Alienware 13/15/17 BSOD Driver Power State Failure

Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD) due to Driver Power State Failure have been noted in several Alienware 2015 notebooks (13/15/17).

These BSODs occur out of box and as recurrent events. Cases of BSOD recurrence have also been observed after bios updates and in replacement units. Cases have been noted to occur in various situations including the following: idle, active download, and active light use (ie browsing).

In light of this, I have created a simple poll to survey how many have experienced BSOD: Driver Power State Failure on their 2015 Alienware notebooks (13/15/17).

I would also be interested in the following:
Number of BSOD events and duration of time:
Activity being taken place when BSOD occured:
(idle, downloading, installing, browsing, etc)
Action taken to resolve BSOD events:
(update bios, order replacement, item returned and alternative notebook purchased)
User success at resolving BSOD events (Y/N):
Any BSOD that occurred for reason other than Driver Power State Failure:


As for myself:
3x BSOD events over 24 hours. Last event 2 hours ago.
#1 during control panel browsing. #2 during idle. #3 during process of downloading windows driver kit
My final plan of action is to return the product for a refund. Prior actions include full windows update, system verification for errors, review of registry for errors.
No, I have not been successful at resolving the BSODs to date.
All BSODs were due to Driver Power State Failure.

 

All these BSOD's? You just got this the other day?

Wow Alienware, pick up your quality, this is pathetic.

 

Like I posted in the other topic:

Driver power state failure is an issue with a driver, not necessarily hardware related (though it can be in some cases).

A very common issue of it is with the intel rapid storage technology driver. I'd suggest downloading the latest intel rapid storage technology driver from intel.com and then follow these instructions to uninstall and reinstall it: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...chnology/e3c4b6d6-56ba-4ac5-be50-89843c9d9b22

Do not use the rapid storage technology driver from dell...it's ancient...like at least 7 months old.

If they do, let it make a memory dump (don't restart until the BSOD does) and download WinDBG and get it to analyze said dump. It'll tell you which driver is causing the issue, and then take it from there. Another way to check is to open device manager and see if any hardware has a yellow triangle, though this isn't always accurate since sometimes you can get a BSOD and device manager looks fine.

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Driver state power failure is almost always due to a bad or buggy driver. In rare cases it can be caused by defective hardware but that usually leads to other errors. It could simply be that the driver (USUALLY intel raid storage technology) was just buggy and needs to be updated/uninstalled and reinstalled.

 

I would have expected for the price of this laptop, it would have been tested for stability with the drivers available. If they couldn't find a stable driver, then why would they send it to any customer with those components? That is pure insanity. I know BSOD's are not exactly uncommon with these laptops, too.

 

Because drivers and software are a fincky *****.

You could have issues across different configurations where one works perfectly fine and causes no errors, but another one causes a ton. It could be that when the drivers got installed into the factory image something got corrupted, it could be that a windows update caused the drivers to act funky.

It could just be that for w/e ****ing reason Dell is using a driver that is at least 7 months old and the one on the intel website was released in december. I always format and reinstall windows when I get a new laptop and use the latest drivers and so far I've been lucky to not have any issues.

 

i also had this issue constantly with both the original and replacement system.(refunded now). I removed one driver at a time to test and it sill came up. Make sure you are on bios A02 and uninstall intels thermal framework driver, that helped.

 

I've only heard of more issues using the newest BIOS vs any other. From what was discussed on AlienwareArena, some users seemed to conclude the latest bios was a sloppy fix.

 

It could be. If theres an error in the way a driver and bios communicate with each other it can cause the driver power state failure.

I never understood why dell suggests / installs that driver.

It's meant for intel's i7 extreme edition processors. Not for their regular line of processors.