ATTN: iXPS2 owners experiencing crashes

To those of you who have iXPS2 systems:

When you play games do you crash to a white screen and audio echo, a black screen and audio echo, or don't crash at all?

I'm reading about this a lot and I've also had this system crash on me 5 or 6 times in the past 3 hours while trying to play Counter Strike Source. This is on all Dell drivers and the crashes are totally random. The system is sometimes not even hot when it crashes and the fans generally aren't even up to full speed during the crash. Also, on the CSS title screen I get a loud annoying buzzing, but it goes away once in a server.

Is anyone else experiencing a similar problem? Can anyone offer suggestions to help? I've tried different drivers and even a reformat. The problem has been with the system since I received it and just now it's really been getting out of hand. I'm baffled as to what causes it. [ ]

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UT2004 SoulKeeper - Modeler | Unreal Engine Game Content Developer: Maps, Models, Animations, Characters, Textures

 

No crashing. I've got an slightly annoying buzzing whenever I'm in a 3D app, but it's not very loud, but noticeable. If it's like other pc's I've owned, its one of those doughnut shapped coils vibrating, but it's not bad enough to make me want to take it apart and hotglue it or do the RMA for a replacement.

Back to crashing, I don't have any problems now, but did need to call up Dell's support and have them swap out one of the Dimms that was bad.

If your not blocking the vents on the bottom of the unit, then I doubt it's heat releated.

I went ahead and formated my system clean and used the latest drivers from Intel, Nvidia, etc. for the "important" stuff. I've always had good luck going with the manufacturer's most recent driver set, vs whatever Dell has on it's site.

I'd make sure it's not a bad dimm by pulling one and running with it, then swapping the other in. Or you can try memtest86 to see if it pops any errors. Baring a bad driver, the issues your having sound like faulty ram to me.

 

I ran memtest for 12 hours straight and didn't get any errors. I have not been blocking vents so I'm not seeing the error. I've tried the original Dell driver, 76.50 driver, and the updated Dell driver after having run driver cleaner pro each time. The problem persists. I'm not looking forward to calling them over this but it's looking like that's my last option. I can't find any configuration of drivers or background services in which the system will run stable in 3d. [ ]

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UT2004 SoulKeeper - Modeler | Unreal Engine Game Content Developer: Maps, Models, Animations, Characters, Textures

 

Wow, I just got my XPS2 today, and when I did a clean install, I immediately got the white screen problem. It happens even when just browsing the web or trying to install drivers. I will do some diagnostics and report back -- I have on-site warranty support, so I may try to have a tech come out tomorrow.

EDIT: I just unplugged the laptop and ran it on battery while trying to install drivers, and it's now working. I'm pretty sure there's something wrong either with the video card driver or the card itself, because the problem started immediately after I installed the driver and I have the card throttled down when on battery.

 

The 6x00 series gpu's are supposed to throtle down if they got too hot, so unless your vid card heatsink isn't making contact, I wouldn't think you would get that kind of error, just poor performance.

I've been updating drivers regularly since I got my xp2 right after release, and don't ever remember getting that white screen, so I doubt it's specific to the video drivers, unless its caused in part by another app that I don't have.

Might want to update to the latest bios for the xps2 if yours didn't come with it.