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Laptop instability

Started by rip-off Mar 22, 2009 at 7:09 PM 12 replies 3k views

Original Post

rip-off

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445

rip-off

Mar 22, 2009 at 7:09 PM

Hey everyone. I was wondering if some kind soul(s) could help me with an issue I am having with my laptop. Diagnosing hardware problems isn't exactly my strong point, and I do think this is a hardware issue. I thought maybe some of the smart people who hide here could lend a hand. First, some background. I have had my Acer Aspire 5680 for a year and a half to two years. I am pretty sure it is out of warranty. For the past few months, I had issues where if the CPU was busy for extended periods (e.g. during any modernish game) the laptop would crash. I put this down to some battery issue (because it literally just crashed, no blue screen etc). I later learned that this might be overheating, so after reading up a little online I removed some of the back covers and cleaned out the dirt. This was the weekend before last. The following week was the most stable I remember in a long time. No crashing, I was even able to replay half life 2 (whereas before it would have crashed after maybe 10 minutes). Last week, I was extremely annoying to discover the laptop had decided to find another reason to crash. These crashes are far more random than before. Last Thurday was the most worrying, it crashed and failed to boot, it kept crashing continually during the boot. Luckily I had backed up my data before opening the case the week before, so I wasn't overly worried. Later that day I managed to get it to boot. Since then it has been quite unstable, frequently crashing and often during bootup. Sometimes it crashes before an options are given (e.g. safe mode), sometimes it hangs while booting safe mode, sometimes completes a normal boot and starts a disk scan (drive C is FAT). I have a Linux disc here too, and it has crashed while booting into a live Linux. For this reason I suspect it might be a hard disk issue, because there appeared to be some disk activity just before the crash. That said I have a history of misdiagnosing hardware issues... While there is no particular usage pattern that guarantees a crash, one thing I have noticed is that it has crashed numerous times when I hit F5 to do a compile. Sometimes I can use it happily for a few hours without problems, other times it will simply refuse to boot. And before you ask, I was quite careful when I open the case. I am quite concerned because I am coming towards the end of a taught masters and I have about a month to finish the main project and write-up for this. Obviously a non-cooperative computer will not help it getting finished. I am not totally ruined even if my laptop goes under, all my project work is managed under subversion to a remote server and my sister has offered me a loan of her laptop should I need it. This isn't an ideal solution, because she is also in college and may need to prepare projects etc. I was wondering if anyone has any ideas. I am looking for some way of diagnosing the problem. If I could somehow prove that it is just a faulty hard drive and the rest of the machine is OK I would consider replacing just the drive. I wouldn't like to do this on just a hunch however. Thanks in advance.

Instigator

Mar 22, 2009 at 9:14 PM

It seems to me like a hardware issue. Even though you've recently cleaned out the dust/dirt from your computer the damage has been done. Your solution would be to replace all your damaged hardware and keep your laptops cooling mechanism in order (don't let dust collect inside your computer) or this could lead to damage in the future.

I would test various hardware components of your computer. Try MEMTEST. I'm sure there's thousands of other things to use to test your hardware components.

Good luck!

Sirisian

154

Sirisian

Mar 22, 2009 at 9:23 PM

These problems can be hard to diagnose. I had a cracked motherboard before that caused random crashing. I ended up sending it into Dell and they fixed it for a 500 dollar fee since it was out of warranty. Granted I could have bought a new motherboard and video cards for less than that price. :)

Maybe you can contact someone about your laptop and check the out of warranty fee for fixing it.

Luckless

377

Luckless

Mar 23, 2009 at 6:10 AM

What are the specs on the system? Maybe it is time to consider something newer? Good time as any to pick up a Netbook.

borngamer

Mar 23, 2009 at 9:38 AM

I have the same laptop and it's a pretty good machine overall. It's a secondary machine I use when I'm travelling and performance isn't bad on newer software.

I bought mine 2 years ago which is forever in computers. I'd also agree with everyone else that you are having hardware issues.

With the prices of laptops it may be worth investing in a new one if you have the cash handy. Or, if you really want to keep yours going, try to find a used one on eBay cheap and swap out parts yourself. Heck, you should be able to just drop your drive in a used system and be up and running right away if all of the other components are the same.

John

_Sigma

118

_Sigma

Mar 24, 2009 at 12:20 AM

I've seen these problems before when OCing. So given you *aren't* OCing, I'm going to say either bad ram or unstable CPU. Ram instability can manifest itself in odd ways however. I replaced a HDD I thought was bad because of bad ram.

Run Memtest86+, let it run for as long as possible (ie: over night). Given how unstable your system is, I'd sit and watch it, as it'll probably lock up pretty quickly. If you see any red errors, you have bad ram, which is easily fixed.

Quote:

I have a Linux disc here too, and it has crashed while booting into a live Linux. For this reason I suspect it might be a hard disk issue, because there appeared to be some disk activity just before the crash.

Live distros are loaded into memory, and shouldn't touch the HDD other than to enumerate and mount it.

This all being said, I've seen these issues with OCing. So an unstable CPU due to overheating could also be a very likely candidate. However this is harder to isolate.

For the moment, run Memtest and see what happens. Post back here, and I'll see if I can't help at all.

Koobazaur

155

Koobazaur

Mar 24, 2009 at 3:28 AM

Quote:
Original post by rip-off
drive C is FAT

Tell it to go on a diet then.

(Yea sorry I know this is utterly unhelpful, but I was just skimming through your whole post and that sentence caught my interest and cracked me up, especially with the caps as if adding extra weight to your insult. And yes, I know what FAT is, but still)

Dmytry

264

Dmytry

Mar 24, 2009 at 4:03 AM

I had bad capacitors with exact same symptoms. Except it only crashed when power saving was active.

I guess any sort of hardware problem on motherboard or CPU leads to such symptom as crashes. I'd guess on overheating.

ChurchSkiz

126

ChurchSkiz

Mar 24, 2009 at 4:10 AM

as said, probably ram or a bad motherboard. If memtest comes back ok you'll have to replace the mobo, which will probably be more than a new laptop.

It's not guaranteed to work and if you're going to try this be very careful. But as a temporary fix you can try running your computer on top of a bag of ice to keep it cool. This may buy you a few hours of uninterrupted computing time depending on what specifically is wrong.

Krokhin

Mar 24, 2009 at 4:32 AM

Check hard disk overheatting-remove it from slot,remove dust (if exist) and examine how system works.Check video card (dust inside cooler).Check chipset and its radiator,normal contact between them may be lost.

icarusredux

Mar 24, 2009 at 11:55 AM

yeah my laptop use to crash in games.But it wouldn't crash if I used battery instead of outlet.So maybe you could try it on batteries.I guess it was ram,I took out some ram and everything runs fine now.It never had a problem booting up though,and would run fine until I tried a game.

rip-off

Author Mod

445

rip-off

Mar 24, 2009 at 6:51 PM

Quote:

What are the specs on the system? Maybe it is time to consider something newer? Good time as any to pick up a Netbook.

Well, its far from brand new, but its perfect for my purposes. Its dual core, with 2 Gb ram and a GeForce Go 7600. I don't have a huge amount of money, I could afford a cheap laptop but I prefer to buy decent machines that will last me.

Thanks for the responses. I left it running MemTest for 7 hours today, completed 3 passes without errors. I'll see about giving it a longer run if I can, but for the moment I need to use it.

As a minor update, I have had one or two bluescreens rather than just rebooting so it could be anything really.

For the moment I'll try be positive and assume that it might be something I did while I had it open, and it might be fixable. I can't reopen it for a while until I am home again where I have all the equipment for that kind of thing (like... a screwdriver).

I have a 60Gb iPod lying around at home that home with a broken headphone jack. I could use that as a bootable USB drive if it turns out to be a disc issue.

Thanks for the help so far. When I have some more free time I will take a closer look at some of the ideas here.

_Sigma

118

_Sigma

Mar 24, 2009 at 8:13 PM

Hmm, I was betting pretty hard on RAM. Guess not!

I would see if you can reproducibly lock it up using Prime95 stress testing. Don't worry, you don't actually have to sign up. If you can, then it's probably a CPU issue (over heating, vcore droop, etc). If it isn't, bad mobo would be my next guess.

//edit
I suppose after the Prime95 test, give ATItool a spin. Not to OC, but use it to test stability. If something is wrong with the gfx card, it should artifact pretty quick. Might also lock up the driver => BSOD. If that fails to lock it up, grab a copy of 3Dmark or equiv and see if that doesn't do it.

You don't mention what BSODs you get - do you remember what they were?

rip-off

Author Mod

445

rip-off

Apr 8, 2009 at 4:36 PM

Just as a (hopefully final) update, here is what happened.

I found it was stable in safe mode. When I first posted, this wasn't true, it appeared to have problems booting even before it made it to the choice screen.

This may be because I installed Linux on the machine, because using safe mode wasn't a great option. It may also have been some of the drivers I removed.

Linux was unstable too, but by disabling acpi in the kernel options it worked fine, albeit without the wireless card and touchpad. After mentioning this to a friend of mine, he suggested that I physically remove the battery.

After doing this, it works fine on either Windows or Linux. It has been a couple of days and no horrible crashing.

Thanks again for all the ideas, I did make use of them while trying to diagnose the problem.

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