Alienware M17x locks up a lot

Anyone? This is getting pretty ridiculous. Now, it will often lock up when all I'm doing is starting up a game, clicking something on Steam or, hell, even just clicking a harmless link in Firefox. This laptop is almost unusable if I have to reboot it 4 times a day on average.

this has been happening to me since about two months after i spent the $3000 on this machine i contacted dell support and they are sending a dell tech to my house to place one of my video cards although i highly doubt its the video card. I think this problem has some correlation to a malfunctioning mother board!! Ill keep you posted if i figure out what is causing this issue.

Thanks, I definitely appreciate it.

Had another weird issue lately again, Windows froze... I gave it some time to recover.. and then the laptop started making weird clicking noises. I quickly shut it off because I was afraid something was short-circuiting but I haven't had any weird issues (well, apart from Windows freezing at times, of course!) since. Pretty sure something's very, very wrong - unless they designed this laptop this way in which case I'm not buying from them again :P

My M17x has been locking up, unpredictably.

I do a forced shutdown/restart and the problem corrects itself, for a while.

It may not lock up again during that session, but it does lock up.

If I'm patient and wait, the problem sometimes corrects itself.

I called Alienware support and the CSR said that the hard drive may have to be replaced.

I've been resisting that, until I can get things in order.

[My gawd! - do you have your all of your key codes?]

My hard drive is a Western Digital - WDC WD32 00BJKT-75F4T SCSI Disk Device (320.07 GB)

I Googled the drive and found that I'm not alone with that drive "locking up."

I may have to run the "replacement gauntlet" - kicking and screaming.

But I want to be as certain as I can be that the drive is the problem before I do.

In fairness to Alienware their CSR's have been very helpful when I've had to call.

I had my hard drive replaced as well (seems it had bad sectors)...

It helped the problem to some degree, but it still locks up (although only on start-up).

I've got other weird issues now though. I sent Dell support an email about it almost 3 weeks ago but I haven't heard from them yet, thanks Dell...

I believe I've solved my problem...

...in a completely unexpected way.

I have been using O&O Defrag on my desktop for years without a problem.

When I bought O&O Defrag for my laptop it came bundled with O&O Clevercache as well.

"O&O CleverCache prevents those infamous program and application “freezes” where usually only closing the program with the Windows Task Manager can help. Simply install O&O CleverCache and let it take care of your computer or servers memory management."

OK, O&O Clevercache "prevents freezes" but if O&O CC was having problems could it be causing them?

So I disabled O&O Clevercache in msconfig/startup...

...and my system hasn't locked up since I did it almost a week ago.

And I'll spare you the details but Winzip is now working as it should.

Suggestion:  Check your third party software.  The problem may be hiding there.

[In the event that I've "jinxed" myself by posting this I'll let you know.]

I spoke too soon...

The saga continues...

ISSUE ONE: Power Brick vs. Battery

When you boot the M17x on battery it automatically reverts to the GeForce 9400 driver.  And when you boot it again on the power brick it doesn't revert to the GeForce GTX260M.
You must do that manually - Fn + F7, respond to the prompts, and restart.

Obviously, unknowingly running graphics intensive programming on the lesser driver will cause problems.

ISSUE TWO: Revelation!  Patience is a virtue!

Experience has shown me that when my M17x hangs/locks up all I have to do is WAIT, sometimes for a few seconds, sometimes longer, and my M17x will sort itself out.

So no more forced shutdowns/restarts.  And of course my M17x is "healthier" for it.

ISSUE THREE - Video Driver

The opinion commonly expressed in Dell Forums is that ALL of the video drivers available for my M17x are deficient, some more than others, and are responsible for the lockups and hanging.

It would appear that until Dell/Alienware can come up with proper drivers there is no solution for our "problem."

ISSUE FOUR:  Choose your poison.

An opinion commonly expressed in the Forums...
Driver 197.84 is working with rare issues.

But I've yet to get to playing driver tag.

Choose your poison...

My M17x continues to hang from time to time, unpredictably, and for varying amounts of time.

From what I've read the problem appears to be with either the video driver or the hard drive.

Regarding my hard drive, Belarc Advisor -- http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html -- reports...

"WDC WD32 00BJKT-75F4T SCSI Disk Device (320.07 GB) -- drive 0, s/n WD-WX60A89L9509, SMART Status: Healthy"

Before I commit to making changes with the drive I've been searching for "SMART hard drive monitor" software to assess the true state of the drive.

But "SMART hard drive monitor" software doesn't appear to recognize all SMART drives and SCSI appears to present unique challenges in that regard.

Do any of you know of "SMART hard drive monitor" software [Windows 7] that works with SCSI drives ???

Thanks in advance!...

The search goes on...

I posted my M17x's hanging problem on the Kim Komando message boards...

http://www.komando.com/

Here are the last two responses, from experienced KK message board members with thousands of postings behind them.

=====
p********** - Senior Member - 5904 Posts
Posted - 01/03/2011 :  03:49:24

Alienware is sold by Dell. Have you checked Dell's site for support on the hard drive. And is the laptop still in warranty? If so, support should be able to do a remote check of the hard drive for you.

P**********
=====

=====
B********* - Advanced Member - 7318 Posts
Posted - 01/03/2011 :  12:09:23

It sounds more like a video card issue than hard drive issue. Unfortunately, Alienware's video drivers are know to cause occasional hang ups, and they've not chosen to solve it by issuing a good updated driver. You can always ask Dell to replace the video card with another brand (not nVidia), which may very well solve your problem.

B*********
=====

I called Alienware and spent a couple of hours with a very helpful and knowledgeable Alienware CSR...

[Thank you sir!]

...with the result that...

...Diagnostics were run on my system = "passed"

...BIOS has been upgraded from A02 to A05...

...updated video drivers were installed,

...Alienware Command Centre was updated,

Worthy of note:
Early on after the CSR had taken control of my laptop it hung up twice, just as it had hung up for me.
It pleased me that he was able to experience the problem "in the flesh."

Now all that remains is for me to use my M17x and wait...

So far, so good...

Fingers crossed! :-)

UPDATE:

I've had the memory maxed out to to 8GB...

...a secondary hard drive has been added...

and my M17x now has Windows 7 SP1 installed.

The hanging continues...

...but not as frequently as before.

It's almost reached the point of being a tolerable nuisance.

I've done more reading on-line...

...and I think I may have found the cause of the problem...

...though I lack the background to explain it.

===
Timeout Detection and Recovery (TDR)

What is TDR?
Windows Vista and Windows 7 have a new feature called Timeout Detection and Recovery (TDR).  TDR attempts to detect problematic situations and recover to a functional desktop dynamically.
===

The best advice that I can offer is that you Google TDR for yourselves.

Good luck!

And if you find a solution, please share!

Mcbarker, just want you to know that I did see your reply fully (I still have it sitting in my email inbox if you want to repost it) and it's too bad that it was such a hassle for you.

I've had my M17x for almost 2 years now and I still have the lock-up problems, but I've given up on it now. It only locks up for a minute or so shortly after starting up and occasionally I get a blue screen for some reason (driver problem most likely...) but it's something I can live with.

However you can be sure that Alienware/Dell have lost me as a future customer. Did you know that everytime I have attempted to contact technical support through email, I didn't get any kind of reply? I can only contact them through phone. And if I tell them that I am running Windows 7 (hey, I got an upgrade option along with my laptop after all) they tell me I have to install the OS that the laptop came with. So basically tech support refuses to help me if I don't have the old Vista installed.

I've had a good experience with Dell support when I had to get an RMA for my HDD (which I thought was the source of the lock-up problems but I guess it wasn't, must be motherboard related in that case), that was handled fast. But apart from that... not very good experiences with Dell here.

"Your post contains language that we believe to be harassing, unlawful, or otherwise objectionable."

This is addressed to the moderator who deleted my reply today. I would like to know which part of my post contained harassing, unlawful, or otherwise objectionable language. I simply told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth concerning my experience with my brand new M17x R3 laptop, and recommended that those experiencing the system hang up problem on this model should return it for a full refund. I would like clarification on which part of my post violated your Terms of Use so that I can modify my post and resubmit it. Thank you.

Sangman... thanks. The moderator also returned the full email to me, so if they let me know what was wrong with it, I can change it and repost for the benefit of those who are still having the hang problem. The technician who installed the new hard drive said that he had noticed a trend showing that most manufacturers were putting cheaper parts into their machines to make them affordable to more potential customers.

My dilemma is that, because of the photography and graphics work that I do, I need a machine that can handle it, and there are very few laptops currently on the market which can do this. Apparently Dell/Alienware still tops the market in this area. I looked at a high end Asus laptop, but many people seemed to be having graphics corruption problems with it. I still haven't found a decent replacement for my old XPS M1710 which recently started displaying corrupt graphics, and the $400 plus price tag for a reconditioned graphics card for it just seems unrealistic.

Even though I'm unhappy with Dell at the moment, I seem to be stuck with needing one of their laptops. I'm hoping that the M18x series has worked out the bugs which plagued the M17x, but I'm not buying for a few months until I see some feedback from people who have owned it long enough to find any issues.

In the future I'll likely go back to putting together my own desktop for gaming and things like that and use a business model from some brand as a laptop. I hear the business laptops of Dell are actually quite decent... but it tends to be true with most companies that consumer laptops are awful compared to their business laptops. (same deal over at HP for example)

Been fighting lockups with my alienware m17x 1,5 years now, and it seem that the problem is the hhd WDC WD32 00BJKT-75F4T SCSI Disk Device . Last found reason for lockups is MAYBE the freefall sensor in the hhd., that is working a little to well and therefore locks the hhd even if u dont drop your laptop. It locks the hhd for a some time and then unlock it again after a while. I'm atm in dialog with DELL and ill post in here when a solution is found.

Hope this will help all of you finding a solution - regarding my bad english :)