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1747 i7 820 Random crashes solved
Just for information, hope to help someone.
I received this laptop late December 09 and suffered random crashes. Not very frequently but still anoying. I leave my laptop on permanently. It never goes off, but restarts due to Win7 updates. I stream video (UK TV to my home in Spain) and sometime I download high volumes but slowly at 1-2Mb/s for days at a time.
Initially it appeared to crash due to video playing on Hulu or YouTube
Flash was updated (was suggested a possible cause) = crashes appeared less often (possibly this fixed one issue).
ATI drivers were updated = possible improvement again.
Updated motherboard drivers = no perceptible change. NOTE* this requires launching the installer using a cmd window with "infinst911autol.exe -overall" without the quotes of course.
Finally I noticed a few crashes when not watching video but when downloading. This was narrowed down to ONLY when on the wired Realtek ethernet and never occured on WiFi. This was proven over about 2 weeks on WiFi (0 crashes) with 5 weeks on ethernet (1-2 crashes a week).
Updated ethernet using Dell drivers = no change.
Used Realtek drivers direct = no change ------- Until driver 7.23.623.2010 dated 23/06/2010 this SOLVED it. File appears to be named Win7_7023_08192010 though I cannot verify this as my folder has about 5 different ones now. The contents appears to match up though. Judging by this, it appears that I extracted the 64 folder and manually installed it.
Now I can't say for sure as there could be all sorts of interactions happening, MS Updates could have resolved something without me realising. I'm pretty sure that the updated Realtek driver sorted it. I appeared to prove that ethernet caused these crashes, even when downloading wasn't happening user commanded (the laptop appears to send out a few packets all the time - McAfee etc. OSes are so complicated these days, always busy doing something behind your back).
Just in case it was a combination of drivers (seen an audio driver prevent a USB device from functioning properly on an old Curries cheapo PC years ago!)
PM55 drivers: 9.1.1.1025/(file properties 1.1.30.0) however the displayed information within the driver tab in device monitor is dated 28/10/2009 version 9.1.1.1022. I think this is a typo within the driver inf.
ATI 10.5
Flash - 10.1.82.76 - I see that 10.1.85.3 is the latest though.
swapshop1
38 Posts
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September 28th, 2010 16:00
I should add that I was on Bios A10 when all was tested ok above. Since then I have updated to A11 and still all is well. I'm pretty sure A10 didn't fix it, but it was so long ago now that all I have in mind was the latest Realtek driver.
Oh did anyone realise that A11 now includes the loJack in the bios? Thats the reason the file size changed! Shame Dell doesn't tell you what changes updates bring! Don't mess with it. Once activated or disabled it is permanent, unless you upgrade the bios. Mine is now disabled. Defaults to not in use or something like that. If you activate it, it will install a windows driver directly into your installation. The service costs money - boo hiss.
a few other drivers that I changed:
ST Micro 26/6/2009 1.8.1.0 - I wouldn't recommend updating this as it's unlikely to sort it.
Intel rapid store driver 9.6.0.1014.
intel AHCI drivers show as 3/3/2010 ver 9.6.0.1014
swapshop1
38 Posts
0
May 30th, 2011 12:00
Just posting to confirm after all this time that I've was crash free - Except up until about 2 months ago (well I'm still crash free but instead it occasionally causes video to freeze. I stopped leaving my laptop on all the time. Now instead I use Sleep or Hibernate before going to bed. After a few weeks I realised what what happening.
Leaving an open video player window, Media Player Classic Home Cinema or VLC player, resuming from sleep or hibernate causes the video to freeze after about 30 seconds. 100% reproducible. If you close the programs the program will crash needing Task manager to kill it. The file will be locked for about 30 seconds maybe more. If you leave the player alone, it will continue playing after about 30 seconds.
Why? I don't know. But basically, I have to wait a few minutes after resuming before playing video.
Just to clarify, the issue appears related to the Windows and the hard drive. Something needs to re-sync freezing video temporarily playback. This might be related to the Intel Rapid Share driver I have installed (hard drive driver) but event manager does not record any issues and I cannot find any other log.
Pelllur
22 Posts
0
May 30th, 2011 13:00
I had that Realtek driver already and my laptop keeps crashing.
I have ATI HD 560v with driver 8.713.3.2000. Otherwise pretty similar system.
swapshop1
38 Posts
0
May 30th, 2011 14:00
have you tried looking at the "event viewer"? It might help locate the issue. Have you tried running on WiFi only for a month? If you still experience crashing then the issue is not with the Realtek driver.
Software interactions can come from weird non-related drivers. Trying to track them down is a pain. Multiple failures with the same symptoms can be difficult to find and fix as you never know if one change has fixed something or not. It took me ages to track mine down. Now it has been stable for a while it has become an awesome machine! (the resume from sleep is pain. But, now I know what it is, I can avoid it)