Dell Alienware PC Kind of Freezes

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My computer works fine when I first turn it on.  Then at some random time it kind of freezes.

The time in the lower right hand corner stops

The windows icon on the lower left hand side – If I left click mouse it works; if I right click menu does not show up. Must shut down manually.

My task bar does not work right – I can open some programs from the task bar but others I cannot.  Chrome I cannot open from task bar

I can pin a program to the task bar but the icon for that program does not show up.  When I restart the PC it does show up.

Most of the programs do seem to work OK when in this freeze state, so far.

I have DELL support.  DELL help tonight was to tell me that it is a software problem and to back up my data because the only way to fix it is to take the computer back to factory default.  I asked what if that doesn’t help and he said then we will look for a hardware problem.  Do you think it could be a hardware problem?

Another way I can tell there is a problem is that – when a program is opened a line appears underneath the icon in the task bar and goes away when I close the program.  But when the freeze happens, the lines under the programs do not go away.  And again I have to manually turn off the computer and restart it for those to go away.

By the way, I did a MS Update – KB4023057 (9Mar2022) and KB5011493 (8Mar2022).  Today is 11March 2022.  I can’t remember having this problem before that update.

DELL Alienware Aurora R11

Memory 32GB

Processor i9

Operating System Windows 11 Home

1 SSD Drive 2 TB

1 HD Drive 2 TB

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If you can open Task Manager, check the processes tab to see what is going on.

--Joe

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Do a bootable memory test.  Maybe try uninstall recent updates and block windows updates.  Try updating graphics drivers.  After that, I would follow along with what Dell says to do, but I would agree with your concern that it is hardware.  – Barry

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Most Dell machines have boot time diagnostics which generate error codes specifically to enable them to remotely diagnose a hardware problem, yet you don’t mention running those.

For me the obvious symptom is the clock stops but patently the GPU and CPU clocks remain running as some of their functionality remains accessible. The RTC clock of course was “legacy” linked into the interrupt system for hardware (IRQ0) so other hardware could be affected (or maybe the RTC is in the chipset and that chip as a whole is overheating; without full model detail it’s harder to work out what you have in the hardware department).. and the BIOS code probably wasn’t written to cope with that sort of failure. If it is that sort of RTC failure, if you leave the machine in the fault condition for a few minutes and restart straight into the BIOS (usually F2 key at boot) and check the time, Windows won’t have got to the RTC to set it right by a time server, and you should see some deficit.

Hopefully this way of starting diagnostics works for your model:

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-uk/000179493/dell-diagnostic-tools-to-diagnose-and-fix-hardware-problems-on-your-dell-pc-tablet-or-servers#:~:text=Turn%20on%20the%20Dell%20computer,appropriately%20to%20complete%20the%20diagnostics.

If that doesn’t work then you will have to use individual tools and try to convince dell of a fault if one manifests as the software is easiest to accuse and set back to factory.. so do that backup and write down the passwords and the like as if it is a hardware issue it might just not work at all later.

Might be worth getting the bitlocker recovery key written down as well, just in case.

 

 

 

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I called DELL again and they had me restart Windows Explorer.  This does work and it is easier than restarting the PC.  I have read that alot of users have problem with freezing Windows Explorer.  I read one today that said it had to do with a corrupt oleacc.dll that is involved in searching.  I did a short time ago enable indexing so my search would work. I have since gone in and modified what drives it indexes and there was a couple of places it want to index that did not exist.  So maybe that was the problem.  Time will tell.

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