This is for me and anybody else running similar specs who is suddenly running into frequent crashes.

laptop specs: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700H [Family 6 Model 154 Stepping 3] , NVIDIA NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU (4095MB) , Microsoft Windows 11
Core x64 Edition , 32461.29 MB memory , 20 cores , BOINC version: 7.16.20 , TThrottle running to manage temperatures

problem: Since late last night, keeps throwing reference-by-pointer bluescreen errors. Have since uninstalled BOINC on that machine only to find the same error keeps happening. Even when four loud fans are all running full blast and TThrottle shows temps as nominal, and the keyboard/surface is cool to the touch, attempted installations of basic program updates have caused a crash.

current actions: Did diagnostics for corrupted data and memory, reinstalled NVIDIA driver and checked all drivers, errors kept occurring. My next course of action is to reset the thing, wiping out all personal files (I have backups, thankfully, and have only had this thing a month) and reinstalling Windows since whatever corruption may have happened seems to run too deep for me to figure this out with my pedestrian computer skills.

lesson one: This isn't the ideal platform for hours-long distributed computing applications anyway, I made a terrible mistake purchasing this machine. I don't even need the portability so I should have gone with a tower with robust cooling systems. Even if the tower had the same processor, RAM and GPU specs, it would at least be able to handle using its processing power to the full and would live a longer life of good work.

fears: Have I managed to brick any of the hardware within a month of purchasing this machine? Trade-in value at the seller looks sad and I will not be in position to finance more suitable equipment for a long time. Well, I tried.

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Dylan Madeley, Independent Author

Short update: reinstalled Windows, reinstalled the few programs I had on there since I'm literally just running it for BOINC until I need it for anything else.

Current theory: since every crash log showed that a crash in Alienware Command Center was concurrent with it, and AWCC has 1 star reviews for good reason, I question whether AWCC is what flaked out. The moment of truth: having reinstalled and updated every driver and program needed inc. TThrottle, if I can run BOINC on lighter than usual settings and not get a crash, then it's fixed. If it bluescreens again, then perhaps I bricked my GPU. No crashes since the reinstallation, but it just started putting the GPU to work for BOINC.

Seems resolved: Alienware Command Center had screwed up during a software update and this somehow corrupted Windows. After a full reset/reinstall, back to work with no problems.