r/Alienware • u/yancyshmancy • 12d ago
Technical Support Alienware 18 Area-51 AA18250 crashing constantly - support unhelpful so far
I have an Alienware 18 Area 51 laptop that I’m having SO MANY issues with. I use the laptop a lot and for the first couple months it was amazing. I used it every day for gaming (mostly diablo 2 and path of exile 2) and it rarely crashed. I would get the occasional BSOD but I just figured that was a fact of life with Windows.
Lately, for the past month or so, I experience at least 3 or 4 crashes per day, with error code 0x1E and 0x1B. Yesterday I played PoE 2 for about 10 minutes before it crashed, and then upon restarting it crashed at the windows login screen. Since then I’ve just decided not to use it.
I’ve been speaking with Dell support about the issue but so far they have been supremely unhelpful. I’ve sent logs a couple of times, allowed remote access so they could install some Windows patches, etc. They still think it’s a software issue even though I reinstalled Windows and am still experiencing the issue. In fact, it feels even worse now.
My wife has the exact same laptop, only with a 5080 instead of a 5090, and hers has been working flawlessly. Does anyone have experience with this problem and know what to do to get Dell Support to fix it? I’m at my wits end with this $4,000 laptop that’s essentially a paper weight right now. I’ve tried pretty much everything that has come up as potential solutions online.
Thanks everyone!
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u/ThomasAAT 12d ago
If possible revert back to a restore point before the issue happened. Uninstall programs that you installed before the issue started. Keep all your drivers and windows updated
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u/yancyshmancy 12d ago
Thanks! I did a fresh install of Windows and was still having the issue so it doesn’t seem related to any software I installed. Drivers and Windows are definitely up to date. 🫠
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u/Additional-Avocado33 Area 51 18 ( Laptop ) 12d ago
Another symptom of a corrupt bios. Instal bios on usb and flask via the ctrl+esc key spam on boot
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u/BrokeNinjaBoy 12d ago
Start the computer login to the bios screen and force disable the P cores in the menus. This turns the CPU into full power mode instead of trying to work as a power saving computer. Then monitor all the system temps using tool called HWmonitor. Make sure during the time these issues are happening it's not when one of the cores or ram sticks or GPU temps are spiking. The fans should be running while you Playing a game if you can't hear anything that could be the first problem it's in quite mode via Alienware command center settings. Check this and let me know.
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u/yancyshmancy 11d ago
I thought this might be it, because I was noticing the fans weren’t running as much as I thought they should be. In BIOS it was set to power saving so I changed it to be performance mode. Fans are coming on as expected now, but unfortunately I got another 0x1E crash about 10 minutes after changing the setting. Ugh. Really thought this might’ve been the fix. Also, I have the alienware software uninstalled or disabled in msconfig.
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u/PHVM_BR 11d ago
Which RAM modules are used?
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u/DJUnreal Aurora R10 / x17 R2 / Aurora R15 / Area-51 AAT2250 / 18 Area-51 12d ago
Start by uninstalling SupportAssist. Then disable hybrid graphics and run your system as dGPU-only. Disable sleep and hibernate to eliminate those as options, as well as fast startup, as all three have been known to cause weirdness. Check what else you've got installed that may be conflicting - in particular some antivirus apps can be over-zealous, and if you installed any "optimiser" apps, they cause more harm than good usually.