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Computer Fails Randomly/Restarts
I have an Alienware Aurora, bought back in 2008, and within the last month or two my PC has been failing at very random times. I say very random because it has failed more than once per day, once per day, and once per week over the last 2 months. What occurs is I could be on the internet or on a video game and the screen goes black. I tend to still receive audio but all other functions are not working and clicking any assortment of key combos (ctrl alt del, alt4, alt tab) do not have any effect on the blackness or audio playing. Sometimes the black screen recovers and I am given a message the display drivers have failed and have recovered. When the black screen does not recover, my PC restarts on its own telling me that it failed to recover from a display problem. Checking event viewer shows me that "Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered". Although display drivers seem to be the issue here, I have used driver sweeper to fully remove all display drivers and freshly installed other drivers, which had no effect. I have ran 3 or 4 different diagnostics regarding RAM and some of those included motherboard, graphics, hard disk.. etc. The results say nothing is wrong across the board. I notice that, when I dont experience any problems for multiple days at a time, I get random slow downs and a loading sign next to my cursor while watching youtube videos (this is the only occurrence that happens daily and it happens more than once a day). So I am at a loss; I experience daily 2-3 second slow downs multiple times a day, and, at times where no pattern can be made, I get complete failures and the PC restarts itself or I have to do a forced restart. Diagnostics show all components are fine and my graphics card shows no signs of overheating. Keeping in mind the complete randomness of the occurrence of the failures and the results of the diagnostics, could this be a power supply issue or other hardware/software issue?
Event ID: 4101 (Display driver amdkmdap...)
Windows 7
Radeon HD 5870 (Catalyst 12.8)
Intel i7 920 (Level 1 OC Utility)
Alienware 0H869M Mobo
6GB DDR3 1300mhz
DELL-Sujatha K
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September 23rd, 2012 22:00
Hi Finkster06
Thank you for the detailed information about the steps that you have performed to troubleshoot this issue. Please clarify the type of diagnostic tests that were run on the system. Reply to me with the detailed steps followed to run the tests.
Thanks and Regards,
Sujatha K
#iworkfordell
Finkster06
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September 24th, 2012 07:00
Hello Sujatha
Diagnostics that have been used are F12 diagnostics on the mobo, Diagnostics tool from the Dell website, Alien Autopsy, and RAM diagnostics from Windows 7. The steps required to run the tests were to simply select what you wanted tested and to let it run. The F12 diagnostics on the mobo had me move my mouse and type "y" or "n" to certain situations, but that was the only one that took any further action than just starting the diagnostics. When given the option on what to test, I always selected the diagnostics to test all things.
Finkster06
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September 25th, 2012 07:00
It seems that I've lost the opportunity to talk to Sujatha. Anyone else have any questions/ideas?
DELL-Chris M
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September 26th, 2012 14:00
Finkster06,
* Power the PC off
* Open the case cover
* Look at the power supply cables going to the video card
* If your video card has two power supply connectors, they each must be coming from a separate power supply lead/bundle. One power supply lead/bundle cannot be split into two to power the video card. If they are, find an unused power supply lead/bundle and connect it to one of the video card power supply connectors
* While the cover is off, go ahead and disconnect/reconnect all other cabling, cards, and ram sticks
Finkster06
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September 27th, 2012 17:00
Hello Chris
I did what you suggested, but due to the randomness of the occurrence, it may be a day or more before the problem occurs again. It turns out that 2 connecters from the same bundle were being used, titled P14 and P15. I disconnected P15 and I am now using P14 from the original bundle with P16 from the P16-17 bundle. Thanks for the help so far.
Finkster06
6 Posts
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October 14th, 2012 09:00
Well, after more than two weeks the problem has returned. Yesterday I saw it happen again for the first time since I changed the power cables on the graphics card. Today it happened again. The screen goes black and you can hear a fan speeding up and going back to normal about every 3 seconds. Eventually you get a blue screen telling you that the PC was shut down to prevent damage. This is the same occurrence as before I switched the cables.
Finkster06
6 Posts
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November 4th, 2012 19:00
The problem is still occurring every couple of days now. Any other ideas?
DELL-Roshan L
4.4K Posts
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May 29th, 2013 04:00
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