My Dell XPS crashes and I have NO idea why

Karl

Karl

Karl

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Hi!

I have a Dell XPS laptop that I use for work stuff, and up until a few months ago, it's been absolutely brilliant for about 18 months.

Recently, roughly once a month, it crashes. It starts with the system speaker beeping once ever half a second. At least, I think it's the system speaker.

You can hear it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1OcOylIBF8

Then each application locks up, one by one over the course of about two minutes, until eventually you see this:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/208/bsodm.jpg

Then it'll shut itself down, rather than restart. When I switch the laptop back on, it asks me if I'd like to resume windows after a crash, I say yes, and then it's fine for roughly another month or so!

Any ideas? I know it's a bit strange! As the laptop's for business use, I need something reliable, so not sure what I should do, short of formatting it.

Cheers for any help in advance!

Karl.
 
I'd run a scan of the HDD for bad sectors and I'd also run memtest to check the RAM.

It's apparently a problem caused by a fault when reading the page file.

Some info here: http://www.carrona.org/bsodindx.html#0x0000007A

Usual causes: Memory, Paging file corruption, File system, Hard drive, Cabling, Virus infection, Improperly seated cards, BIOS, Bad motherboard, Missing Service Pack
Click to expand...
 
the beeping could be telling you it's overheating (i've not checked the video - i'm on 3G and can't afford the bandwidth :p). that sort of thing might be covered in the documentation if there is any.
 
Thanks very much for your responses!

I've actually already run the diagnostic tools that are packaged with Dell when you initially start up the laptop, and it all seems to check out okay.
 
Well, my last hard disk error was picked up on 15th November 2012, so I would imagine that rules that out!

Also, would landscape videos help you to hear the beep better? :D
 
I have the predecessor to that laptop, the L501x.

The thing runs terribly hot and wouldn't last any more than 5 minutes of prime prior to reseating the heatsink - check your temps. Also had my hard drive replaced once due to occasional freezing so you might want to read the SMART data for your hard disk. For some reason I also had to uninstall the freefall driver because of some conflict.
 
Thanks. :D

I do the same thing on it every day, and it's only overheating like this once a month or so. It's also absolutely fine immediately after turning it back on again, so temperatures shouldn't be that different, should they?

Are there any other options that you guys can think of?

Again, thanks for the help so far!
 
Downloading now. Thanks very much - I'll keep an eye on it and hopefully report back! (CPU is peaking at 58 degrees at the moment, and motherboard peaks at 65)
 
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A mini-update for you: Temperatures have been fine and not tipping above the yellow areas all that often.

It crashed again this morning. I was actually upstairs on the loo, so nothing intensive was going on at the time, apart from me on the loo, obviously.

Any ideas from any new brains as to what may be causing this to happen almost exactly once a month?

Cheers,

Karl.
 
I have been using mains at the time - I've felt the mains adapter, and it's not particularly hot. It's actually cooler than my old Sony VAIO adapter used to get.

It's crashed three times more in the last 5 days, so this is escalating very quickly. It's still the same symptoms and the same BSOD message.

I'm going to run another full Dell system check this evening, but I get the feeling it's not going to turn anything up.

The next step is to do a full Windows re-install, which I'm planning to do this weekend. - Does anybody think this will help?

Cheers,

Karl.
 
Update - This is now happening once a week or so, and it's the same BSOD and bleeping every time. Still haven't had a chance to do a system restore yet. :(
 
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