Serious computer problem

[Kirei Blossom]

Hello,

I have a really long story with my computer. One of my laptops, which is a Dell Inspiron N4010, purchased just a few months ago, started having random freezing problems from the first week. One day recently, it froze and then refused to boot up, as it kept looping on bootup. I did a full diagnostic, and it said that the hard drive was gone. Since it's still in warranty, I called Dell and after many days and hours of talking to them, they finally sent a technician over with a new Harddisk which he replaced. He reinstalled Windows 7, however he said the harddisk was completely blank and so I was supposed to call Dell and they would walk me through updating and installing all the drivers.

I called them, but no one seemed to cooperate. They said to insert the CD I had already which came with the laptop, but my OS was 32 bit and the drivers on the CD were all for 64 bit. The Dell people told me that the laptop should've been 64 bit from the start, but somehow it was configured for 32 bit.

Actually, this laptop was a gift from someone in Singapore, and at first Dell even refused to listen to me until I had completed a transfer of ownership, which I did, but that's a whole other story..,

Anyway, after many many more gruelling hours talking to them on the phone, they say that since it was bought in Singapore, they can't do anything about it in the United States. Still, they agreed to send in another technician, who put in the 64 bit OS, and then the 64 drivers. Dell told me to fix the freezing problem by updating my BIOS. The technician told me to download a driver from the Dell support site, which I did, and as I was running it, a BSOD came up with the message saying DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE. It did a minidump... The weird thing was that pressing the power button on the laptop wasn't doing anything. Took the cord out, but it was still running on battery. In the end, I had to remove the battery to turn it off.

I have just turned it back on, and it seems to be okay - though there was a lag during the Welcome screen. Also, a message came up "The computer has just recovered from an unexpected shutdown." There is a minidump in my dump folder, which I'm attaching here.

Any help would be more than appreciated. Dell seems to not be responding at all - even though its still in warranty, but I have no idea what to do anymore. There seems to be a very big problem, but I can't identify what it is.

There are still a bunch of problems going on- the screen brightness is acting wonky and none of the brightness/volume buttons etc are showing on the screen (you know, like when it shows the volume increasing /decreasing when you press the button...)

I'm trying to attach the minidump, but it is one file of 667 KB. How can I attach it, since its exceeding the forum upload limits?

 

[Tmagic650]

You will probably void the Dell warranty, but you need to take it to a reputable laptop repair center and have it looked over and properly diagnosed. It also sounds like your friend in Singapore might have given you a lemon or suspect laptop

 

[Kirei Blossom]

Thanks.

However, aren't there any other options? Since it's under warranty, and its been only 3 months, I was hoping Dell would be able to fix it, or replace the piece...

 

[Tmagic650]

If Dell can't fix it, they should replace the entire laptop under warranty. So far, as you have said, Dell hasn't been of much help have they?

 

[Archean]

Please zip the minidump(s) you have and attach with your next post. May be some clues to what is the issue can be identified from them. Regards

 

[Kirei Blossom]

But it's only 1 minidump file - around 600 KB. The forum rules don't allow me to put anything up which is more than 200 KB. Is there any other way I could put the minidump up?

 

[Archean]

As I said use Winzip or 7Zip to compress that file into zip format, and attach the resulting file with your next post or you can use any of the sites allowing you to host your file and give us the link.

 

[Kirei Blossom]

Here it is. I didn't realize zipping it would reduce the size by such a large amount!

 

[Archean]

It is an 0x9F error, which occurs when drivers do not handle power state transition requests properly. The error message most often occurs during one of the following actions:

i. Shutting down
ii. Suspending or resuming from Standby mode
iii. Suspending or resuming from Hibernate mode

The driver specifically couldn't be identified in this instance, instead OS process ACPI was listed.

Does this sort of BSOD's happen frequently? Also you haven't replied to Tmagic's question about dell's warranty related response, I think the issue might just turns out be hardware one; so you may persist with dell until they solve your issue.

Anyway, you may also try to update all drivers (i.e. graphic/aduio/network etc.), as they should be available on dell's site.

 

[Kirei Blossom]

Thanks for the response. These aren't frequently happening BSODs. Actually, this just happened after Dell installed a new blank harddrive, reinstalled 64 bit Windows 7 OS, and asked us to put in the 64 bit drivers from the CD. And then they said to update the BIOS from an internet link. The blue screen happend while installing the BIOS update.

I am constantly persisting Dell to repair this problem. I don't know what's up with them, but at first they said they would have to send us an image harddrive, and maybe also a motherboard and memory, then next day they say they can't do that anymore... just because this wasn't a product bought in the US. Howvever, the trnasfer of ownership has been completed weeks ago, so this shouldn't really be a problem. Sigh..

 

[Archean]

That doesn't sound like they are all for helping you out. Anyway, in the interim you can disable all power saving options except the ones for your display screen; that may stop these BSODs.

In addition, as I said earlier please do download latest drivers for Win7 x64 (audio/video/network + any others), from Dell's site and install them.