Trouble with AOpen 2000 notebook

My AOpen 2000 hangs often, especially when playing games. It's probably not due to temperature because I use it in a well ventilated and cold environment. It also happens during normal surfing or playing music. I have updated the drivers to their latest versions: Video and southbridge from ATI, Modem and cardbus/reader from AOpen, CPU driver from AMD, Sound from Realtek, Wireless from atheros, and touchpad from synaptics. I also tried those from the AOpen website. The notebook just hangs and is totally unresponsive until I turn the power off. No blue screens, it just totally freezes. It passes memtest86 perfectly.

Here are my specs:
AOpen 2000 notebook (i believe this is the same as the cisnet ncl3001, the nascar notebook)
http://nb.aopen.com/prd_feature.aspx?Auno=2060
http://aopen.jp/products/baresystem/2000.html
AMD Mobile sempron 3000+ S754
2x256MB Hynix DDR333 SODIMM
ATI Xpress 200M chipset
Atheros AR5005G wireless mini-PCI
Toshiba MK4026GAX hard disk
NEC ND6650A DVDRW

What really irritates me is it doesn't even give me a blue screen to help troubleshoot the problem. It just stops responding. There isnt anything related to the crash that's written in the system event logs.

What can I do to solve this problem?

 

Sorry to revive an old post, but this seems like a good place to stick this information so I can find it later.

I picked up the same notebook last year as a black friday special (actually the cisnet ncl3001 "NASCAR Laptop" model, but same difference). I've upgraded the RAM and CPU though. I'm currently running a MT-38 (2.0 GHz, 25Watt TDP) and 1GB RAM (single slot).

I'm having similar problems as the original poster - and I have been all year. All diagnostics come back clean, but the machine will frequently lock up. No blue screen, no error message, just completely freezes. Only a hard reboot will do anything, then there are no error logs of the crash. At this point I've swapped the CPU and RAM thinking something must just be overheating. I've tried two or three different applications of artic silver, but nothing seems to make any difference. I get similar freezes if I'm running wireless or wired network connections. I've tried changing the memory from one slot to another - no change. I've tested the memory in different laptops - everything comes back clean. I can't count the number of times I've wiped the hard drive and done a clean install. I've even tried Ubuntu a bit, but nothing seems to make a difference. It only seems to freeze when I stress the machine (games, heavy downloading, etc). So long as I back my stuff up regularly and stick to web browsing and light office work it won't freeze more than once every few weeks.

I've eventually learned to deal with the freezes. I have a newer desktop for all the "important" stuff so this laptop is only heavily used when I'm on the road.

After cracking the case probably one too many times I started noticing that some of the keys were sticking. Over about a week it developed into a serious problem. The space bar, Z, V, B and left key no longer work at all. I've tried removing and reinstalling the keyboard a few times - sometimes it seems to help for a bit, most of the time it has no effect - reguardless after a few minutes those specific keys will stop functioning at all.

I guess the reason that I'm posting this is that it's incredibly difficult to find anything on the web about this laptop. I can try to look it up as a cisnet ncl3001 "NASCAR Laptop" or as an AOpen 2000, but there is virtually nothing out there from either company. That seems odd for a product that was sold new in stores less than a year ago. Cisnet seems to be ZT Systems now and the only reference on AOpen's web site is a grainy thumbnail picture in their product museum. No information is provided on either website.

I did run across a list of drivers on driverstock.com. Check out this link http://www.driverstock.com/AOpen-2000-driver-download/29-21-5798/index.html

I'm trying to replace my keyboard now, but I can't any part that cross reference with AOpen 2000 or cisnet ncl3001. There are several other Acer keyboards that look similar and are only about $30 so I may try a few and see if I get lucky. This seems to be the only website that looks promising for a keyboard - http://www.pchub.com/uph/category/66-11-0-1-0/Keyboard.html.

If anyone else has found any solutions to the freezing problem or has any ideas for a replacement keyboard, let me know - even any other methods to cross reference this laptop would be helpful.

I guess the moral of the story is that you get what you pay for and buyer beware.

 

I am not sure what the differences, if any, are between the Cisnet NCL3001 and the NCL3006 (which my mother-in-law has). She purchased the Cisnet Nascar-branded NCL3006 from Target.com in January 2007.

You can see info on it at these places:

www.cisnetpc.com/ncpc/ (archived)
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16834228002
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/443359

She doesn't use the laptop for gaming, but did have trouble with it freezing when playing a lot of flash videos. After meticulously researching all of the hardware ( PC Wizard 2008 is helpful) and then updating drivers, testing hardware, etc., I was eventually able to keep these mysterious freezes at bay. I wish I could give you a specific solution that fixed this.

You can still grab the "official" drivers for the laptop from:

http://www.ztsystems.com/download/mb/n/nascar/audio_drivers.zip
http://www.ztsystems.com/download/mb/n/nascar/cardreader_drivers.zip
http://www.ztsystems.com/download/mb/n/nascar/cpu_drivers.zip
http://www.ztsystems.com/download/mb/n/nascar/Launch_drivers.zip
http://www.ztsystems.com/download/mb/n/nascar/LAN_drivers.zip
http://www.ztsystems.com/download/mb/n/nascar/Modem_drivers.zip
http://www.ztsystems.com/download/mb/n/nascar/Video_drivers.zip
http://www.ztsystems.com/download/mb/n/nascar/Wireless_drivers.zip

As for a manual, since I wasn't sure which OEM model this rebranded laptop was until I came across this thread, I found more downloads available at AOpen's website:

http://usa.aopen.com/products_download.aspx?sDropDownProd=Notebooks

Go to the above URL and select 2000 from the "select a model" dropbox. They have utilities, drivers, a manual (17.6 MB!) and BIOSes (1 for XP/2000 & 1 for DOS).

There isn't anything in the manual detailing specific part nos., but it is helpful to have.

On a side note, I have had OK/decent experience with customer support. You should be able to contact them and get part numbers. Depending on your warranty, it may be covered (she got a 3 yr extended plan).

Overall, I think the laptop was a great bargain and has served it's purpose.

 

It is not the drivers, I have had this problem before. Go to start, run, msconfig. Clean up the startup processes/program list. Simply unclick the programs which you do not always use. This shuts the processes off from boot up. This means that less programs are running in the background.
This problem happens quite fequently on slower harddrives.
This will make your computer more responsive.

Make sure that you shut off background periodic scans which antivirus programs make. Just run the antivirus manually, rather than in the background.

Also, run a disk cleanup and disk defragment, it will help speed up your disc a bit.

K-TRON

 

I have the NASCAR version of the AOpen 2000 notebook computer and have had similar problems with it freezing up randomly. Mine would freeze in different manners. Sometimes the screen would go completely red, other times with stripes and occasionally there was no change to the screen but there was also no response. I tried different drivers etc. with no results. Then I went into the BIOS and changed the video memory from 128 mb to 64 mb and that greatly reduced the number of crashes. Then I also tried reducing the color depth to 16 bit and that made a difference too. Doing these two things have greatly reduced the crashes I am seeing. They still occur but not nearly as often. Others may find this helps their problem too.

 

As I mentioned, the problem has been fixed.

I agree that it is a great idea to reduce as much as possible the number of programs and services set to run at startup, however, having set her laptop up myself, I know that that was not an issue in her case.

Ditto for the AV. Hers was set to never autoscan in the background...that's what the On-Access scan is for.

Disk defrag and cleanup-type tools are also good measures to follow, but were useless with the weird freeze problem she was having.

I am certain that one of the driver updates fixed her issue, though I don't know for certain which one, because I ran most of them during the same logon session. I am inclined to think it was the updated ATI driver due to the repeatability of manifesting a freeze by watching videos for an extended period of time.

Based on the description of your problem & partial solution, I would suggest you test your memory, as the ATI Radeon 200M video card is an integrated video card, meaning it shares RAM with the system, rather than having it's own memory. This makes it cheaper, but also slower and takes up memory the system would otherwise be able to use.

Something like memtest86+ will be able to tell you if you have some bad parts in your RAM. It is run from a bootable USB drive, CD or floppy disk.

 

I ran memory tests and no issues were reported. I can't explain why reducing the size of the video memory in the BIOS and the color depth makes things more stable but it does. There are still random freeze ups but they are far less frequent.

 

I'm having the same problem with mine. Any luck figuring out which keyboard to use?

 

I'm fixing a friend's Cisnet Nascar laptop and need to replace the keyboard as well. The keyboard part number (AOPEN brand) is 99.N6682.G01.

I found a replacement at this website: https://www.abc01.com/store/p-389-notebook-keyboard-1558-99n6682g01.aspx

You can find the keyboard with the part number listed above or replace the "G" in the part number with a "6" (I don't know if it is a typo on the site that carries the keyboard, but it will display a picture if you use the "6" in the part number. I'm going to order one tomorrow ($19.99) and cross my fingers that it is the correct model.

Good luck everyone.

 

I have a solution to the freezing problem and yes it works!

The problem is not related to programs, software or drivers. It is in fact that the ATi GPU is not stable at the clock speed it has been set to run at. Here is what you do. Download ATITool, an overclocking utility designed for ATI and NVIDIA video cards and install it, but you WILL NOT OVERCLOCK it obviously. Instead you are going to downclock the GPU. Start ATITool and click the 'Settings' button at the bottom right. Make sure that the right device is selected in the drop down menu under the overclocking category (Might be labeled with PCI in the device name) otherwise it will not find the GPU and you won't be able to set the clock speeds. There is a chance that it will find the GPU right away and you will already see the clock speed. Take note that you will not be able to set the speed for the memory as the GPU does not have its own dedicated memory so ignore this slide bar altogether. You should also see that the GPU clock will be set at 250 MHz by default. You will see it there in the appropriate slide bar if the right device is selected in ATITool (again in 'Settings' under 'Overclocking'. What you want to do there is drag the slide bar down to set the clock speed to just less than 200 MHz. If you get it just right I always set mine to 199.68 which ATITool will automatically adjust the clock speed accordingly when you hit the 'Set Clock' button. Say I drag the bar down till it reads 200.01 and click the 'Set Clock' button it will automatically put it at 199.68. This is normal. Ever since I have done this I have had no lock ups at all!

The only catch is this. You have to start up ATITool and set the clock again every time you start the machine. Otherwise not a big deal considering it won't freeze on you so long as you remember to do this. ATITool also has a startup with windows section in 'Settings' under 'Miscellaneous' to make it a little more convenient, but you will still have to set the clock speed manually.

I would also recommend one other thing. As far as the video driver I would highly recommend the best one to use for this particular chip would be the Omega ATi driver version 3.8.291.

I hope this helps.

I also have a request. I have somehow managed to fry the lcd inverter in my nascar laptop and now need a replacement. I, being stupid, threw away the one that fried and now I do not have the part #. I would greatly appreciate it if someone could give me their part # off their lcd inverter BEING CAREFUL unlike me (unplug unit and remove battery!!!)
- Thanks in advance.

 

Never mind about the inverter. I had a guy who smashed his acer 5620z laptop in his car door and it had a very similar inverter and it works perfectly in my nascar laptop now. How convenient.