Dell Sutdio 1555 lagging sound and webcam crashes

Hi all,

About a month ago, I bought a Dell Studio 1555 from Dell UK. The specs are:

P8600 process (2.4ghz)
4Gb RAM
320Gb HDD

Since I got it, I've had two issues, which I suspect may be linked. First, whenever I use the integrated webcam, the machine freezes, necessitating a reset via the power button. There is no blue screen, it just freezes, and nothing moves. This sometimes happens after 5 seconds of webcam use, sometimes 20 minutes, but it ALWAYS happens. It doesn't just happen on Windows Live Messenger, but also when using Dell's own Webcam Central software.

Secondly, when I'm playing music from my hard disk, usually via iTunes, or though youtube, the music lags whenever the machine is doing anything slightly intensive, such as loading a new webpage, as if it's struggling.

I have updates ALL drivers, the BIOS, reinstalled Vista twice, and still no change. I suspect this is something to do with a loose RAM chip or graphics card, but Dell support are no use, and keep insisting I download updated drivers, despite having already done this several times over.

Can anyone offer any insight into this, or has anyone had a similar experience? I would be HUGELY grateful for any help.

Thanks

Matt

 

If it's loose RAM chips, it's an easy fix; just remove the bottom panel of the laptop (three Philips head screws are all that hold it in place), and simply pop the RAM modules out and back in again.

A loose graphics card is almost infinitely unlikely; the GPU is soldered onto the motherboard on this model.

If that doesn't work and Dell support continues to be unhelpful, you may want to consider the Unresolved Issues form.

 

You might also want to take a look in Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer. Browse around the logs in there to see if there is anything that looks to be causing a problem.

Additionally, I don't suppose it would hurt to run diagnostics on your machine. Power off the machine and then when you press the power button to turn it back on, at the same time press the Fn button. Release both the power & Fn buttons and some diagnostics should launch. It may turn something up, it might not. 10 minutes out of your life is probably worth it though

 

Thanks fr your replies

Fragilexx - I've already run every single diagnostic I can, and all have passed fine. As for the event viewer, is there any way of knowing where to look, or is it just a case of browsing?

Mastershroom - will reseating the RAM chips invalidate my warranty?

 

In event viewer, issues are indexed with red or orange/yellow icons.

Using hazard triangle and exclamation mark...

Look through and see if anything relates to the webcam or anything else when running iTunes etc...

As for Warranty invalidation, I wouldn't know.

 

Reseating the RAM will only invalidate your warranty if you insert them incorrectly and break something; this would be hard to do unless you use your feet to re-seat them

 

Well, that didn't work

I'm at a complete loss as to what to do now...

 

Bump.

Out of sheer desperation

 

You could try reinstalling Vista and the drivers.

That could well sort it out.

Did you look in the Event Viewer after??

 

Well, after doing everything possible, the issue persisted. Dell sent out an engineer this morning to replace the webcam, and...

It still freezes.

I'm wondering if this might be a conflict between the webcam and Vista 64-bit - from the few reports of this happening which I've been able to find online, it seems to happen only with 64-bit versions of Vista. So does this mean that Dell are essentially selling stuff which doesn't work?

 

Did you look in the event viewer?

 

Yep. I may not be looking in the right place, as I've never used it before, but from what I can see, there is nothing recorded for the time it crashes.