Hello, I purchased a Dell G15 5525 directly from Dell on 23 August 2022. I have been troubleshooting with SupportAssist and chats and calls basically since it arrived and am now past the 30 day return window. Despite exceeding the system requirements, I have not been able to run the games Apex Legends or Hunt: Showdown (the latter is the whole reason I bought the laptop in the first place).
Additionally, after troubleshooting with Dell, my laptop now BSOD's (the sideways sad face, unknown error, needs to restart) REGARDLESS of what I am doing on it. This happens about every 25 minutes now, predictably. Whether I am using Word, using the internet, or anything. The laptop has not gone more than a half hour without a BSOD since running start-up diagnostics as directed while on the phone with Dell this morning.
Apex Legends has a 100% crash rate. It never completes a match. I uninstalled it a while ago before I got more serious about running diagnostics to troubleshoot. When I play Hunt: Showdown, there is about a 90% chance it will randomly freeze mid-game and crash. When this occurs, the screen freezes, but the audio continues indefinitely until I use ctrl+alt+delete to open the task manager and close the app. Sometimes the screen will go black and the app closes by itself. No message is displayed afterwards. This has never coincided with a blue screen of death. Only the game app crashes. I can look in Event Viewer afterwards and the error at the time of the crash is always the same: nvlddmkm
Event ID: 0
General: The description for Event ID 0 from source nvlddmkm cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer. The following information was included with the event:
\Device\Video9
Error occurred on GPUID: 100>
My specs are:
G15 5525
AMD RyzenTM7 6800H 8-Cores Processor (20M Cache, up to 4.7GHz)
Windows 11 Home, English
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, 6 GB GDDR6, 3 DP, HDMI
16GB, 2 x 8 GB, DDR5, 4800 MHz, dual-channel
512 GB, M.2, PCIe, SSD
Troubleshooting with Dell SupportAssist and Chat included
-uninstalling/reinstalling drivers
-verifying integrity of local files on steam
-checking for Windows and drivers updates
-performing a system recovery and fresh install of Windows 11.
After the fresh install, I checked for Windows and driver updates, installed Steam, installed Hunt: Showdown, and still get the same crash/error in Event Viewer. The first match usually crashes; if it doesn’t, the second match invariably does.
Today I spoke with Dell Technical Support on the phone and they viewed a screenshot of the error. They had me run an f12 startup diagnostic and it was successful, so they told me it is not hardware but software and sent me an email to book a $99 Software Repair session.
I read a similar post on here by another Dell G15 5525 user who also purchased theirs within a month of mine, also with the GeForce 3060, and their issue was only resolved when a technician from Dell came and replaced their hardware. https://www.dell.com/community/Inspiron/Dell-G15-5525-Games-crashing-after-few-minutes/td-p/8265834 However, everyone I spoke to on the phone today insisted I have to pay $99 for Software Repair to fix my issues.
Even worse, since this call and running the reboot diagnostics, my laptop has had blue screen of death crashes about every 25 minutes. It crashed once while typing this out.
I am desperate for any advice. I feel a bit hurt that Dell would make me pay for additional support when “Onsite Service After Remote Diagnosis” is right in my warranty terms. Should I spend the $99 to let them try? And what about the blue screen of death? Thanks for any help and suggestions.
EDIT: 2 blue screens of death while typing this out. Ran another diagnostics and no issues found. Blue screening predictably every 25 minutes since troubleshooting with Dell earlier today.
