Laptop crashes and sometimes doesn't boot

[kasavien]

Hi all

I'm having issues with my laptop crashing at the moment and was wondering if anyone can think of anything else I can try before I ring dell support.

My laptop is a dell studio 1557
Intel Core i7 CPU 1.6Ghz
4Gib DDR3 10600 memory
ATI 4550 Mobility Graphics Card
Western Digital 320Gb Hard Drive
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

Symptoms I'm getting are the laptop will completely freeze and requires a hard reset, after which the laptop reboots into windows fine. There are no events in the event log as I don't think it gets chance to write what has gone wrong.

Things I've tried:

-Clean installation of windows 7 home premium 64bit
-WD Diagnostics Tool for the hard drive, no errors
-Memtest passed 1 test fine, should try for longer but I suspect it will be ok.

Running memtest went fine, but when I rebooted I got beeps indicating there is an issue with the graphics card (1 long beep 2 short beeps) and subsequent tries to restart resulted in nothing happening, just a black screen, but the backlit keyboard illuminated. After leaving the laptop for a while it rebooted ok and I'm using it now.

So this leads me to believe that it's overheating, could this be the cause of the lock ups, and the boot failure?

Does anyone have any other ideas I could try, I would be very greatful for any help with this. I have 3 years warranty with dell, but I want to try everything so I can tell them what I've tried when I inevitably have to contact support.

Thanks in anticipation

Andy

[Kumagoro]

Umm you could try stressing it with some prog outside windows. Say some boot CD like UBCD
or PC check, maybe even try a Linux live dist on USB.

You could load up windows and tap or press the laptop quite hard in different places to see if
that has an effect. Then if you have a loose cable/connector or bad solder joints it would perhaps
show.

[kasavien]

A bit more information - I thought it was flash that was causing the issue as it most regularly crashed while watching flash video in full screen, iplayer or demand five for example. Also it used to crash when skype video was open, so does that make it more likely to be graphics related?

Thanks

Andy

[Kumagoro]

Well you would think after a clean install it should sort it out. It could still be the HDD.

You just need to try and rule somethings out.

[kasavien]

I ran the full WD test on the hdd, which reported no errors, just running prime 95 as we speak, temps hit 96 degrees C :s but back down to ~88 now. Bearing in mind it's a laptop, and cooling isn't great. No crash yet either so I'm thinking it's maybe not heat related, but maybe graphics related. Are there any graphics stress tests I could try? Or is it just a matter of playing a game. Prior to getting regular crashes I had played through Bioshock 2 without a problem.

[Kumagoro]

This should stress your laptop nicely although depending on how new it is it might not run all
tests.

http://www.ozone3d.net/gpu_caps_viewer/

[Jasp]

Your kidding right? the i7 720qm tjunction is 100c, your lucky its not cooked.

Run HWmonitor and post both the GPU and CPU temps, not knowing the laptop design its possible they both share the same heatsink so when your watching flash it clocks up both the CPU and GPU causes one or the other to overheat.

[kasavien]

temperatures I reported are with hwmonitor. There isn't a reading for the gpu, maybe it doesn't have a sensor as it's only a mobility part?

[Jasp]

Possibly, maybe worth cleaning the vents out, if their is a build up of dust inside it could be causing the overheating.

Are the fans still spinning ok?

[kasavien]

Update for anyone that comes across this thread, it appears to be fixed by the latest BIOS Revision A05, managed to watch a whole episode of the gadget show full screen with no crashes

[kasavien]

As it turns out, I was being too hopeful, it didn't work and I shall be calling dell on monday, even though it states on their website they support studio machines 24*7, apparently what they actually mean is they only support xps and alienware 24*7

They better be helpful on monday!

[kasavien]

They turned out to be quite helpful although I'm guessing they don't really know what's wrong with my laptop because they're going to send an engineer to replace the motherboard and heatsinks on my laptop, but it's better than nothing. But having seen someone elses laptop on here which was 'fixed' by dell (ended up being scratched to hell) I've taken the precautionary measure of taking lots of photos of my laptop to show that it is in very good condition without a single scratch or mark, so they better do a good job!