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July 7th, 2013 23:00

New Inspiron 5423 unexpectedly restarting

Hello, I wonder if anyone can help me, I'm at the end of my rope on what to do next, particularly as I'm currently living overseas and my computer is my lifeline to my family back home and my work (which I do online).

Specs

  1. New Inspiron 5423
  2. i7-3537U 2.0GHz
  3. Bios Dell A10,1/29/2013
  4. Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 7570m
  5. 250GB static HD

After having my new inspiron for about a week, yesterday it just started unexpectedly restarting.

It came with Windows 8, but for my work I needed Windows 7 - so I installed that and continued to install all my usual programs. Windows 7 was activated and I had downloaded and installed all updates available.

So when it first started rebooting, I restored it back to the previous day (last know good configuration), but the problem continued to occur.

I did the dell startup diagnostics (even the extra mem tests) and there were no error messages.

I decided to reinstall windows 7 from scratch, and it was ok at first, but then after a couple of hours it started happening again.

I can load in to Safe mode with networking (what I am currently in) - and it seems to be fine, I haven't experienced a reboot in safemode.

I downloaded coretemp - and it doesn't seem like a temperature issue as it's restarting, not shutting down - and it showed the chip was running between 56-64 degrees which seemed normal.

From what I can tell, it's not any particular program I've installed that is causing the issue. 

I don't think this could be a virus due to the clean installs (and having mcafee installed).

I installed Turned on Times View (nirsoft) - which gives you a list of when and why the system was turned on/off, if it can. Eg when you restart for windows updates, the log shows that it was a planned restart etc. However after my system unexpectedly restarts, there is no reason listed.

Can anyone offer any advice on maybe how to figure out what is causing the restarts?

I'm not even sure where to go next - should I be looking at the drivers, could they cause this? Or am I looking at a hardware failure? I tried to look at the Event Viewer but to be honest I'm not really sure what I'm looking for.

Any guidance would be highly appreciated!

Samantha

6 Posts

July 22nd, 2013 16:00

Hi thanks for trying, but the drivers from Dell are the ones that cause the restarting problem.

I located the newest version of the Intel HD 4000 driver (Win64_15313_intel) from their website and installed that, then I installed the latest AMD drivers (13-4_mobility_win7_win8_64_dd_ccc_whql_AMD) from the AMD website. This has solved my issues and my graphics card is now performing correctly.

So yeah, just to repeat the ones it tells me to install when I enter my service tag and OS (Windows 7) were:

Intel: 5423_Video_Driver_T6XGJ_WN_8.15.10.2669_A02

AMD: 5423_Video_Driver_VGR24_WN_8.951.9.0_A02

And these caused endless problems - the graphics card would not work and then when I installed the AMD drivers from Dell, it would cause my system to restart every 2 or 3 minutes. It seemed like some sort of incompatibility between the two display adapters and the supplied drivers.

The other Dell representative told me the same stock reply as you - so I wanted to post my solution in case anyone else has this issue.

4 Operator

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2.5K Posts

July 8th, 2013 00:00

Hi s.mckillop,

I appreciate that you have done lot of steps. This may not be a hardware issue as the diagnostics test has passed. It may be a driver issue, I would suggest you to reinstall the operating system and install the drivers by using the link below.

http://dell.to/10j0xQQ

In this link punch in the system service tag or express service code and select the right OS. Then you may refer to the link below to install the drivers in the correct order

http://dell.to/11Cpkya

Please let me know if this helps.

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