S96J - Periodic Freezing

P.S. No one mentioned Power2Gear yet in this thread, do you have that installed on your system?

Cat

 

I used it with previous windows installation, but now I don't.

BTW, my laptop froze twice yesterday with no battery and with dvd-/+rw disabled in device manager. So I guess that's it for me then.

I wonder how did it end for the guy who started this thread (MrIbanez).

 

Have you tried taking out one of your 2*1Gb sticks of ram and seeing if ii makes a difference

 

You can actually take the DVD-RW drive by unscrewing 1 or 2 screws from the bottom. But that shouldn't be anything to do with it - though I am 99% sure that the ASUS Canada Tech Support gave me the wrong DVD drive (one another person brought in with a defective system).

This problem realy sucks... - I'll do a search to find my original thread on this as well.

Here we go, first search I did for 'z96j freezes' hit gold with result #2:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=78704&highlight=z96j+freezes

Cat

 

Thanks for all the posts people have been making, its helping to pinpoint the problem so we can hopefully eventually fix it.

Hey krono - It's been a few days, I haven't seen the issue on my system recently - but it may be because I'm not using it as much lately because of work. One idea I had though is that it could be overheating - what is the temperature where you are? It's pretty cold here now that its winter. Some of the tasks I do are quite intensive and that may be what is causing this to occur especially in games such as AOC. Have you checked the gpu/cpu temps right after one of these freezes occur to see if there is any sort of relationship?

Cat

 

I don't have my laptop at this moment as I left it for testing in the warranty service. That's their job after all. I will post the results as soon as I get any news from the service.

Meanwhile.. I don't think, that my problems were heat related. It is cold where I live also (it was below -20C outside not that long ago. brrrrr... ). And I have my room temperature set up at ~19C (I don't like when it's hot in the room and so do computers). I don't really play that much now (work + studies = no time). But I remember playing SWAT 4 and that didn't cause freezes. I could leave Video card stability test for hours and that also didn't lock up my computer. I've also tried running Prime95 torture tests (I had up to 3 instances running actually) the fan started roaring, but nothing... It happens for me when I do some light tasks for example read these forums. I hit some thread title and the next thing I know - my computer doesn't respond. Sometimes I don't even hear the cooler spinning when the freezes occur.

Have you tried running such tests as Video card stability test or Prime95?

BTW, when I told the warranty service guy that my laptop has problems the first thing he asked was "Is it overheating?".

 

Ya, thats the typical first thing. 3DMark runs fine, haven't tried Prime95. Did do some SuperPi no problems tho.

Hope they work it out, let us know if they do, I'd really like to get this fixed as well - it being so intermittent makes it hard to reproduce to show them, but its pretty dang annoying...

Cat

 

Just happened again to me approximately 60 seconds while playing AOC. Here are the stats:

CPU Temp: 62*C
HD Temp: 45*C

Room Temp: 25*C (space heater is on, heating up my left over pizza on it )

It froze for about 5 seconds.

 

Happened again, same stats.

We still have no solution, and there are there are many people with this problem. If you have any suggestions they would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Cat

 

Hey, yeah... it was a long time ago when I started the thread. I still have my laptop, with all the same specs. The periodic freezing still occurs. I have already made a reformat with Windows XP Pro SP2, but the freezing still occurs. I get it every once in a while, so it doesn't bother me too much. I don't really use it for much gaming or anything aside from the internet and my college work.

The freezing happens at completely random times though. It could happen when I'm gaming, or even just surfing the internet or listening to music. So I think its safe to say that the freezing could be a product of a program that is constantly running in the background, rather than Nero or whatever.

I also have a problem with built-in ASUS function key program not responding (the program that indicates the volume/brightness level etc.) It might be linked with the freezing it might not...

 

There's a program for that HControl I believe which you need for the function keys (I made a joke about disabling it in the other thread I started on this a few months back too - once I enabled it the keys worked again).

Random is true, though I see it especially in AOC...Might just be that I'm desperately trying to do stuff all the time in that game since I only play multiplayer and even 5 seconds of sitting there can mean the difference between a win or a loss..or a drop.

Cat

 

I have a V1jp that also has a freezing problem. The comon thread here is the ATI X1600 graphics card.

After some investigation with the IT guys in my office it appears the culprit is the ATI "Catalyst Control Center" software that is loaded with the card. There has been similar problems with this 3D acceleration software on other laptops in our office, and uninstalling this program has solved the problems.

Hope this solves your problem. Let us know.

 

Thanks for the reply

That's interesting, the CCC. I've uninstalled it in the past to try to improve system performance, I need it for just 1 option that it gives me: Notebook Scaling Modes - Full Screen, Best Fit, and Centered.

I always use Centered on games such as AOC that can run at a max of 1280x1024 because the other two modes distort the game onto Widescreen rather unpleasantly. But there are some times when I want to use the resolution at Full Screen to see some websites which use small fonts, or for other reasons.

Do you know of another program that would do this? If so I'll happily dump CCC and give you my report on its effects

Anyone else with the same problem who doesn't use the CCC can feel free to uninstall it, and see if it has an effect.

Oh and nevaR, when was it that it was determined CCC was the culprit? It was totally recoded in the 8.33 drivers when it became excalibur - I'm currently running the 8.342 drivers (Catalyst 7.2). If you can give me a link to where it was found out or more info I can look into having this fixed...

Thanks,
Cat

 

Well.. actually I didn't install CCC (at least for the first and the last time when I installed windows). But when freezing started to really bug me I installed it just for testing. I don't think that CCC made the problem worse (or better).

The overall situation with video card drivers is kind of lame.. I read more and more about new cards without drivers or drivers which don't support all the card's features...

I'm still waiting for my laptop.. I was told that tomorrow I'll get some kind testing report.. I hope that will be "we have fixed it" or at least "we have fount the problem".

 

If CCC is the problem, uninstall and a better graphics option is the Omegas. Better than the Mobile Cats and less installation space.

This freezing thing must be isolated because its been almost a year since ive purchased the S96j and the only problem was the grainyness issue which was solved a long time back.

 

The Omegas are just modded Cats... I used to use them, but I've found that the original ATI drivers are better (not the ancient ones from ASUS of course).

The ATI drivers are actually ok...outside of them not officially supporting Mobility X1700 yet though it does work with that card, they have had official WHQL drivers since January...nVidia though...they are still beta in Vista and don't even have betas for many of their setups. But I guess that's neither here nor there, it seems this isn't related to CCC from krono's report.

Here's the stats of those who have reported seeing it:

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

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

CCz_Cataphract (Purchased early September 2006):
ASUS Z96JS Notebook
2GHz CoreDuo,
Radeon X1600 (M56-P),
DVD-RW 8x,
2 GB Corsair 667mhz,
100 GB Seagate 72k
XP Pro SP2

I installed the latest Firmware for my DVD Burner. Probably no one else bothered. We all have 2 GHz processors...maybe we all have Corsair RAM. Can't really see anything setting us apart from the others. No overclocking or anything. Not sure why it happens to us and not to everyone.

Hopefully tech support will spread some light on this matter...

Thanks for the replies all,

Cat

 

Good news: I have my laptop again

And the bad news: I didn't get any answers from the guy who supposedly tested it.. (no comments...) Oh well.. At least now I can work with my laptop again.

BTW, my laptop had 3 kinds of ram: A-DATA 533 2x1GB (a mix up), then A-DATA 667 2x512GB (now that's just silly...) and finally PQI 667 2x1GB. Changing ram didn't help. So what we have in common is the processor and the video card. But the I guess the processor is also different in my machine.. So that leaves.. Do you know anyone who wants to write proper drivers for X1600?

 

I would have held on to the 2x512GB of RAM myself - You probably won't get another pair of those for few decades at least

But seriously, I don't know whats going on here. You should definitely wait until it does it again before trying anything more...but if it does happen... Have you ever tried hitting the reset button? I just found it on the bottom of the machine 1 inch beyond where the microphone plugs in. I've never hit it, and I'm in the middle of a big download at the moment so I won't risk it for awhile. Not sure if that would help, I've heard of it solving some issues like this before. Before upgrading its firmware, If my router was freezing up like this, which it began to do very often after awhile, that's the first thing I'd do. Never know...but it might help... I've not taken out the battery and removed the AC cable for months (I even forgot to take out the battery when adding the second 1 GB stick )

Other things that we could try though is different ATI drivers. If there is some previous one that this never occured on, that would tell us something. If we still see it with the VGA drivers then that would mean its not a software glitch, but possibly a VBIOS or BIOS issue...

Just throwing out ideas here, if anyone else has some feel free to add...

Cat

 

I am having the exact same problem on my S96J. Some days it will do it, some days it wont. It didn't start doing it until about 7 months after I had it. I thought it might have just been overheating or something, but now I see the problem is widespread.

 

Hi Nofear20, welcome to our club.. Could you share your laptop specs with us?

Also, do you remember installing any new drivers recently (for example, ati video card drivers)?

 

It just happened to me again, this time all I was doing was closing down some extra Services. I wasn't actuively stopping one at the time it happened, if it wasn't that I was trying to move my mouse and it wouldn't move I wouldn't have noticed it. I heard a click and it started to work again, it lasted about 10 seconds or so...annoying as ever.

Krono has it happened to you again since you got your laptop back from service?

Thanks,
Cat

Update: It happened to me 5 more times tonight, sometimes within 5 minutes of each freeze. More frequent than I can ever remember it being, and 3/4 of these happened in a completely different program than before...

 

It haven't happened to me since I got my laptop back. But that could be because I haven't used my computer that much as I had no time for that (this is the first time I've turned on my laptop in four days). Or maybe that's the result of installing omega drivers (38330_7z_fixed).

Also, I didn't install flash player (neither for IE nor for FF).

You could try reinstalling your video drivers. That helped me when I had these freezes for the first time - the freezes became much rarer.

 

Reformat your computer.

Or faulty hardware, rather than discussing it, start taking action to identify what hardware/software may be causing the freezing.

Then RMA it.

I have an S96J with the specs in my sig and it runs great, I got it in July and I reformatted last December, its been running great.

 

We have been trying to identify what is the same between the multiple comps that have this issue. I don't think reformatting will do any good, krono did that many times as documented in the thread. If in fact his is fixed by RMAing it then thats a good sign that it can be fixed. I'd rather not send it in though if possible, they screwed up and gave me the wrong system last time, along with scratching the lid. If it's the only way to stop these constant pauses and would remove the worry about dropping out of online games anymore then it might be worth it...but if there is another option I'd rather take that... Just trying to discuss and figure out what the answer is.

Cat

 

I sent krono a PM and he replied letting me know it's started happening for him again as well...the thinks it might be overheating, he says we might try underclocking the graphics card. I still think though we shouldn't have to, it should work alright at stocks...

 

I was going through every omega graphics driver option and I found this check box which reads "Enable VPU Recover" (checked) and then another one "Prepare an error report if VPU Recover is activated" (checked also). And then it occurred to me that I haven't looked at system event logs that much (How did that happen? Usually I'm all over system logs when I have problems with computers).

I opened the event viewer.. And guess what - I found this in System event log:

"""
Date: 2007.03.12 (that's when I was playing Medieval 2 Total War ant the the video card wanted to die on me)
<...> Type: Error <...>
Source: ati2mtag
Category: None
Event ID: 108

Description:
The driver ati2dvag for the display device \Device\Video0 got stuck in an infinite loop. This usually indicates a problem with the device itself or with the device driver programming the hardware incorrectly. Please check with your hardware device vendor for any driver updates.
"""

Now I remember why I missed this - this was only the second (or maybe the third) time when I was saved by VPU Recovery. I guess logs are not written when entire system just hangs and stays that way until you reset it.

I will look for more specific log entries and tell you what they say (if I find any)

CCz_Cataphract, do you also get these errors in the event log?

Update:
Here's a link with more info about this event:
http://www.eventid.net/display.asp?eventid=108&eventno=2186&source=ati2mtag&phase=1
This is a really great site for searching information about errors found in the event log. I have found solutions for almost every problem I had.

 

Good catch, I am using the ASUS branded drivers so they don't have that feature unfortunately (the VPU Recovery tab is not there). I was looking at the Event log for a Vista machine this morning actually to try to figure out another issue. Wish I had this logged on my system, I'd take it in tomorrow and show it to people. If I have time tonight I'll change my drivers to Catalyst 7.2 from the ATI website and see if I can't see it as well. I'll make sure I see it with my current driver first though.

No 108 Event IDs for me unfortunately, but I'll keep a watch for them for sure. Definitely stupid of me not to have checked, I always find the best way is to get a quote from an error and google it...man I need to get my head straightened.

Cat

 

I heard there was a case where the Wireless Driver had some kind of interrupt that was blocking the ATI display driver and causing an infinite loop like that error log. Have you ever had this problem/error log while the wireless driver wasn't installed?

Cat

P.S. Intel released new Wireless drivers in the past few weeks.

 

Actually, I haven't installed the wireless driver.. ever.. I didn't find the driver. There is only wireless console on the my driver CD. I don't want to install it as I don't have any use of the wireless adapter at the moment.

Maybe I should try installing it.


OK, so there are wlan drivers in the CD. But there is no link to them in the autorun menu.

 

Ok, no more PMs, it's my fault - I'll just post cause I'm getting confused between what I wrote here and there lol .

My suggestion is to install the latest Intel driver, we know there's something wrong with the one before...I have that one.

If you don't need the wifi card maybe you could remove it...I'm not sure if it is a software or hardware interrupt that was causing the issue, if it is the same one. I haven't had a chance to check it with the ATI drivers I have installed now - I've only used my home system for about 3 hours in the past week because of work and events. As soon as I see it again though I'll upgrade my Wifi drivers to the latest ones to see.

Cat

 

Ok, well my theory about it being the Wifi card's problem is now proved false (sorry to hear what happened to you krono, gl with getting through to that reseller). So let's look at other things I guess.

Still seeing if this ATI driver has the problem, and I'll check out the logs to see if I have any events like that. Just to make it easier for me and others to check this, what category was that message above under, krono?

Thanks,
Cat

 

Hey

I have experienced the same exact problem with my S96J. It happened twice, when I was playing Unreal Tournament 2004, with around 10 minutes between the two freezes. I was on battery (AC cable disconnected)

The last time the laptop had crashed was in first days of usage, almost 2 months ago... I think these two were the 6th and 7th freezes or so.

The laptop was purchased on January 20-25th, 2007. The specs are:

- T7200
- 2GB Hexon 667mhz
- Seagate Momentus 7200.1 100GB (I had a Fujitsu 120GB 5400RPM before, and the problem also occured)
- Toshiba-Samsung TS-L632D SuperMulti DVD drive
- Windows XP SP2 + Vista Ultimate (haven't used Vista much)
- Latest Omega drivers, without CCC


By the time it froze, it returned this message in the event log:
http://www.eventid.net/display.asp?eventid=1&eventno=3767&source=ACPIEC&phase=1

Btw, that message appeared only once, and the comp actually crashed twice...

 

Hey, thanks for replying Warwizard. That's very interesting, it seems to be even more widespread then. What BIOS are you using? Have you seen any of these freezes while in Vista?

We have identical HDD, but if you saw it before with the Fujitsu that's very useful and discounts one possible cause of this problem. So we can discount the wifi card and the HDD from being the cause of this problem.

Is that the only error/critical log you've gotten at around the time of these freezes? Any involving ATI?

Thnx,
Cat

 

It was under System category.

Warwizard, did you have such problems when running Vista? I was trying out Vista for a 2 weeks or so a month ago and don't recall any freezes. But I think I didn't install any video card drivers on vista. So maybe that's why my laptop didn't freeze.

 

1104

Nope, I haven't even played any games while in Vista yet... I use XP 99% of the time.

Maybe I've got some other error(s) in the Fujitsu disk... But, in the Seagate, that error is the only one so far.

Anyway, I'll play once more with the AC cable disconnected, maybe it's just a battery problem (for me). While on AC mode, it never freezes (at least with the Seagate disk; I can't remember whether it happened with the Fujitsu or not).

 

Hmm, for me it doesn't happen only in game. I'm doing more testing now, so far it hasn't frozen on me yet with normal XP usuage in the past 4 days since I tried this other ATI driver, I'll try a game now and let's see if my luck holds...

 

Still didn't happen to me again, either in Galactic Civilizations 2 or regular Windows use or while playing Oblivion. It seems something in the ATI driver may have fixed it - but it is an intermittent issue. Is it still happening for everyone else?

Thanks,
Cat

 

It happened to me once when playing total war 2 and half an hour ago when I was trying to write a post in some thread. Both times I had to restart the computer to get it running again I didn't find any error entries in the event log. But i think that's because of those cold reboots.

CCz_Cataphract, so which ATI driver did you install? Could you provide us a link to it?

 

The cold reboots, they didn't happen before? Maybe you should downgrade your video card driver it would stop.... it sounds much more serious then what we are seeing b4.

Cat

 

What I meant was that I had to restart my computer by pressing the restart button on the bottom or holding the power button for 5 seconds (it doesn't restart on it's own). For me freezes last not 5-15s but when the system freezes it doesn't unfreeze until I hit restart. Very rarely it freezes for 5-15s or so and then goes back to normal. So you guys are in a way luckier than me...

 

Ahhh...that sucks, I had no idea. That seems much worse. Was it always like ever since you got the system?

Cat

 

Yea.. it was always like that and it is starting to get on my nerves. To be honest I regret buying this laptop. I thought this is a great laptop for work and gaming, but I can do neither of those activities without these interruptions. I am surprised that I haven't lost any sensitive data all this time (knock on wood.. just in case.. ).

 

Darn, hope we can find a fix. For me its annoying, but at least I don't lose anything...though I get a mini attack every time it happens and I have a bunch of things open/unsaved stuff/online game that might disconnect...

It happened to me once again unfortunately. I've only seen it once in the past 1.5 weeks since I upgraded the drivers, not sure exactly why. It happened while playing Oblivion, there wasn't much different about the system than normal except that I had gone to Standby. I'm not sure if that has a relation to it, but the game also seemed a bit slower as well - but I also upgraded to Oblivion 1.2 today. I checked and I have no error log for that time.

So I'm not sure if S3 has something to do with it, it seems better with the drivers but I think we need something to really fix it completely.

Cat

 

Greetings folks. I just started experiencing the same exact issue with my w7j (which i've had for a little less than a month now). This started happening to me right after i installed the klite codec pack. Which I am now uninstalling hoping it takes care of the issue. But from what I've read in the past posts... this seems to be more like cancer for my sweet new machine ;[

Will post if it happens again, i'm not sure if I should upgrade my geforce 7400 driver or not though.

 

uninstalled klite... Still getting it totally at random. Hard locks and sound loops. ;/

 

Interesting, it would be very useful if other systems have it to - especially a nVidia because then that would rule out a few possiblities.

To be clear, here are exactly what symptoms I experience:

-Random, system locks up completely sometimes while in Internet Explorer, transfering files to SD Card, playing Galactic Civilizations 2 or Oblivion.
-Lock up lasts 7-15 seconds (estimated) and the system recovers after this time and becomes usable again
-Image on screen is frozen in place, sound loops last few milliseconds over and over, HDD and other lights flash on laptop surface.

kono has it worse than myself since his entire sytem actually locks up and never recovers and has to be reset - that's not what I get though and that sounds more serious, possibly overheating with damage. Though it could be related, that means we can't take it for granted that his tests of fresh installing the OS and it still happening apply to all of us...so it may be caused by something the rest of us all installed...

Viking, NoFear, MrIbanez, and all - are these the symptoms you also experience?

Thanks,
Cat

 

I get the full hard lock. Have to physically reboot.

Also happens totally at random. I just updated the bios, updated my video drivers and uninstalled everything i had installed before I got the error.

It was working GREAT for about 4 hours. Just popped in a dvd to watch and BOOM. Happened again.

As far as I can tell it's something with the sound/video drivers thats blowing up.

 

Sound does seem like a likely cause, not sure if the Z96J and your W7J have the same ones there, our graphics card being ATI and yours being nVidia discounts a lot of that being the issue. Do you have any system error logs?

How else does your problem differ from my own experience? How long do you wait before phyiscally rebooting?

Thnx,
Cat

 

Since this only started yesterday I really haven't had a chance to start logging anything.

I waited up to 5 min before rebooting, also the first time it happened when it hung up upon reboot my sound card was no recognized. Which leads me to beleive it's a renegade sound driver. This also happened after installing a codec pack.

Something, somewhere got mad.

I work with 80+ developers/g33ks with time on their hands. (I work for a financial software company) lets see if they can be any help.

Also after updating my bios the problem seems to be less frequent. where before it was once every 20-40 min.

Now it only locked after i inserted a dvd. I deleted all my excess dvd software and played with the auto play settings. So far the error has not repeated itself.

I hate how random this thing can be.

I'll try to log some stuff tomorrow when I get back to work and see what I can figure out.

 

Check your event logs people.