Alienware 17 R5 BSOD

[TNGrizzly]

I Have an Alienware 17 R5
Purchased October 2018
Repair by Dell during 2019
New Motherboard- Graphic cooling fan died
Swapped Gaming WiFi card no WiFi connection.
Swapped Gaming WiFi card again to Intel WiFi card a couple months later- WiFi problems disappeared.

2 weeks ago I was watching YouTube videos on it and a BSOD appeared.

The first one was StopCode CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT
The system Collected some info and restarted.
It made it to the log in screen for Windows 10 then another BSOD
StopCode WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR (I took pictures of BSOD if you need to see them)
On Reboot the Alienware ePSA Preboot diagnostic ran and I let it do the 4 hour memory test. All returned positive. (I have the PSA.txt file if needed)

On my own research I read that BIOS may cause this. I used a Flashdrive to upload version 1.11 to the machine. I have verified it loaded by going into setup.
Another report I found is threat problems may be a driver or component failure.
On one attempt I was able to get into safe mode. the laptop ran for over 2 hours in safe while I looked at drivers and other problems on the machine.
Using device manager i uninstalled the drivers to the network and rebooted. BSOD as before.
Fearing a bad boot drive, I opened the case, disconnected battery and removed bot the M2 and SSD drive. Removed the WiFi card. Installed a new Samsung EVO 256GB drive and attempted reboot with a new image I downloaded from Dell.
After less than 5 min into image restore the system went into BSOD again. WHEA_UNRORRECTABLE_ERROR.

Direction on proceeding appreciated.

 

[MattyB]

Hi. That error could be due to a few things and hopefully it's not a hardware issue for you as pretty much everything important is soldered to the board on your laptop. You could try just using one stick of RAM at a time and test.
If you've done a clean Windows installation then you should be able to rule out it being a driver or Windows registry issue.
If you had done any overclocking or changes to voltages then this could have caused the problem. Try to remove any overclocks and repaste you GPU/CPU to rule out it being from high temps.
If all of this doesn't fix your issue then it is probably a hardware error and you may require a new system board.

 

[TNGrizzly]

Thanks for replying.

I have never overclocked the laptop, so that shouldn't be an issue.
I did remove and swap the memory cards, but have not tried booting with one of them at a time. I will do that next.
When I tried to install Windows it failed to the BSOD WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR.

I was able to get the machine to boot in safe mode today and able to download some files to a flashdrive.
I went thru and looked at the updates to drivers and programs, It says nothing current is left.
While in Safe mode I looked at the device manager, Most of the items not working were graphic, or Intel items. And the machine ran for over 5 hours in Safe mode.
Would a physical fault not show up in Safe Mode?
Could a Virus cause these issue? I've run BitDefender ever since I got the machine, Knowing it might not be perfect.

Ill try the memory card idea soon.

 

[MattyB]

Safe mode disables most of the system drivers so you will find that the Device Manager will show some missing devices.
It could still be a hardware issue though as the GPU can seem to work fine without a driver but then fails (usually with a code 43) when the driver is installed. This is usually a sign of a failing GPU and not the driver.
When all else fails I like to do a clean Windows install. It's a pain if you have a lot of software/games but it will usually solve any Windows issues and virus'.