Lockups with HP nc8430

I have had my HP nc8430 since the end of July this year (2007) and for bit less time than that, I have been having periodic lockups. When these lockups occur, any audio playing will stutter, it does not respond to keyboard or mouse input, and the only way to get out of it is to hard-shut it down (hold in the power button until it switches off) and then switch it back on again.

I had been running a Linux distro inside a Virtual PC (Microsoft Virtual PC) and it would freeze several times a day with that. I've started using VMWare instead, and it has taken about a week-and-a-half to lockup -- but, that's still unacceptable.

I have looked at the Windows event viewer and there is nothing there to suggest why this would happen. I have all of the necessary drivers installed (no error'd devices in the device mgr). I have tried removing the original RAM (I have a second DIMM that I bought after the laptop), changing the hard drive and various software troubleshooting.

I keep a close eye on the temperatures, I have a laptop stand to raise it up in the back and I have strategically-placed fans that do a very good job of cooling the laptop. It is not overheating.

I have called HP a number of times and they will not do advanced replacement. Considering the amount of money I paid for this and that it is a business notebook (typically bought by enterprises who need constant use of their systems to keep the business running -- I cannot work without a laptop either), I am very disappointed with this. The only options they give me are to mail it into them while I twiddle my thumbs for two weeks or to bring it to the nearest service centre (which is about a 30-minute drive away). I had found HP post-sales support to be very good right up until hardware repair needs to be invoked. Then it's the pits.

I plan to re-install my OS/drivers/apps/peripherals/etc this weekend to see if, maybe, something got messed up along the way the last time I did that.

Are there any other suggestions as to what I can try? Any monitoring apps out there that I can use to debug this?

EDIT: I should mention, I'm running Windows XP Pro (the operating system which this system is intended for)

 

When you're simply running XP Pro, does it have these lock-ups?

I've had a few occasions where my nw8440 has locked up hard for no reason, forcing me to do a hard reboot. It hadn't done in for several months until just a few days ago, where it locked up hard while a sound effect was playing. The sounds started skipping/stuttering, but, oddly enough, the computer rebooted itself. Usually, I have to hold the power button down to force it to turn off.
This happens about once every 3-4 months on my machine. Clearly, however, something is wrong if yours is locking up that often. Reminds me of Windows 98 in a way, lol.
My suggestion is to run straight XP Pro for a while and see what happens.

EDIT: FYI, I've owned my nw8440 for little over a year now. The nw8440 is simply the workstation/ISV certified nc8430, in case you didn't know.

 

Yup, it can happen anytime, including running at idle.

You mean an XP installation with absolutely nothing else? (drivers, devices, apps, etc.)? That could be difficult as I need to work.

Nope, I didn't know that - thanks!

 

Sigh...had another lockup

I still didn't get an answer to my question:

 

By running straight XP pro, I mean not using VMWare or Virtual PC, but just using XP instead, with everything else you need still installed.

I can't think of any monitoring programs off the top of my head, unfortunately. When you're using windows, it is possible to check the event viewer to see if anything amiss is going on, so I would recommend looking in there for anything.

Also, I know you've tried removing the RAM, but a more through (and accurate) way of testing the RAM is to use a RAM testing program such as memtest86. I don't know much about it, other than people using it as a way to test their RAM to see if it's good or bad.

You've tried another HD, so obviously that's not the problem.

The only other thing I can think of (and I don't know how accurate I am by saying this) is that perhaps the CPU is bad. Very, very unlikely, but possible. I *think* the CPU can be upgraded/replaced without replacing the entire motherboard on the nc8430/nw8440, but you really need to know what you're doing. If it can't be replaced, then the motherboard will need to be replaced. I don't know of any CPU testing programs other than benchmarking software.

 

I have had the nc8430 for over a year now. I can think of a couple of things that you could try almost immediately. See if a BIOS update fixes this and secondly try running a cpu stress test and a memtest to see if the CPU and the memory are both fine.

You can burn a linux cd with these programs. http://grml.org/

Best of luck !!!

 

I know this thread is pretty old now, but I should probably update it with my solution. And it's a weird one.

I overrode Windows XP's simultaneous per-second TCP/IP connection limit using the tcpip.sys "hack", setting it to 2048 from the original piddly default of 10. I haven't had a lockup for months now.

I have several networkable apps running at any given time, so it's clear how this fixed the problem, but not exactly why...