Inspiron N5110 freezes with distorted display

Sasrob, you may be onto something here. I have that HD 3000 graphics card/cpu. Interestingly, it now instead of just freezing, will sometimes have a BSOD and then freeze with a distorted display. Usually it just freezes or freezes with distorted display. Unfortunately the BSOD display is very distorted and I managed to see that it has something like "IRQL_not_less_or_equal". Unfortunately, it is distorted ,so that was all I've managed to see.

The pictures of the BSOD with distorted display are below. Hopefully someone can decipher. If only it would complete the crash dump, then one could look at the dump file with "whocrashed"!

Thanks for any help.

I have come to find out that if you use your AC adapter and battery, at the same time it generates too much heat, so I have just been using the battery until it gets   down to 20%.  Then use your adapter to charge of battery backup, when it gets back to 100% you better unplug it, cause it generates too much heat.  I hope this helps you out

its very true AC adapter can heat up if left in for a long time. A laptop cooling pad can off set this heat. If you are not  using a cooler then its best to do what joe have said.

Is the adaptor generating too much heat on the adaptor alone, or is the heat generated somewhere in the laptop? Like near where the connector plugs into the laptop? I'm not sure that this is it either. I've had situations where it is booted up from cold and will freeze withing a few minutes (no time to warm up). I am getting this less and less, so I am wondering if some component is "settling" in? I once had it freeze up while running an agressive memory tester (which ran fine at other times), leading me to believe that this is not an OS problem. Maybe by adjusting the OS, it has helped because it reduces heat. Speculation...!?

the power adaptor do heat up but this is normal avoid leaving it on carpets this will keep it cooler. The laptop battery can get warm/hot too which adds more heat to the laptop which is not a good thing really. shane i think you have a graphic chip problem. have you disabled the nvidia chip in Device Manager once you disabled the chip restart then test it out. You could try this out on the intel HD graphics family but you may need to use a HDMI lead to a monitor as i don't think the nvidia chip can display on the laptop screen "i may be wrong on that". I know the nvidia chip works off the HDMI i use it all the time. Only Disable one chip at a time. One of the graphics chips is faulty which could easily affect the other one from working. If you find its working fine with the nvidia then you will need a new CPU but if it works fine with intel HD graphics then just keep the nvidia Disabled as it would not be cheap to replace it. 

I don't seem to have the nvidia chip in this system. I looked under the device manager and no mention of nvidia there. Any ideas? Luckily I still have till January as a warranty, so if the Graphics chip needs replacing that would be fine by me.

the best thing to do is send it back to dell with a graphic chip error. cpu or motherboard could be at fault here. you could try taking out the ram. you should get 2 beep codes "no ram detected" But seeing you are getting a blue screen crash with video problems. I would still say its the cpu/intel graphics on board cpu.  

I ran Furmark to stress the GPU/CPU arrangement, and of course it ran fine! I wish I could get a complete blue screen dump. It freezes up before the blue screen completes. The blue screen starts and then it distorts. Its kind of random. Some days the system will run just fine and then all of a sudden it just freezes. I suspect its a hardware fault, but nothing shows up on any diagnostic test as it is random. Without that failure, Dell doesnt seem to think its a problem and blames software who then want to reinstall everything from scratch - which I've done already - which did not fix things.

search for this program on the net this will save all  blue screen dump files. you could send the laptop to dell but like you say its random so it may not happen. send the BS bump file to dell this should help get to the bottom of this problem.

.."BlueScreenView v1.35".. 

I've taken it to the next level - Dell sent a techician out to replace the hard drive and memory today. Also supplied disks as it did not have the image. Went throught the reinstalation of windows & drivers + updates. Unfortunately, it still crashed in exactly the same way - this time with a black screen. Looked in the event log, and it was exactly the same comments as before - "system experienced an unexpected shutdown". So, since the hard disk and memory have been changed, by a process of elimination, the next item is the Motherboard and CPU. One good thing about this is that i dont have to use the image to restore, which gives you a very clean install of windows without all the other garbage that comes with the factory image. Laptop startup is pretty quick. Anyway my next step is to get them to change the motherboard and CPU. I'll update when that is done.

I'm going to try that BlueScreenView to see if it can pick up a mini dump file. I'll update when done

Thanks for the updates Shane it really is helpful. I had a technician come and replace the motherboard a couple of months ago and the problem still occurred. Presently, I called Dell about the crashes again and they updated my BIOS and video drivers to no avail. When I callback they said they will do something with my wireless card and see if that is the source of the problem but I really doubt that it will do anything.

Hey there that technician sounds like a absolute numpty :emotion-2:, I have a N5110 Laptop. And if I am honest it is a poorly designed machine, The laptop generates alot of heat either Dell are using a poorly designed fan, or the Heatsink inside the machine isn't up to the job. 

There are a few things you can do to reduce the heat, Disable turbo boost, If you are using WIndows then in the power management settings set it to not run full power.

Which is a bit of a pain in the ass not running the laptop at the speed it was originally designed for. I'm not impressed with the N5110 at all even with those changes made with my WIndows 7 installation the system became really sluggish, It was ridiculous a Pentium 3 could outrun it i'm talking about 10 minutes to open a firefox browser,

So I though you know what memtest the machine, the memory is fine, the hard disk has been checked and is fine, Ok so I thought clean install of WIndows, but then I changed my mind and installed Debian (Linux) , My thoughts now? for some strange reason the laptop is still kicking out alot of heat i'm not even doing anything intense few websites open and the laptop is kicking out a ridiculous amount of heat, And it sound as if the fan is constantly exhausting, It gets worse if you plug the charger in?

I'm tempted to strip it down have a look inside and get some proper thermal paste on the chips i.e Artic SIlver, So yeah not impressed and it appears to be a common fault with this range of laptops. I wont be buying from Dell Again what a letdown.

on my N5110 i find the heat is from the nvidia GT 525M this chip default temp was 92c-95c playing the latest games with maxs graphics the system could deal with. "dirt showdown" look very good but heat build up then the game crash. No laptop shut down yet!!. "this is overheating if i use big fan i can play as long as i like" I have strip repaste with Artic silver on both cpu/gpu. I put a thermal pad on the gpu this has help to cut the temp to 87c "maxs load" but the cooling for the 525M is a cheap design with no spring-tensioned screws this mean you have no real contact with gpu chip to heat sink!! this effect heat transfer. The copper pipe try's its best to apply pressure but just can't do what is needed. You have got two screws that holds the gpu heat sink in place. I would not go bending the copper pipe to apply more pressure its so easy to destroy the pipe. Cost around £30 for new heetsink/fan.  This laptop was designed to look good then the technician had to work around the laptop design to make it work for everyday use which my laptop do fine with no temp problems cpu..40c-55c the gpu around the same temps. The term "everyday use" to me would apply gaming but technician say its not a gaming laptop!! why give it a 1GB gpu then?? do any one know why you need a 1GB graphic chip for everyday use? I got this laptop because of the nvidia chip on there website its clear its for gaming not everyday use. 

"

Great performance AND great battery life
NVIDIA® Optimus™ technology seamlessly and intelligently optimizes battery life while delivering the outstanding graphics performance you expect, whether you’re watching a HD movie, surfing new HTML5 websites or playing the latest DirectX 11 games.

Outstanding performance today - leading-edge technologies optimized for tomorrow
Speed up editing of your HD videos and retouch your high-res photos with stunning clarity. Accelerate HTML5 websites on next-generation browsers with richer graphics and supercharged performance. Bring the 3D experience home and enjoy full 1080p Blu-Ray 3D movies on your 3D TV.

Game on with the latest DirectX11 titles
Play with confidence at higher resolutions on visually stunning DirectX 11 games like Civilization V while giving you the performance headroom you need for tomorrow’s top titles.

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/notebook-gpus/geforce-gt-525m/description

" 

This is from the nvidia web site for the GT 525 M !!!!!  DELL

iv got no Blu-Ray drive to enjoy my HD movies.  Any one?