motherboard drivers aren’t outdated/corrupted, and if so, replace them with their ‘healthy’ and most updated versions.

Doing that manually is a time consuming, too risky, and inaccurate task. (You can never tell which are the most updated and exact required drivers). Anyway, I found that the safest (and by far the fastest) way to replace those problematic drivers is by using a reliable drivers repair tool.

To summarize - in order to repair this nvlddmkm.sys BSOD run a quick drivers scan and at the end see which drivers are causing this error, then install their latest, official, and most updated versions.

I suggest you to do the following:

(1) Remove your NVIDIA display driver
(2) Restart Windows
(3) Run another drivers scan
(4) The missing NVIDIA driver should be detected and it should let you download the latest certified version of that driver that matches your specific hardware

A little request...
Since each of you got a differently configured OS, I’d like to know the exact symptoms that you encounter with this problem. Feel free to post this information at the bottom of this page. Thanks.

Source: http://www.articlewritingclicks.com/Windows_Errors/Nvlddmkmsys_BSOD_Fix__How_to_Finally_Solve_this_Error.html

Right now I'm trying Solution 1 and see if it works. 

I'll ask customer support before trying Solution 2.

I'll update this every week and inform everyone. 

If you find any solution, please post it here.

UPDATE: (September 4, 2012) 2:47:54 PM

It freezes while watching videos on YouTube.

Event filter with query "SELECT * FROM __InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60 WHERE TargetInstance ISA "Win32_Processor" AND TargetInstance.LoadPercentage > 99" could not be reactivated in namespace "//./root/CIMV2" because of error 0x80041003. Events cannot be delivered through this filter until the problem is corrected.

UPDATE: (September 4, 2012) 2:58:24 PM

Again watching videos on YouTube.

Event filter with query "SELECT * FROM __InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60 WHERE TargetInstance ISA "Win32_Processor" AND TargetInstance.LoadPercentage > 99" could not be reactivated in namespace "//./root/CIMV2" because of error 0x80041003. Events cannot be delivered through this filter until the problem is corrected.