System Freeze, USB Malfunction, Restarts, BSOD

I have an alienware m17x.
i7 920 xm
8gb DDR3
Crossfire 5870's
256gb Samsung SSD
Win 7 Ultimate x64

The error occurs randomly. My drivers, bios, and vbios are all up to date. I have had a new motherboard installed. I've ran memtest for 9 passes and nothing. I ran prime95 for 26 hours and nothing, but when stopping and coming back to the laptop 10 min later I lost USB functionality.

It's weird because this week I saw different blue screen errors. Perfmon shows nothing but a service failed when I get it to work the few times I just lose USB/Touchpad function and the system doesn't lock up.

This is my second reinstall and I've also tried new RAM and a new SSD and nothing fixed the errors. I've tried different USB ports, different mice, and all that stuff to no avail.

I am having a new system sent to me in the next week or two but this problem really irks me so I figured I'd post up my stuff for someone to look at and maybe see what the deal is because I'm baffled. The Dell techs are terrible to say the least but I thought for sure this was memory related but it isn't.

5htsynaptrip said:

I have an alienware m17x.
i7 920 xm
8gb DDR3
Crossfire 5870's
256gb Samsung SSD
Win 7 Ultimate x64

The error occurs randomly. My drivers, bios, and vbios are all up to date. I have had a new motherboard installed. I've ran memtest for 9 passes and nothing. I ran prime95 for 26 hours and nothing, but when stopping and coming back to the laptop 10 min later I lost USB functionality.

It's weird because this week I saw different blue screen errors. Perfmon shows nothing but a service failed when I get it to work the few times I just lose USB/Touchpad function and the system doesn't lock up.

This is my second reinstall and I've also tried new RAM and a new SSD and nothing fixed the errors. I've tried different USB ports, different mice, and all that stuff to no avail.

I am having a new system sent to me in the next week or two but this problem really irks me so I figured I'd post up my stuff for someone to look at and maybe see what the deal is because I'm baffled. The Dell techs are terrible to say the least but I thought for sure this was memory related but it isn't.

These were caused by you USBHUB.SYS. If you have more than 2-3 USB device in use the voltage drops

I would runhttps://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html?ltr=S

See, I only have my mouse plugged in. I've tried three different mice and the problem persists. I'll take a look at that link you posted. Thanks so much!

Oh, after checking the link I have already done that. I've done two completely clean installs of Win 7 Ultimate and the second time was on a new SSD.

I've been working on this problem for over a month now! A new laptop is on its way to me in the next week (I hope) but I think I may have found the problem.

Alienware has a ton of software to control the alienfx, power settings, and control panel by the keyboard. I never paid much attention to them because I've built my own systems for the past decade and didn't think much of it. So I checked some of them out after tweaking my video card settings and noticed alienfusion has power settings and one of them was suspend USB device. That was enabled so I disabled that and made sure it was also disabled in device manager.

I'm not sure why this would cause me to have blue screens but this USB type bluescreen is all over the place for laptops and the error seemed to occur mainly when I didn't use the mouse or the laptop sat (I have hibernate/sleep disabled).

That would explain why having almost every piece of hardware replaced and every diagnostic showed no errors... at least a little. So far no crashes and it sat idle for 2 hours almost so I'll be interested to see what happens. Prime95 for 26 hours and no crash but then a crash 10 minutes after I stop all of that and the system sits idle...

24 hours and still no freeze! Maybe it is the USB suspend but I wonder why now.

I've been going crazy for the past 2 weeks on this. Your post finally is making some sense. I don't have any settings for the video board (GeForce 210) so I thought I'd follow your lead so to say. I went in the Device Manager/USB Controllers/USB Root Hub/Power Management. Low and behold the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" was checked.

I am going to uncheck and keep my fingers crossed. I really hope this will do the trick. If I let the mouse sit idle for about 10 minutes, the computer appears to freeze. Thanks for the tip.

Nope didn't work. How frustrating! 7 was supposed to be the answer to my problems, not create more.

Nothing fixed the problem for me either. After what became countless hours with Dell tech and numerous screwups by them I contacted escalations through customer service and eventually was given a refund after showing complete documentation of all theyd done to not help and mess up sevice requests.

Glad I did it and I actually built a desktop and bought a laptop for what that pos Alienware/Dell cost. I will never buy from Dell again after this experience!

Not long after my last post, the culprit behind my problems reared it's ugly head. I had a bad memory stick, possibly 2. The computer completely shut down and I all I could do was get a black screen and the looping bios beeps. Researched it and found the memory to be at root of all my problems.

Symptoms..

1) Computer would freeze if no activity for about 10 minutes.
2) Windows system screen would read 4 Gb (2.75 Gb usable)
3) I use a couple of DAW applications (music recording). The VST's would all be erratic and unstable.
4) BSOD once.

I even put the memory thru a test and it passed. The memory itself is around a year old. I feel kinda bad for blaming 7. Probably because of past issues I've had.

So hope this helps