S96J - Periodic Freezing

Hey guys! I actually come to this forum a lot, but its my first time posting. I found out about the s96j hype and I decided to join in.

I just got my laptop about a week ago, but I've been having one problem. While working (web browsing/word processing) or playing (Oblivion/F.E.A.R.), the laptop would freeze every once in a while (once or twice a day) for about 5-10 seconds. When it freezes, the sound loops over. I installed all drivers from the CD, except I used the latest Omega drivers for the video card. I also ordered the laptop without an operating system, and used my own CD to install Windows XP Pro.

Can anyone help me troubleshoot this? Is there any drivers that I should reinstall? I've been told by another forum that I should just go ahead and have my laptop replaced right away, considering that its so new.

 

Have your laptop replaced?

I would call this problem as "system hanging", which means some part of the laptop is bottlenecking its performance.

I get this too with my desktop if I am playing Winamp 5 and open Corel or Photoshop, my song would hang for a while untill the other program fully loads.

While graphic designing on my desktop, my song would hang because I rendering a graphical image and takes up a lot of ram.

My first guess is your ram usage might be too high for what your doing while using your laptop.

It would be nice to have your specs of your laptop.

I really doubt you have 512mb of ram... lol, so even with 1gb of ram you really should be fine and have no problems.

You should check your memory, before doing anything else.

 

Ohhh... sorry about that... forgot...

Asus S96J
Intel 2.0GHz Core Duo
2 GB Corsair RAM
100GB 7200 RPM HD
MultiLayer DVDR Drive

And obviously... ATI Radeon X1600

Thing about it is that I would freeze when I'm just instant messaging and surfing the internet, using barely any resources.

 

Check Task manager when it happens and also the system event log. I had a problem with my system suddenly maxing out one of the CPUs and, thereby freezing until I did a hard reboot. By opening Task Manager and closing one process at a time (none were using any cpu or memory except system and system idle), I was able to track it down to Roxio DLA. Uninstalled it and haven't had a problem since.

So, I'm saying that most likely it's a piece of software you've installed.

 

Yes. And what video drivers do you have installed? Have you installed the multiple cpu hotfix? Everything from the drive CD?

 

total shot in the dark, but maybe your ram is loose?

 

Could be. You could try and reseat everything.

 

the multiple cpu hotfix? I don't recall anything liek that. I installed everything from Windows Update, if that is included.

Where could I find the hotfix? I did a quick google and it linked me to the microsoft website, but it requires me to send an e-mail to request is.... is there a faster way to get this?

 

I got the hotfix from my Asus support CD, but that is with a Z96J.

http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache...iple+core+cpu+hotfix&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2

Here's an article I just found with a quick google. 2nd on the first page. This article provides a link to hotfix as well. Says "unexpected behavior" may occur running Win SP2 without the hotfix. I say what you are having qualifies as "unexpected behavior".

EDIT: Forgot the link.

 

alright... well, I just realized that the hotfix is already installed since it was on the CD. I just didn't know that was the hotfix.

Also I just reseated the memory module, and I'm waiting for the to freeze/not freeze again.

The freezing problem is very rare (maybe once a day), but its something I can't just ignore.

 

OK. Next time it happens, watch your hard disk access status light and make note of it. Is it a total and complete lockup when it occurs? Or just general freezing up/being incredibly slow? Can you enable and disable caps lock, etc. while issue is occurring?

 

Finally got it to happen again. Was playing Freelancer while running the server at the same time. (I did get the short 1 second pauses due to resources being low) The lappy finally did freeze though for a good 10 seconds. The sound repeated over and over and it seems like a geniune lockup. The harddrive disk light wasn't on and the caps lock key light, etc was not responding.

 

That happens periodiclly with my old desktop, well, because it is old. Maybe there is a problem with your battery? Having a battery output less then the required power could be lowering your system performance.

 

Any idea how much of your ram was in use? Perhaps your second stick is faulty, and whenever you are using so much memory as to move into the bad portion of the ram, it locks up? Try memtest 86. Also try running Prime 95 for a solid 12 hours atleast. If both of those pass(memtest for a good 8-12 hours as well) then that would rule out your processor and RAM.

Have you install the ATK drivers? And everything else from the driver cd?

 

Its possible as said above, stuttering or hanging like that can be a bad stick of RAM if your HDD light isnt on constantly while it happens.

Also make sure you dont have a program set to do "Automatic Updates" as that may be momenterily take up your resources.

By any change are you using AVG Antivirus? Because when it auto-updates while doing something else it does cause some lag.

But If you ask me something is running in the background that should'nt be when that occurs.

You could also check the event log.

 

Only thing I got under the system log was a warning about not being able to renew the DHCP Where could i find info about required power and battery output?

I swapped the slots for the RAM. So the second stick is in the first slot, and the laptop is still able to run.

I'm using Avast! Antivirus

 

So was this problem fixed somehow eventually?

I think I have a very similar (or the same) problem here... my computer freezes and the worst part is, it doesn't want to unfreeze there were times when it froze and after ~15seconds went back to normal.. but all other times it just freezes until I hold the power button for 5seconds (what shuts down the laptop..)

I think that the problem is video drivers.. when I installed the drivers which I got with my laptop the freezes were very frequent. then I tried Omega drivers.. there were no freezes at all for a while.. until recently now I use ATI stock drivers (I think - downloaded those from some website with lots of video drivers.. as ATI wont let me download from their site)

The freezes usually occur when I use web browser (IE or FireFox - doesn't matter) - open couple of pages in tabs and the cursor stops responding to the mouse... sounds loop..

BTW, when I run the video stability test program (not the benchmark or the test - just the initial window with the little earth spinning on the right) I can hear some high-pitched noise.. could it be, that my video card has some kind of defect?

What I have is:
Asus S96J
Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 2.00ghz
2gb DDR2 Dual Channel
ATI X1600 256mb Dedicated
80gb 5,400rpm
WinXP Pro with SP2


Does anyone have a clue what could be wrong?

 

I also reported this and I think we had the same sort of ideas. I'm still having it happen, when playing AOC, Civ4, and even just surfing. I can't recall the thread I posted but.... it does just freeze for 15 seconds as was initially stated...

 

So there is no solution for this?

I just remembered.. I even dad a BSOD once.. and the easiest way to lock up my laptop is: run video stability test, then open and close WAtomic_1_2_3_257 couple of times (2-4 times)... but that works only with drivers from asus. When I try to do the same with other drivers I get an error after closing WAtomic. I guess this could be a bug in the WAtomic.. But why does all system freeze with asus drivers then? BTW, when video stability test is running I get artifacts in the WAtomic..

So what could we do to solve these freezings? Should we contact asus with this problem? Maybe this is just a video driver problem.. so asus could fix that? I don't want to live with this inconvenience... I want to do something.. but what? I'm not that good at writing video drivers..

 

Just my two cents worth...

I had a Fujitsu 6010 (a few years ago) that would lock up occasionally, it didn't matter what I was doing or what programs where running when it froze. It also locked up when using the dvd/cd drive. It drove me nuts trying to figure out the problem. Finally a fresh instal of XP Pro fixed it, so it lead me to believe it was a problem with one of the programs installed.

Now just a few months ago, I bought my son a s96j, and while he was installing all the programs he wanted, his laptop started to show the exact same problems as my Fujitsu. As it was still a new OS install, he started to delete the programs one at a time until he found that it was NERO 6 causing the lock ups. He deleted nero, and it's been problem free. I also had Nero on my Fujitsu.

Like I said, this is just my two cents and if you have Nero installed, try deleting it and see if it helps.

 

Skibums, thanks for trying to help

I wish it would be just something I've installed. but.. I haven't installed nero yet. 2 weeks ago I installed windows xp to another partition, then installed those video card drivers from asus and tried running video stability test and WAtomic - Windows froze up again..

So I don't know what to think now..

Oh.. and does anyone else get that squeaky noise, when video card stability test program is started? I wonder if that is normal... or am I just paranoid?

 

What video card stability test?

I do have Nero, but it doesn't have anything to do with CD/DVD drive I thinik. I upgraded the firmware on it a few months ago but it didn't do anything really. When it locks up it lasts 4-10 seconds and the audio gets mucked, all the lights were out last time and the Caps Lock light did not respond until the system resumed.

I observed it last in CivIV about 2 hours ago, after posting my first reply, and if this happened when I wasn't looking at the screen or trying to get feedback I wouldn't notice (reading a thread for instance, it could come and go b4 I tried to do anything and notice it... So I really have no clue exactly how often it happens, but it's at least twice a week..

Cat

 

I am talking about this video card stability test program:
http://freestone-group.com/download/VideoCardStabilityTestSetup.exe
and this little game:
http://watomic.sourceforge.net/

For me games didn't lock up not even one, but I was playing such games as Quake 3, S.W.A.T. 4... also, my computer can run that video stability test for ages.. but when there are 2D graphics involved it often freezes.

And when I ran this performance test (with asus vga drivers):
http://www.passmark.com/download/pt_download.htm
I noticed that in some 2D tests x1600 scores way less than my radeon 9600 (not pro) on my old desktop. But with other drivers (omega for example) x1600 leave s 9600 way behind..

Browsers use 2D graphics...

Tell me what do you think?

 

I can think of two main reasons :
1 - A change in the architecture,You can search for Matrox,once a leading company in Video adapters,the main reason for their downfall was their late upgrade to 3D GPU's yet their 2D was better than any GPU availible.Once the 3D Graphics gained momentum,they started to focus the number of transistors on 3D graphics rather than 2D graphics.
2 - A driver related problem.

About the web-browsing, the main reason for lag is filled/fragmented Firefox cache.If the picture flickers when you scroll,then it might be Driver/GPU related.

Edit : w00t, my 400th post.

 

Well.. the picture doesn't flicker when I scroll. Freezes usually happen when I open some new pages I never visited (in a new tab most of the times) and it starts to load. Then I move my mouse and when it stops.. it's time to restart the computer. The freezes are almost instant, but there were times, when I opened huge bunch of tabs with lots of images on the sites and tried to select a different tab (moved the mouse pointer towards the other tab) when the mouse pointer twitched a few times and everything froze up.

 

This problem is because either your FireFox cache is too big (clear the cache) or the file is big and it's horribly fragmented.Be sure to defragment your HDD,freeing disk space + defrag greatly helps to reduce fragmented files.

 

OK.. so I guess you don't need a lot of images in the website... my computer froze five minutes ago when I pressed F5 after I edited my last post... there was another tab ( http://www.opengl.org/) opened though..

~5 seconds after the freeze, the fan started to spin faster. I waited for 6 minutes, but that didn't do any good. All leds except power led were off.. caps lock didn't respond. When I unplugged the power cable and plugged it in again, battery led turned on..

This makes me sad.. really..

 

Which browser are you using?

 

I am using Firefox version 2.0.0.1.

 

Go to tools -> clear private data -> uncheck everything but "cache" -> click "clear private data now".This should fix it.

 

Done that.. the thing is though.. How do I know that it helped?

These freezes happen almost randomly. I don't know how to replicate them with the browser. I tried the firefox restore session function, which opened all the windows and tabs which were opened before the freeze - nothing happened.. I think a while ago I tried using IE7 only, but the freezes kept happening...

Also.. How can one program such as firefox hang all system?

Could it be that the HDD is falling apart? Are there any stress/test utilities for HDDs?

 

I have these freezes on my W7j from time to time...not common enough to give me great grief but try disabling your DVD drive...work for a few days and tell me if it still freezes.

 

I don't use Firefox (tho I did install it to check how my website looks). it happens for me more often in games, though that might just be where I notice it most. I almost drop from some multiplayer games because of it. But if I wait 5-10 seconds it goes away on its own, no reboot required, but it is terribly terribly annoying...no brand new computer should do this kind of thing...

 

Hmmm so anyone figure out what the exact problem is yet?

 

Nope - maybe it would be a good idea for people with the problem to post everything they have installed/setup on the system to see if we can find a common thread? We should start with the person who saw it on an almost fresh OS, and compare that with someone w/a Z/S96J who isn't seeing this ever (after a few weeks or more of use).

Cat

 

let me see, Go to Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Defag.
Let it Analyze your main drive.Save the log and attack it to your next post.

 

mujtaba, OK, so here's the the log, which was created by the disk defragmenter... I hope this log tells you something.

But again.. how can programs such as IE7 or FireFox lock up whole system... It doesn't make sense to me.. I think that fragmentation can only slow the computer down a bit, but not freeze it.. unless it is some kind of problem with HDD. Or maybe motherboard? I am not an expert. so I can only speculate.

It would be great if we could get someone from asus to help us... at least they could tell us what information they need to track down this problem.. I don't know about other guys in here, but I would willingly dedicate some of my time (which I don't really have that much) to make this laptop better. Did anyone tried to contact asus support?

BTW, I've written down some information from bios "system information" (if I recall the title correctly) section. Here's the info:
Z96JS BIOS
Version: 0901
Build date: 07/14/06

EC Firmware
Version: 1000800001

VGA BIOS
Version: 009.012.001.014.A050504.008

Also, are there people here, who have Z96JS/S96J laptops and do not suffer from these freezes? Could you please provide us with some information about your laptops: BIOS versions, what drivers (and their versions) did you install. I think it would really help..

Oh.. and I've read that S96J is VBI. Doest this mean, that I can install drivers provided by intel?

 

Thanks all who posted so far.

I don't think it is a fragmentation issue, but thanks for bringing up that idea. I don't see any correlation between the HDD and the freezes (light is still off, no strange noises).

I checked my CPU temp incase it was overheating, but it was at 59 a few minutes after the last lockup. I'll have to try to remember to check it at the exact time the lockups occur though.

I'm using the beta BIOS, but I saw this with the original once as well. I've had the newer 1104 BIOS to try for a few weeks now, but haven't gotten around to trying it (don't fix it if it ain't broke) - I guess it may fix this...

Krono, I don't have access to my system now, can you give it a shot and see if it still happens? You'll want to upgrade to the latest BIOS anyway to get the grainyness fix, it really makes the screen sharper and clearer.

Cat

 

Yes drivers can be installed from Intel's website. Looking at your BIOS version,there is a new one now out which fixed some other problems.

 

I have updated my BIOS to V1201 and installed the newest graphics driver from intel also. Now, after every hour of working and browsing the net my computer will freeze. My laptop crashed 3 times yesterday. Two times while browsing with FireFox and once with IE7. So I guess these updates didn't help that much

At this point I really started to think that this is some kind of driver issue. When I was trying out windows vista, my computer didn't freeze at all (I didn't install all the drivers from my driver cd - some of them just don't work in vista). Also, I noticed that when I install asus/intel graphics drivers and then run video card stability test and then open and close watomic for a few times my computer freezes every time. But when I install stock ATI drivers or Omega drivers then after closing watomic I just get a windows error (with the possibility to report the problem) and no freezing occurs (also system freezes are much rarer when browsing). So i guess these vga drivers don't have proper error handling (and asus/intel drivers are worse than others)..

I am planning to reinstall my OS on the weekend. I will install drivers from intel only and tell you how it goes.

Oh well, at least the picture in the monitor is somewhat clearer after updating BIOS.

 

Ack, that sucks then. It's worse now than before you'd say? I guess I'll stick with the 1104 version for now. The ASUS/Intel Video Card drivers are just old versions of the ATI ones, possibly with some tweaks that each company wants, but mostly identical to the rest...I don't know though, I suppose it could be something wrong with the video drivers, but it seems very odd....I used to have a lot of flickering on my system when Powerplay was enabled and I had the brightness set to 1/2-3/4.

Please let us know how it turns out with the stocks...

Thanks,
Cat

 

I would suggest browsing the startup tab in msconfig and unchecking everything that isnt needed to get the notebook up and running. No sense in having processes/programs running in the background when your not using them.

I know Adobe, Java, TurboTax, and Macromedia have their dumb updates running in the background by default when you install their programs.

 

OK, so a fresh installation of windows and drivers from intel didn't help. An hour of browsing = frozen windows.

Here's what I have installed:
Windows XP Pro w/ SP2
ATK0100 ACPI Control Driver (intel)
INF Update Utility (intel)
Multiple Processors Hotfix (intel)
Video drivers (intel - drivers only)
UAA (intel)
Audio drivers (intel)
Bluetooth drivers (msi - I need these as I set up Internet through BT)
K-Lite codec pack (klcodec284f)

When I go to device manager there are devices which are still not recognized. Those are lan, modem, webcam and others. I don't know if installing drivers for those devices would help as I don't use them when freezes occur. Should I install drivers for all these devices? (I have those installed in my old windows)

So does anyone have any other suggestions? (besides smacking it with a huge hammer )

One other thing.. I have a benq mouse and a msi starkey 2.0 BT device plugged in to my laptop (both of them use usb slots on the back side of the laptop). I just remembered, that when I plugged in my external HDD to my laptop after installing windows the mouse just turned off (there was no light coming from the bottom side - it is an optical mouse). I had to plug it out and plug it in to get it working again (the HDD was still plugged in and working). This happened for the first time (I think...).

Now when I think about it.. I am using both of my usb devices when I am browsing. Maybe it's some kind of power management/distribution (or usb) issue? I will try plugging my usb devices to the usb slots located on the side and see if that helps. I guess it won't hurt to try..

 

I suggest you do install un-recoginzed devices since you won't have to deal with popups of erros or anything like that.

With regards to your optical mouse, same thing happens to me occassionally, I don't think it is a power related problem, it is more that the laptop doesn't recognize it right away, and the light stay off on the mouse, then I just have to plug it in again, and it work.

 

I don't get any popups or errors. But I will install those devices anyway so I don't have to do that when I need them. I just wanted to see if my computer still crashes without those devices installed.

What do you mean by saying "the laptop doesn't recognize it right away"? My mouse was working fine (it was already plugged in and recognized for a while already) then I plugged in my external hdd (to another usb slot) and the mouse just turned off.
I presumed that this could be a power problem as every part of the laptop uses it (cpu, hdd, fan, monitor) and I plug in 2 other devices which need some power. So maybe sometimes some of the energy is drawn away from some part of my laptop. lets say, for example, hdd. It stops responding and whole system freezes. I am shooting in the dark here as I don't really know what happens and how to identify which part of my laptop is responsible for my problems.

 

Try to repeat what you just said.

Leave your mouse plugged in, then plug in the external HDD, does it continue to turn off your mouse? Or was it a noe time thing?

 

Well, it was a one time thing. I don't remember that happening before and it doesn't turn off my mouse now.

 

I personally have seen this happen when it is just my Logitech MX518 Gaming Grade mouse, and nothing else...

I have everything I don't need disabled in msconfig, and from what krono has said he doesn't have anything extra installed.

I wonder, has anyone seen this while running on battery - or when running on AC power with no battery in?

Cat

 

Plugging my USB devices to other slots didn't help. My computer crashed today...

I have taken out my battery. I will tell you if my system freezes again. And if it does... I think I will be visiting warranty service. Maybe they will figure out what's wrong. I've run out of ideas (even silly ones)...

 

I've had my system replaced once already, I can't for the life of me remember if it did it b4 tho . I only had it about 3 days before I took it in because of a dead pixel. This is really annoying, and I think it can't just be us two having the problem...there are at least 2 other people who posted. I think its something wrong with the entire Z96JS/S96J series conflicting with...something we are doing, installing. Brand of RAM, type of HDD, I dunno. But it doesn't like something.

If you can get away with anything less you might want to try that. If you don't need the CD drive, remove it, don't need an extra ram stick, take it out, don't need that USB device or whatever.... I'm doing that sort of test here now as well, I have a different stick in there now and I'll let you know if it still happens...