Laptop Over Heating After Re-installing Windows

Hello! So I have an Alienware M17xR3 after a year of brutally pushing it to its limits playing high end games, running UDK, Maya, Mudbox, etc. I hadn't had a single problem. 10 days after the warranty expired almost all the files corrupted on my hard drive. It wouldn't boot, but would power on. I hooked my hard drive to a usb to sata and dove in as an admin hoping to recover some important work for school, which is when I discovered most everything was corrupted. I could copy most files, but nothing I needed. Disheartened I formatted the drive and re-installed windows. Using the resource disk I re-installed/updated all the drivers, and reloaded a month old back up. Now it runs fine so long as the power adapter is not plugged in. As soon as it is plugged in my laptop immediately over heats. Classic symptoms: Screen goes black, sound keeps looping, and I have to hard restart with the power adapter unplugged in order for it to boot. I come asking for assistance before I hand over $430 to Dell to fix it for me.

System Fans are running. Also my laptop is on a Targus HD3 Chill Mat.

System Info:
Processor:
Intel Core i7 2860QM

Memory(RAM):
8 GBs of DDR3

Hard Drive:
750 GB

Video Card:
Nvidia Geforce GTX 580M with 3D enabled and 2GB GDDR5 cache

Mother Board:
Alienware M17xR3

LCD Panel:
17.3 Inch WideFHD 1920x1080 120HZ Nvidia 3D vision enabled

Network Card:
Killer Wireless-N 1103

(Windows default balanced power setting)
Running just Chrome
Heat with the Power Unplugged:


(Windows default balanced power setting)
Running just Chrome
Heat with the Power Plugged In:


Suggestions, Ideas, Requests?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: I use Avast as my anti-virus.

 

I'm a cheapskate so I'd probably buy a new power adapter, which costs way less than $430, just to rule out a fault with that causing the overheating.

 

Should of mentioned I have 2, and 2 batteries.

 

What happens in safe mode?
What happens when you remove the battery and just use it with the adapter?

 

I'll test safe mode when I get home. When the battery is out and the power is plugged in it over heats as if nothing has changed.

 

Those are perfectly acceptable temperatures for a laptop.

TMax is 100c for 2nd gen i7s before they start throttling.

Something else is wrong if it is boot looping while plugged in, because it will throttle if it overheats and/or shut down before the software does that.

My laptop has somewhat similar specs and runs about the same temperatures (maybe a little hotter).

 

It reads like a 0x117 TDR problem, perhaps because of the mix of drivers/settings since the backup was restored.

I'd try fully uninstalling the gfx drivers before testing with the latest Dell version or try a drivers only approach.

 

It jumps higher after its plugged in that's just a snip I got before it crashed. I'm home now my laptop has been off for roughly 3 hours. It will not boot just turns on and gives me 8 beeps which means its over heated. I wager there is something far worse than I originally thought going on, and the $430 will unfortunately be Dell's.

I'll try again some time tomorrow to try safe mode.

I appreciate everyone's advice thus far.

 

Behaves the same in safe mode. The temperature of everything is the same, and plugging in power causes it to crash.

 

That error descriptions fit the problem I'm having perfectly. I uninstalled my current gfx driver, and I'm re-downloading the driver from nvidia to install it. Any other suggests?

 

Ran the installer for the Nvidia Geforce GTX 580M driver and it said it could not find a compatible device.

 

Well, lets back up a little. Now that the driver is uninstalled, is it still crashing with AC power?

 

Nope, so far it has not crashed.

 

That is good.

Where did you get the installer?

 

Geforce this time:
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/notebook-gpus/geforce-gtx-580m


Last time straight from the Alienware Resource disk.

CPU-Z and my laptop's paper work both said I have 580m, however, the driver on the resource disk is for a 460M.

 

It is possible that Dell is using a modified version of the 580m that the reference drivers do not cover in the inf (different hardware ID). That is what HP did to my AMD device. You could try extracting the driver package manually and installing through device manager.

 

I tried installing the drivers from Nvidia, and it immediately crashed on restart. I'm uninstalling them and trying the drivers from Dell. The Dell drivers are listed under my Alienware on the support>Drivers and Downloads page. They are all .iso files.

 

Heading to work I will try that later. I also down loaded the drivers directly from the Dell website. One of the listed downloads for my system was a VBIOS update. Could the lack of an updated or changed video BIOS be the cause of my problems?

 

Howto in the "drivers only" link in #7, the principle should be the same for the Dell/Alienware installer.

You should also check that you have the correct/latest chipset drivers installed, a gfx card install will frequently fail with that "could not find a compatible device" error if the chipset drivers don't allow correct detection.

Yes, hardware detection on many Dells is tied to the BIOS.

 

Just got home from work. I went to turn on my laptop to burn the vbios update iso to a disc, and my laptop no longer boots. It doesn't even power on. The alien head lights up which means its charging, but nothing happens otherwise(battery in, out, etc. No change). Thanks everyone for your advice I've learned a lot. Looks like Dell is getting my money.

 

Ouch!

I hope they get it fixed fast and first time for you, good luck :major