Laptop Constant BSOD Issue

phly

phly

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Good Day
Hopefully someone can help me with my problematic laptop.
To backtrack my dell xps studio 16 laptop was fine. No issues at all. Lately i started getting BSOD which became more and more frequent. The initial blue screens of death pointed to atikmpg as the fault of the pc crash. Now the error on the bluescreen ranges from Bad pool header, Machicne_check, IRQ not equal or less, Page fault in non paged area etc. My graphics card is an inbuilt ATI
Mobility Radeon 4670. I have not updated anything concerning it. I thought maybe its a registry problem, ran ccleaner and still nothing. Reinstalled Windows
7 and even before installing my apps I had a BSOD. My screen would show the bluescreen and then a black
screen and nothing will respond or work except shutting laptop down by pressing and holding the power button
for about 5secs or more. On restart the laptop will hang at times by the windows logo or after it.
At times when i switch off then on again only 3 of the 8 media keys will light up and screen will be pitch black
No activity. Any idea as to what the problem could be. Software or hardware? I have not upgraded or changed anything
on the laptop. Opened it up and everything seems fine nothing is loose as i have been travelling with it alot in the recent months. Does anyone have any idea or suggestions i could try? Or even know what the problem might be. This is both my personal and work pc so i need to sort the issue urgently otherwise i cant do any design work on it.

Specs are:
Dell XPS STUDIO 16
Core i7 720 CPU
8GB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon 4670
Windows 7 64bit
 
had a similar issue with a latitude notebook, called Dell and they replaced the motherboard and power unit under warranty. You should check on the dell support site if you machine is still under warranty, if it is, call them and they will dispatch a tech to replace whatever needs replacing.
 
It is not under warranty. It was bought in the states around 2010 and I bought it from the original owner late last year. All has been well but in the last month or two this BSOD issue has become intolerable. I could be typing this post and pc would just freeze and no key would work. Screen would freeze too or just turn black or flash a BSOD then turn black. Im suspecting the graphics card however i dont know how to precisely identify if its at fault. Ram could be another possibility but these ram sticks have worked so i dont see why they would act up now.
What i have noticed is teh fan would kick in as if laptop is going into high performace mode then lock up. Sometimes it would only restart and go straight to desktop when no charger connected. I know all these may not help much but just thought i should mention them incase they give anyone some insight.
@Garyvdh, take out the laptop battery?? Its a laptop and i have already tried using it without plugging it in. It does work for quite sometime maybe 30mins or so and then even then it locks up.
I have exhausted all ideas and the bios settings are at default. There arent even that many changes that can be made to it in anycase.
 
Boot from removable media (DOS, Hiren's boot CD, linux, Windows 10 installation disk) and run memory test. Post here if you get any errors report before crashing.
 
Since its a dell;
Did you run hardware diagnostics?

That should point you in the right direction
Many dell's I have seen die when the warrentee expires,

Let us know what's going on.
 
phly said:
It is not under warranty. It was bought in the states around 2010 and I bought it from the original owner late last year.
Click to expand...

Have you taken a squiz at the temperature? Does the fan seem to come on always just before BSOD?

Try a quick blow down.

At worst, find the strip down instructions and re thermal.
 
Thanks for the all the input. Will find the dell diagnostic app. Should have the original cd's somewhere and try it and see. However the whole of yesterday evening all has been smooth. And not a single crash today as well. So have been reinstalling my Adobe softwares without any issues. Everything has been working as it should. Will run the tests though just to see if something comes up. If anything is failing though, I'd rather it be the HDD as that I can easily replace. Graphics card I can't. The laptop is too dope to have it fail on me. I reckon its one of the best laptops Dell ever released. Full HD Screen. The rare RGB LED type. Spoilt with countless ports and features that I would even turn down a macbook if handed one on a platter.
On a side note I have not noticed any high temps. Or anything above normal. But did observe on several occassions that a crash would follow just after the fans kick in. Fingers crossed that the laptop continues working fine as it has since late last night.
 
Spoke too soon. Laptop BSOD again 5 minutes after posting my previous message. Crash pointed to atikmpg Currently running the Dell diagnostics tests. From the memory test the first two have passed. The third is still running and there are already 4 lines in red of memory compare errors.
 
phly said:
Spoke too soon. Laptop BSOD again 5 minutes after posting my previous message. Crash pointed to atikmpg Currently running the Dell diagnostics tests. From the memory test the first two have passed. The third is still running and there are already 4 lines in red of memory compare errors.
Click to expand...

Dunno how many sodimms you have but rather test with only one installed at a time. This will find the faulty one but if both come up faulty you might have memory controller or mb issues.
 
It seemed like the screen froze so I stopped it. Restarted the laptop. Ran all the other tests and laptop passed all tests. Ran the very long HD test but only for like 20mins. No issue whatsoever. Went back and ran the memory test and laptop passed all the tests. Issue now is I can't even get into Windows. Laptop starts. Then I'd hear fan kick in louder and my pc would freeze and lockup. I think HD is fine and ran is fine. I have 2x 4gb sticks. Only two slots. I suspect a heat issue because fan gets louder when most lockups or crashes happen. So frustrating. I reached the desktop on one of the many tries. Tried running speed fan and as it was showing detected ATI 4670 the fan kicked in and pc froze. No keys work and no mouse movement.
 
Last edited:
have you cleaned dust out of the fan and vents?
also never place laptop straight on your lap, bed , other soft surfaces. Rather use one of those "laptop trays/stands", it allows for ventilation.
 
I hardly use my laptop on my lap or bed. Always on a table and it's raised up. Also it has the extended battery which props it up at the back. So even on a table it's at an angle. No I haven't cleaned the dust out. Not sure how to buy about doing that especially on a laptop. What decent app can I use to monitor Temps should I manage to get into Windows or even better. Stress the cpu or gpu and see if I can reproduce the issue. Had another bsod trying to boot into Windows which stated windows shut down to protect the system etc. Sounds like a classic overheating issue. Can thermal paste be reapplied on laptops. Or is that for pc's only?
 
Before trying to solve suspected overheating problem, follow response @ponder.
Run memory tests for couple hours with a single stick installed. If you see any single error, don't use it anymore, look for replacement. However if testing both stick shows errors, then is a signal that something else is faulty. It could be CPU, chipset or just noisy power supply (badcaps or failing MOSFET). Post your result for more suggestions.
 
Friend of mine had similar issues with a Dell Laptop.

I did a full diagnostics on it,including swapping out just about every removable component,HDD,RAM.
After numerous new Windows installs the issue persisted.

It was still under warranty so even Dell sent their technician to swap Motherboard,HDD and RAM.
Still continued to BSOD.

They eventually replaced the Laptop with a new one.

Sorry that I couldn't give more positive feedback,but I hope it's not the same sort of Issue.
 
I have seen similar Posts online about there being no solution to dell xps studio 1645 constant bsod issue or issue with at graphics 4670 and I'm hoping mine is not beyond help. I found a version of prime 95 and ran it and before 7secs the screen had gone black and laptop unresponsive. What I find weird is that the laptop doesn't even feel hot and my diagnostics show that it's not reaching high Temps. Granted ram sticks are the only things I have upgraded a few months back but it has been working fine with them for months even though they are mismatched. They are not running at the same speeds so automatically they run at the optimal speeds of the slowest stick. I will try out the ram test and see if anything happens. I still do have the original 2x2gb sticks and they are identical. Perhaps I should try use those and see if any issues arise. If not then it's highly likely it's a ram issue. Will report back with more findings.
 
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