alienware 15 r2: intel graphics drive crashing

AW14DOA,

How often does the crashing occur, is it just the video driver stopping or do you have to reboot Windows, when this happens what do you normally have to do to get the system back up and running?  Has the system always done this and if not, when did it start, what changes if any was made to the system prior to the crashes?

Does the problem occur with battery or AC adapter only or does it seem to matter?  Does the crashing happen all of the time or does it seem that specific software is running when you notice the problem. When you get the blue screens what errors messages are the blue screen giving?

If you have not already tried, download both the latest Intel and Nvidia drivers from support.dell.com and save them to the desktop, don't install them yet.  Then uninstall both the Intel and Nvidia drivers from the system and reboot.  Then install the drivers that you downloaded starting with the Intel drivers. While installing the drivers make sure that the AC adapter is plugged in and change Windows power options to "high performance" (press windows and x key, choose power options then high performance).

I look forward to receiving your response. 

post script, I just had another blue screen, for the few second it was up, I could not catch the error descriptions

There was only one blue screen of death, the only comment I recall was that windows was gathering information and the machine would then reboot. Most of the time the screen freezes followed by flicker a blank screen there is a screen flicker and then a windows error message for reporting the windows video driver driver crashed. it happens frequently (several times in a day). It is power, power setting and application independent.

The bios version is 1.2.3, no newer version is available. Support Assist does not identify any issues. I updated the NVIDIA Geforce driver to v361.43. There was no improvement. Support Assist did not identify any issues

I have found similar issues with similar i7 NVIDIA combinations mentioned on the intel site where they recommended a beta driver. I was hoping Dell would have come up with a fix because it appears to be a driver issue.

I ran across this document and it may be helpful. Goes over what I have pretty much already stated, the big thing here is if you haven’t tried, reinstall the existing drivers even if you already have the most current.

If you haven't tried you may want to look into Optimus settings and set the system to globally run in High Performance and see if that makes a difference.

I don’t have any information on updated drivers being made available from Dell but you may want to create a restore point and download the latest drivers from Intel and Nvidia and see if they help.