My nephew's Alienware R9 is having major issues. After getting a warning that the hard drive was dying, we replaced it and did a fresh install of Windows from a USB drive. The installation seemed to go well, but the PC is super slow and it blue screens after about a minute, showing the error "critical process died." We then replaced the RAM as a suggestion I found online, and while that installation went fine, the blue screen error persists. I tried running some repairs with sfc /scannow and dism commands, but the system keeps crashing before those can finish. The Alienware diagnostics said everything is fine, but I'm at a loss for what to try next. I've also tried replacing the CMOS battery, which caused it not to start at all, so I put the original battery back in. Can't even get a dump file due to the blue screen happening so fast. What should I do?
2 Answers
Just throwing random hardware at the problem might not fix it and can get expensive. What exactly showed that the hard drive was failing? Did you run any diagnostics? Also, what kind of drive did you replace it with? It seems like your Windows install might be corrupt, so wiping everything and starting fresh could be the way to go. It’s strange for both the drive and RAM to fail simultaneously unless there was some sort of power surge or hardware issue that caused it.
It sounds like you're hitting a wall here. Getting dump files can really help pinpoint the issue, so if you can boot into Safe Mode, check the C:WindowsMinidump folder for any crash logs. If you find them, zip the folder and upload it to a file sharing site. We usually prefer having multiple dump files for better analysis. If you're missing files or need to tweak your dump settings, check out some guides for how to set up Small Memory Dump.
The only new hardware is the SSD; the RAM was just some old sticks I had. The original error came from Alienware's built-in diagnostics when I powered on the PC. We tried to reinstall Windows, but it keeps freezing and blue screening. The old drive was mechanical, and the new one is a PNY SATA SSD. I can't seem to run any diagnostics properly because everything just crashes.