what are your rig specs?

@ProfessorW00d​ I have this problem too.

It was "OK" for the first 3 or 4 months, and then discord kept closing.

Discord wouldn't open.

After that I couldn't play RDR2 anymore... Even chrome keeps displaying error messages.

So I tried a reset too, wiping the disc (using alienware recovery) and even after that, I can't install some apps (ex.: google drive desktop app) and play RDR2. Still getting blue screens once in a while too... my next step is mounting a clean windows 11 from microsoft on a usb stick (using win11 installation media tool) and wiping everything.

My specs are :

R15, Intel, 13900K, 4090, 32G RAM

Also, while asking, is it normal that I can't install nvidia lastest 4090 drivers from their wesbsite? Installation always fails, or I get a 7-ZIP error while opening the downloaded file.

Thanks

@StH_e​    the 32GB of RAM . . . 1x32GB or 2x16GB?  What is your PSU wattage? A fresh install of Win 11 sounds like a good idea.

@ProfessorW00d​ Thanks for the reply,

So, I checked my official specs :

RAM is 64G 2x32G DDR5 5200MHz

PSU is 1350W

I have no problems performance wise when I play games I can play, ex.: destiny 2 and tomb raider, etc.

But a lot of stability issues, blue screens, "ahhh snap errors" from chrome watching videos, etc.

I do plan on trying a fresh/clean windows 11 install as soon as I get a big enough usb stick (which surprisingly, I did not have...).

My question is still : after a clean windows 11 install on my Alienware R15 machine, will I be able to install drivers on my own from the nvidia website?

@StH_e​    yes, you should certainly have no performance issues with those specs . . . very nice rig!

You should be able to install nVidia drivers from the nVidia web site now, and since you are unable, something is broken. Hopefully the clean install of Windows 11 will fix your issues.

I have the same problem with my Aurora R15; some of the most common software and stable games crash or fail to launch.  Software such as Discord, Firefox and even the Nvidia Geforce driver installer.  I got this Aurora R15 in May 2023. 

It worked flawlessly until June 2023 (just after 30-day return window), then games and Discord crashed frequently.  After weeks of troubleshooting, it fixed itself, such that only 1 game (Ghost Recon Breakpoint) crashed instead of everything. 

Then again in mid-September, the frequent crashing started back.  After two more weeks of troubleshooting it worked again.  Now again in late January 2024, everything is crashing frequently again.

I have tried re-installing Windows 11 at least 9 times since I got this system.  Each time, I tried a different sequence of updating OS, drivers, and installing software 1 at a time.  The most recent re-install of Windows, Discord setup crashed over and over, even after re-downloading installer and deleting AppData.  I moved on to update Geforce, which crashed during driver installation.  I tried several reboots and eventually got those installers to complete.  However, Discord still fails to launch with any predictability.

I found this thread while googling for display driver issues. Basically everything everyone here is describing is happening to me, with a similar rig on a 4090 (except for discord because I don’t use it lol).

I have ruled out memory issues (which I suspected at first with the STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION from chrome especially while on YouTube) because I have two sets of DIMMs and happens with either.

I suspected driver corruption (display since most issues appeared to be display related). Removed the drivers with DDU and reinstalled just to get that effed up installation failure (only way I was able to upgrade back to latest version was using GeForce experience).

That being said as soon as I do that the game crashes come back. It’s very predictable on Resident Evil 4: it always crashes in the first few minutes of gameplay while at the first cabin.

In the in-between of removing and reinstalling latest Nvidia drivers I don’t know how or why but windows installed automatically the Nvidia 53x drivers (I forget the last digit). Before upgrading to the latest version 551.23 I played on the RE 4 part and it didn’t crash.

I wonder if all of our woes are related to the 4090 and newer drivers. 

I am having sort of the same issues with the same PC. Nothing wrong with the PC when its in normal use, but when i game it just randomly crashes to desktop in games like - Path of Exile, Diablo 4, Palworld, pretty much anything else. Have had the PC for 11 months with no issue, and then out of no where in the last 2 weeks I cannot play a game for more than 30 min without a crash. I do not even know what to tell Dell to call them for warranty issues. Any ideas or same issues?

@Apollo615​ Did you update any drivers in the past few weeks?

@Apollo615 I got in touch with support, we have tried a few things plus some other things I have tried independently. I won't go into details about the things I tried that didn't work but so far it seems closely related to GPU drivers (especially the more recent ones) being quite unruly with this version of the 4090. 

What has worked for me (so far because I did get one BSOD related to nvlddmkm - Nvidia driver) is reverting back to the "official" Dell Driver for the video card, which is linked here (Dec 12):  https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=6jgd6&oscode=w2021&productcode=alienware-aurora-r15-desktop

I also did a Bios "reset" to default optimized configs. I suspect AWCC is pretty bad at keeping settings in sync when you turn OC on and off.

In other words I recommend:

- Downgrade to the Dell provider driver listed above until Dell/Nvidia get their act together. 
- Turn off OC (CPU mostly). I think the problem might be related to a CPU boost + weird Nvidia driver interplay. 

- Reset BIOS to original config by going into BIOS (F2 at loading time) > "Load optimzied settings/defaults" 

@JStriker_4f1208​ So reverting to the old drivers.. how has your luck been? They are telling me at customer support to do the same thing, but alot of the new games releasing have DLSS and other features that come with the new driver updates. 

You are saying that there is some type of compatibility issue with the new drivers and the 4090 card they are using in the r-15 4090?

@StH_e​ Hi, i just have the same problems as you, google chrome crash, edge crash, windows installation problem, windows update problem, nvidia installation crc 32 error....  I tried 2 hard disk nvme and another set of Dell's ram but the problems persists....

Anyone come with a resolution yet? customer support has sent me a return box, but I would like to see if anyone came up with anything yet before I do so. I believe they are going to replace the motherboard.

If you have a heavy video card, like a 4090, another customer reported in another crashing thread that possibly there is some play between the video card support bracket and the 4090.

So something to try is reseat the video card, and check for play when the video card has been seated. It should not move with the bracket installed. If it does, shipping movement and vibration could potentially cause it to become partially unseated from the PCI-X slot and cause random crashes due to bad contact with the slot.

R15 service manual

I bought my wife an R15 with the 3090 a few years ago. It died almost immediately after delivery, after much effort got the onsite tech out to "fix it". He took it apart and played with my motherboard, determined it was no good so he replaced it. It never ran great from day one, but after the tech came out it wouldn't play the simplest of games, and couldn't stream low definition YouTube videos without severe lag to the point the audio and video were never synced together. After 3 months of complaining and trying everything to make the $3000 brick do anything we gave up and it now sits collecting dust under the table that she uses for her decade old m17R3 laptop. It's ancient self will run circles around that tower.