M11x R1. Randomly freezing. :(

My netbook freezes when I use Skype for 3-4 hrs... I even put cooling fan. WHat seems to be the problem? I need help. Thank You..

 

i have had the same problem from time to time but its seemed to go away over time, its werid people have asked this question before but I have never seen a good answer.

 

Well I guess no one can figure it out hahaha... That sucks.. >.<

 

Also have this issue, mine freezes atleast once every month or two.

 

Not nearly enough info for anyone to tell you. It might be video, processor, your network card, temps, Windows, or ????? You need to try and narrow this down. There are test programs out there to stress systems and test components for example.

Based on the op, we can only blame skype. Switch to another chat program.

 

Same here, It just gone with the wind. Now It only crash when I play L4D2 sometimes. Remember back then, there're massive thread popped up about this lol

 

try to keep a temp monitoring program open to see if your over heating. but overheating is very rare on a R1 tho. full load out the box most ppl stay around 50-65% of the thermal limits which is very good. there are bad ones here and there tho, so it would be important to use something like core temp to see what temps your are running.

i feel it may have something to do with the video driver. does it happen on both Intel and Nvidia gfx?

 

My first M11X was freezing randomly , sometimes 2-3 times / day. I return it within the first week , and the new one i get like 8 month ago only freeze once ...

Maybe a hardware problem.

 

Sounds like you're having the same problem I had with the built-in wi-fi chip. I would be watching a Youtube video, Skype, or otherwise streaming media via wi-fi and my R1 would freeze consistently after around an hour of use.

Try this: disable your wi-fi and then use an ethernet cable and stream some media or Skype for a few hours. If you get no crashes, your wi-fi card is definitely the culprit.

I was freezing daily until I bought myself one of these: Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6200 Network adapter. Once I replaced my old wi-fi chip, the freezing issues disappeared immediately.

 

Lets be aware that wifi freeze has many reports with the 6200. Check the reviews of any card before swapping.

 

That's true. Personally, I haven't had any issues with my new 6200, but if you don't mind spending a little more money, the Intel 6300 works as well.

The Intel cards also have a significantly larger wi-fi reception range than the stock Dell card, so that's another plus.

 

So R U still freezing free? The reason I ask is because I'm having the same issues. I even tried updating the Drivers on the wi-fi adapter with drivers from this guide ==> "There's a bug in the Broadcom 802.11 drivers for the M11xR1 that may cause system hangs.

The latest Dell Broadcom 802.11 drivers appear to be for the Latitude E6520. You can grab them here - Drivers and Downloads although you'll have to manually install the sys/inf as the GUI installer will only work on a Latitude.

The driver revision from the E6520's drop fixes the 802.11-related system hang. It's difficult to tell whether it's your issue or not without having some diagnostic equipment (kernel debugger and cable), but it might be worth a shot if you use wifi as your primary network connection." <== It worked for 1 day or 2 and now my Alienware m11x r1 still freezes every time I'm transferring a large amount of data to a USB hard drive or simply doing my random downloads with Jdownloader. So I was thinking in buying the same adapter you purchased, which by the way, thank you for sharing the info. Specially because I mainly use my Alienware in the Wi-Fi networks.
I hope you reply. Thanx, spiktsu.

 

spiktsu is absolutely right, the culprit is the Dell Wireless WLAN 1530 Half MiniCard drivers that hang / freeze your R1. My R1 had the exact same problem when downloading anything, it would be fine then hang unexpectedly. I installed the same drivers in the above post and it was fixed.

 

The link above was dead. Searching for E6520, the only I found is 1501 and 1530 version, not that 1520 which we alien had.

 

This is the link to the driver that I installed that stopped my wifi freezing my R1 Drivers and Downloads

 

Dang. My orig card didn't hang and wish this driver was for the 6200

 

Yeah I should point out that the driver link I posted was for a UK bought M11x R1 and I had to extract the exe and search for the driver inf file to update. It did update an I had no further problems but it might not work for everybody's wifi card.

I eventually got fed up of my R1 and bought an R3 but that's a different story

 

Awesome mate! When I get home I will try these drivers and see if the annoying freezes STOP already! It sucks, specially if I'm in the middle of something important and didnt get a chance to save my work! Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge! Spiktsu.

 

Okay, the 1st time I updated the drivers, I did thru the Computer Management, didnt even read the instructions from the "ReadMe" files. (Dummy Me). Okay, so I just re-did it and this time, I followed the instructions. So far no freezing... I hope it's fixed. Thank you guys for all the info! ^_^

 

I would like to know that: is it ok to use with 1520 Wifi card, because the driver Jedispooner provided is 1530.

 

Not sure brother, but if you do follow the steps above, you stock mini wifi card will work like a charm and not freeze your M11x anymore. I meant to post a comment here yesterday thanking the guys that replied to my posts! So here it goes, THANK YOU! MY M11x no longer freezes thanx to this forum and Jedispooner ^_^ Yep, thank you brother... I"m freeze free now, feels good!

 

I´ve had these random freezes, too. They are gone now, and what i´ve done just before was to wash the mainboard with a board cleaner. Maybe it was something else, but i´ve disassembled it about ten times before that, and every time these freezes still were there.
I´ve used the product called "Kontakt Chemie Board Cleaner".
Good luck to everyone!

 

Sweetness! Glad you're freeze free

 

Great to hear that, congratulation I supposed your wifi card is 1520, so if you can install that 1530 driver, so I could. Now I only wait for your confirmation before upgrading.

And mine is M11xR2

 

It should work, try it. It wont hurt it.
My alienware is the R1 m11x. I followed the advice here.
Once you are done extracting the files, you will see a read me file
in win7 folder. Follow the steps carefully and you will hopefully be freeze free
as well. Good luck, I know how it feels... I've been dealing with this forever,
finally it's gone! Thank you everybody! ^_^

 

Yeah, it feels good! Now I dont have to worry about losing work I've done hahah

 

Just to add a bit to this thread before it's gone and forgotten.

Freezing seems to be an M11x past time. When I received my R3, brand new out of the box, it was on for about 10 minutes. I launched steam and it tried to update and my laptop froze, had to hold the power in and turn back on!

I was a bit annoyed as I'd just sent my R1 back for motherboard problems and freezing and here I was with a brand new R3 and it froze straight out the box!!!

Luckily it's been nearly a month now and no freezing at all, I've not even changed any wifi drivers only my GPU to 285.62, so fingers crossed it was just a one off

 

This is the readme file in the C:\dell\drivers\Win7\VWL

I followed it to this step and the error came out:





spiktsu and Jedispooner, could you guys help me?

 

Are you sure your not trying to update your RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet, it looks like you've got a Broadcom device selected there? Make sure your changing the driver for the intel wifi card.

 

So in order to update the "DW1520 Wireless-N WLAN Half mini card" which one should I choose? The manufacturer of this card is Broadcom, so I think I choose the right one, but it doesn't let me install

 

You want to updating the driver of the DW1520 Wireless-N Half-mini Card.

 

Ok, i figured out, silly me, I put the driver for nvidia and broadcom both into one folder and choose the wrong one. Now it let me installed normally.

Uhm, the installation is quite fast, just 1 sec and it done. Now in device manager



Seems like I got it wrong again?

 

Cool, hope it works for you. Let us know

 

No, please look at the screenshot, now i've 2 broadcom virtual wireless adapter, in other hand, the driver for 1520 is still12/8/2009

 

Hmm ok, I'd delete the Broadcom #2

1. Open NIC_DRVR_WIN_A01_R294111.EXE and Extract without installing...>
2. Point your half mini card driver update to the folder Drivers\Win7\WL

Try the other driver folders if until it updates.

I'm not sure which driver folder it is as I'm not on my M11x.

 

okay, let's see, here goes nothing ^_^

1- extract the driver into c:/dell/drivers
2- then go into the win7 folder, then look for BCMIS in there you will see a read me
file. follow those steps, then when u r done... Go into the same folder again, win7
and look for VWL, again look for the read me file. And follow the steps in it.
3- as you will see on the read me file, it's very important you delete the drivers,
before you begin installing the drivers you have just downloaded.

Once you get everything done right. (Follow the steps in those 2 folders &
everything will work out for you), so far i can say I'm freeze free.

 

I'm in little confused here, I thought I'm gonna update DW 1520 wireless driver but those driver you guys provide me, it's for Broadcom Virtual Wireless Adapter. So the culprit that cause freeze issus is Broadcom Virtual Wireless Adapter, not DW 1520 wireless driver, am I right?

 

You see, the default driver that comes with alienware is the issue.
The driver provided on this thread is for another dell laptop which fixes the issues with alienware,
I dont know how, it just does. Trust us, follow the those steps and u will be freeze free.

 

Thanks spiktsu, I managed to install the driver from BCMIS folder and it's ok now.
But when I installed the driver from VWL folder, It came out in deviced manager that I have 2 Broadcom Virtual Wireless Adapter like the screen below



Well, is it necessary to remove the previous Broadcom Virtual Wireless Adapter or just let it be there?

 

When i followed the instructions i ended up with two virtual wireless adapters as well. I uninstalled both of them and also the DW1529 driver. I rebooted and saw that DW1520 installed by itself without the virtual driver. I then followed the steps again and now only have 1 Virtual Wireless adapter and so far all is running smooth wit no problems.

 

I been having this freezing problem on my R2 since I had it and it comes and goes. Normally it might freeze like once a day but today it froze a total of 7 times. This is very rage inducing as the game I am playing, League of Legends, is as good as lost if you disconnect for a little. Before I heard it was unfixable but today I took the time to look into it a bit more. I did download and install the drivers like said but I couldn't follow the directions exactly as a lot of things were missing. The driver says it is updated but I still freeze.

Could someone put the full directions 1 post? It was rather hard to understand what to do because of the out of order directions. After that ill try to find what I am missing and post it.

 

After update all those Virtual Wireless Adapter and even 1520 Driver though, I had 2 days (didn't download much) working normally. Today, when I try downloading a 3.3gb from torrent, It freezes.

So I guess I must stay away from all those online games and download stuffs.
Or get a new wireless card.

 

Follow the steps from within the readme.txt file in the Win7 folder and u will be freeze free. It worked for me. No more freezing...

 

I rememeber a guy have told me that: disable 802.11n mode in 1520 would fix the issue. It's time to have a test. Since my router has no n mode function, it doest matter anything anyway though.

In order to disable it, go to
Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network Connections
Right click to your 1520 - Propertise - Configuration - BBS mode - Choose 802.11g mode
There're few settings may cause the issue in 1520, such as power save option, but I will try disabling n mode first.
If you guys want to know more, visit: Documentation

 

Thanks, updating the drivers seemed to fix the random freeze issue on my R2!

 

Did you guys download much? I followed schawbs and spiktsu guide but it seems only work for 3-4 days, then another freezing turn up. The lastest freezing happens today, just 3min after boot up.