New (refurb) Dell–three months old. A pretty nice machine and pretty good phone support. But maaaaybe, they didn’t fix everything that was screwed on this machine.
FREEZES: White screen or black screen of death with speakers buzzing! Four of five times this happened, I was watching a video, but not the fifth and most recent time.
It responds to Nothing (ctrl-alt-del, has that EVER ONCE worked in the history of computing!?)
Hard reboot required. Seems to cause no problems (I know–C-drive errors and/or broken registry items that will ____ me some day soon!!!)
What could cause this? The Dell tech I spoke to last time told me to update the BIOS and she was “sure” this would fix it.
The next tech told me that the video card driver needs updating, but that I could put it off. (Was busy as hell that day, and it did not happen for a couple of weeks after this call)
Also, we have lights that flicker once in a while–could a very brief power fluctuation cause this?
I do want to buy a good UPS–we have only the tower (450 watt power supply), monitor, external HD, speakers, and an ATT Gateway to plug in, but I want to leave extra outlets for additional stuff if need be.
I know from painful experience that hard reboots are the road to hell!
Guess I’ll have to call Dell tomorrow and burn up another hour…
Any ideas or suggestions here would be appreciated.
I have the same problem with my old Acer laptop. It started happening 5 years ago. I still don’t know what triggers it. Sometimes it can happen multiple times per sitting. Other times I forget it was ever a problem. If it is a new purchase, it should be in warranty. Hopefully, you can manage to convince them to give you a replacement. I am not good at being assertive but it is always worth the attempt.
Hi, Thanks. I should mention that this is a desktop system. Laptops will not be as sensitive to power fluctuations from wall AC due to the battery–my understanding at least.
If you a nerd, you could get a multimeter to measure different parts of your computer (in addition to other diagnostic tests). The system error logs don’t tell me anything, so I have no idea what is wrong in my case. Could be anything.
Could also be a bad power supply or a bad motherboard. If you have some spare parts, or another PC, you could try testing 1 by 1 component to locate the cause.
APC extension cord with surge protection is nice to have if you have frequent power fluctuation issues.
Check that the memory cards and video and any other cards are firmly set in place. Check that they are level and that latches and other locks that hold them in place are fully engaged. In my experience most of these problems are mechanical rather than electronic failure. But I have had a memory card fail. The memory test will show if this is the case. Good luck.
Thanks guys. I just called Dell, and the tech advised me to uninstall and re-install the video card driver. I had him stand by on the phone just in case something went wrong. He is fairly confident that this should solve the issue. We’ll see…
It does the job automatically. In case it bugs out for some reason, manually unpack the archives and point Windows driver search to corresponding folders.
And this one for apps / libraries: https://ninite.com/
Make a selection of the stuff you need, then use the double click installers as you go.