Laptop randomly freezes, only recovers by power profile changing

Nov 9, 2018
6
0
10
My laptop is rather new, and I do not believe this kind of problem is covered by my warranty. The laptop freezes at random, but I do believe it has something to do with not being connected to the internet. The only way I have found to recover is to change the power profile by plugging it in to the wall, or by closing the lid and powering it back on again since it powers down when I do that.

What could be the cause of the problem? I searched many other forums and the symptoms I described were not in any of them. I am also a college student so I cannot research this myself due to schoolwork. I appreciate any answers I can get.
 
Nov 9, 2018
6
0
10


Oh, I may not have been very clear, but it works just fine on battery, really well actually. The problem is rather that the system freezes altogether at random until I either disconnect or reconnect the wall adapter, or if I close the lid, the latter of which causes it to turn off. I was going to go on the Dell forums for it, it is a Dell Inspiron 15 Gaming laptop, but I found I couldn't log in no matter what I tried. When the system recovers after a disconnect/reconnect of the adapter, the system acts as if it never froze in the first place other than the clock suddenly updating.
 
OK, so it does not actually lock up or turn off or reboot and is stuck, it recovers without shutting it down. Check the event logs and see if there are any errors like applications crashing. You can try running a BIOS update and check for newer drivers for the system also.

Did this happen the whole time you had it? Did something get installed/removed/changed right before the issue started?
 
Nov 9, 2018
6
0
10


The problem started shortly after installing some software required for my engineering program, such as SolidWorks among a couple others, but since the programs take a good amount of power, it is always plugged in, which means the problem does not interfere with my work. I have not checked for a BIOS update since I got the laptop a couple months ago, so I will do that as soon as I can and report back.

And out of curiosity, do you know what this system error means?

5007 - TX/CMD timeout (TfdQueue hanged)

I checked the Event Viewer and this is one I have not seen before, and it comes up not too frequently, so I get the suspicion that this is the culprit.
 
Nov 9, 2018
6
0
10
So, I haven't enough time to mess with the BIOS at the moment due to schoolwork and making do with the plug-in/unplug-to-unfreeze solution so far, but I noticed these 3 events usually coincide with each freeze event.

This is the file.

I couldn't figure how to upload a file directly so I put it on dropbox. It is a file that contains the 3 entries that happen with a freeze. In fact, at the moment of this update, I don't have access to a wall outlet so the laptop has frozen around 30 times whilst trying to post this :/
 
Nov 9, 2018
6
0
10
Okay, small update, I managed to catch the event viewer right in the middle of a freeze and there are no relevant log entries created when the machine is brought out of a freeze by changing the power source. I'm at a loss. This coming weekend I should have enough time to explore the BIOS for whatever may cause this problem. Hopefully all goes well when I do go system spelunking!
 
Nov 27, 2018
1
0
10


I have the exact same laptop and I'm having the exact same problem as you, verbatim.
 
Nov 9, 2018
6
0
10
Well, it seems as if the problem is very random in nature. It has not occurred for a little while now, though that may have something to do with the fact I have not been connected to the internet lately due to problems at home, and right now I'm at a library, so I suspect the freezing has something to do with the wireless module and certain kinds of networks.
My home network is a high load one, I'm always doing a whole lot with it.
My college network has over a thousand devices connected to it and I also do a whole lot with it.
And recently I streamlined my usage of the internet, I no longer have over 20 tabs open, instead I'm separating tabs into 3 different browsers and closing the only open one when I'm done with it. It's a temporary fix, but it seems to work for now. I still want to know why the laptop freezes though.

naruto01234567890, do you have a lot of open tabs in your browsers? Or do you have a lot of stuff running that uses the internet? For the last week both of my OneDrive accounts were paused, Steam was idle, Dell Update, Nvidia GeForce Experience, Discord and FB Messenger were all closed. I think it has to do with a high internet load causing a freeze to occur, like trying to draw more power than can be supplied or something. The driver for the module also requested a reset over 70 times one day at college. On a day with no freezes like today that number has reached 3. It's late afternoon right now.