6224W: Vista: Freeze

Good afternoon,

Since recently (last week tuesday) I've been experiencing quite some freezes. First not that frequent. One on tuesday to thursday, then it got worst went up to 2 and its now at 3 (could be depending on the amount of hours , because I've been working alot more recently than thursday)

My first thought was that the memory was bad. So I ran Memtest86 (bootable cd) for 7 hours total, and it passed every single time without an error; I was reliefed.

And since the temperatures of my laptop are very fine (27 idle & browsing, 30-40 multi tasking, 50-55 watching movies, 70-80 full load), I'm abit stuck, I dont know whats causing this (and a system restore to last week monday didnt help either). my only clue is that some vista file is corrupted and that my only option is to reinstall the whole thing from scratch.

As a side note, my usb hub broke down yesterday. Don't think it's relevant to the crashes since the problem also occured without the usb hub (or any other usb devices) connected



Thanks,
Celox

 

It might be related to this thread. However, my problem is either a BSOD (ending in 000124) or a freeze for a couple of seconds and then the computer goes off.

I wonder whether it's the BIOS. What version are you using? I'm planning to try an earlier BIOS but haven't decided which one.

John

 

afaik i'm running the latest bios version.
I had a bsod on tuesday, but that was due to a bad driver (wich could be the cause of vista going corrupt)

I checked that thread out but its not completly relevant to this one. My freeze just makes the machine freeze forever (even the sound gets stuck and replays 1 second, very annoying when watchin a movie) no bsod, no shutdown. Just a freeze

 

Sorry for the double post but, it just happend again. It's really annoying because i'm working on a thesis for the uni.
And obviousle i'm typing it in word, wich doesn't save every so often.
= I loose alot of data

I'm starting to get sick of it, wednesday i'm definatly going for a full reinstall

 

Word has an auto-back option, but maybe you need to switch it on (Tools > Options > Backups).

I wonder if your BIOS is ...005e which I think is the latest and is the one I'm about to go roll back from. In fact, it's no longer listed for the 6024W which indicates some problems. I suggest you try the previous BIOS before reinstalling Vista.

John

 

Oh the auto-backup is on but i just recently put in from 10 minutes to 3 minutes. Doesn't stop the crashes tho, I'll try to downgrade the bios first. we'll see

 

John, the z14005e would make the fan on the 6024W go to full speed 100% of the time, that's why it was removed.

 

Ok, just to be sure here before I am going to format & reinstall vista. This isn't a hardware problem, right? (since its not the memory, or the temprature) I have reason to believe that its a pure softwarebased problem

 

You can restore vista system files by running sfc /scannow from dos.

Start
All Programs
Accessories
Command Prompt ....BUT in vista right click and run as administrator
with your vista cd in cd drive to allow files to be replaced to original state

 

have you checked your hdd for errors? Sometimes a bad sector in the wrong place can be fatal for the system

 

Ok, i'm going to try that now. Thanks for the tip Ausvet!
Edit: It says that the verification is complete, and that no faulty files were found.

What could be the cause of my freezes then?

 

Checked your hdd? Use HDTune or equalient

 

Just repaired the hdd using dos, didn't have the attention to stay looking at it, so I missed the part where it said how many files were repaired. I guess I got to wait and see if it returns
HDtune (on quickscan) found no damaged blocks. Running a normal scan now

Edit: normal scan = no errors found

 

THere we go, it just happend again!

 

Yes, that problem happened occasionally, maybe once every week or two. I found I could clear it by hibernating and resuming once or twice. Anyway, I'm now back to BIOS 004a which lacks the C3 and Santa Rosa support but, from memory, didn't cause other problems.

John

 

Just a moment ago I experienced something rather weird. I had the freeze, restarted laptop. as soon as i could started WMP (was watching a movie) and after about 5 minutes it would freeze, not like the previous times wich was after hours.
I restarted again. Started wmp again, again after 5 minutes a freeze

I restarted again, waited about 2 minutes longer before starting wmp. And I havent had a freeze yet.

This is odd cause when the pc freezes after hours, wmp isn't running. and now WMP is running for an half hour non stop (music) without crashing

 

Have you visited Microsoft's Vista download section and looked for relevant reliability / compatibility patches. I think there were some issues with WMP.

John

 

can't seem to find the wmp patches. Could you give me a link to the patch-section, I only found the general wp download center (wich contains only the versions and plug ins of rwmp)

 

All the Microsoft Vista downloads are here. That list has the newest first and you need to look back over several months. There were a couple of big patches in August and several in October.

The other possible culprit is the nVidia driver if you are having problems with Video but not audio. Have you looked through the 6625WD threads to see which is considered to be the current best driver.

John

 

It freezes up when playing audio aswell, or when playing nothing at all.
But its completly random, it happens after hours mostly. Except yesterday wich was odd.

 

get the 169.02 from laptopvideo2go.com

 

I formatted and reinstalled vista, I was tired of the freezes.

I got all the new drivers and 169.09 (the newest) also updated the bios to x05e, installed only the neccesary and needed programs ( I lost 40 gigs of useless stuff wich is quite nice)

Its working fine (up to) now, new bios makes the fan abit quiter I think

I'll see if the freeze occurs again

Edit: a very nice side effect from the new bios: my cpu seems to run on 0.85 volts when not stressed, before the update that was 0.937

 

isnt that like some c3 or something like that

 

yeh, nothing but positive things so far tho.
More space on my hdd, less useless programs, less energy usage. Also the graphic card is better in bencharks and abit more fps in games.
ALso my turbo memory works 100% now, it used to work for 50% (before the format only readyboost would work and readydrive didn't)

And most important: no more freezes

 

Rockin! Congrats!

 

OK. Let's see how it goes.

The voltage drop is because the previous BIOS did not support two Santa Rosa features of (i) accelerating one core by one clock stepping if the other core is idle and (ii) halving the FSB speed and dropping the voltage to give a lower voltage at 800MHz. The previous BIOS may also not have supported the C3 lower power state which will let the CPU run a bit cooler when its not busy (on both mains and battery).

John