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#1
Alienware 17 R3 random? BSOD
Let me start over since I’ve got more info:
I’m not new to computers or SSDs or using them. I AM unfamiliar with what to do when one composts (in somewhere around 30 years, I’ve never had one randomly BSOD except when it was something easy, simple and usually stupid. And I still don’t. But my wife DOES…
Alienware 17 R3 laptop. Was my system for several years and never had a problem. Wife inherited it a year or so ago, and SHE’S never had a problem.
Til a few days ago. She said it was slow to boot, sometimes didn’t boot. She’d get a black screen and nothing. Restart and it would boot fine. Wife says this DID NOT happen prior to the Windows updates installed several days ago. It wasn’t the 20H2 update, it was some follow-on to 20H2. Along with at least 3 other updates.
I WAS sort-of able to reproduce the boot oddness. Sometimes when you reboot – it APPEARS to be after a BSOD - it doesn’t boot. You get a black screen with a message that “No bootable devices”. “Press F1 to retry, F2 to setup, F5 to run diagnostics”.
I tried F5 and let it go through the whole Alienware diagnostics. Found ZERO problems. If you press F1, it reboots, finds the SSD, boots perfectly.
I opened it up, pulled out the HDD, then the SSD and the memory. Reseated the SSD and memory and, of course, it boots fine. Left the HDD out for the moment.
Ran Malwarebytes with no problem.
Ran CrystalDiskInfo – perfect.
Ran CrystalDiskMark for an hour. Ran fine.
This time I watched what she did:
She uses an external monitor. Here’s what appears to be happening. Boots, everything is fine. Logs in and everything works. Exactly the same way it did for me.
She then CLOSES the laptop – JUST LIKE SHE’S DONE FOR OVER A YEAR. There’s never been a problem. NOW, a second or two after closing the laptop, the BSOD shows up on the secondary monitor. If you open the laptop, the screen there is just black.
I don’t know ALL of what should be on the screen, but it says
Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart.
We’re gathering some error info, then the system will restart.
0% complete – never does anything after that……
At the bottom of the screen is about the top 1/3 of a QR(?) code and the line about going to www.windows.com/stopcode - that’s the very bottom of the screen.
I must applaud Microsoft – I didn’t think it was possible to create an error message that was so utterly content-free, but they managed.
It appears that after working fine for over a year, closing the laptop causes this mess. Black screen and no info on the laptop and a BSOD on the secondary monitor.
And yes, I went through the Power settings – they’re exactly the way they’ve been forever. The laptop is NEVER allowed to sleep when it’s plugged in. It can turn off the display and even the hard drive, but it’s set never to sleep and never to hibernate.
Is there some relatively idiot-proof flowchart/workflow that's usable by an ordinary user to find out what has happened to this thing?
Last edited by GracieAllen; 07 May 2021 at 18:03.
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