random shutdowns

We had this same problem on our brand-new Inspiron 530 dual-core E6550 with a 128MB ATi Radeon HD 2400 Pro video card running Vista Ultimate.

These random system shutdowns occurred while logged off but powered on, while the system was logged on but idle, and when using applications.  When it occurred, the monitors would black out and the keyboard and mouse would be unresponsive, but the power light would be on and the fan would be running.  The only recourse was to power off holding the Power button down for 10 seconds.  Upon logging on, we'd receive the standard message indicating Windows had terminated abnormally, and then each time Dell DataSafe would run in verify and recover mode to clean up the RAID1 configuration.  In each case, the System Event log reported: “The previous system shutdown at 11:49:06 PM on 3/7/2008 was unexpected.”  The time of the shutdown was always PRIOR to the manual shutdown we performed.  In one case the shutdown occurred at 11:49 pm with the system logged off and we noticed the system locked at 5:30 pm the following day when we tried to log back on.  As always, the Power light was on and the fan was running, but there were absolutely no entries in any of the Event Logs between 11:49 pm (for the unexpected system shutdown) and 5:30 pm when we discovered the condition and powered off.  In other words, the system is shutting down without powering down.  Strange!

In addition, we had display driver failures. While using any application (Chess, Office, system functions) the monitors would black out and then return with this message: "Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has successfully recovered."

When we reported these two repeating errors to Dell, the technician told us we had a bad system and Dell would replace it.  They did so, we set up and configured the new Dell Inspiron 530, and applied the numerous Microsoft Updates, and the same problems occurred. This time, when I spoke to a technician by phone, he told us our system was functioning normally and refused to examine our Event Logs even when he had taken remote control of our system.


When the problems persisted, I emailed Dell on the 2 case numbers open on the system and told them we would return the second system if Dell could not address and fix these errors, and left a message for the technician saying the same thing.  We received no response and so we returned the second system as well.
 

We've been Dell customers for 10 years and have been happy with our three previous systems under Windows 98 and then Windows XP Professional.  Now we don't know if these problems are related to the Dell Inspiron 530,the 128MB ATi Radeon HD 2400 Pro video card, Vista, or a combination.