strange problem after IFL90 upgraded to hd3650

After my 8600gt started giving signs of slowly dying (various artefacts while gaming), I decided to upgrade it to ATI HD3650. All went fine - the new card fitted in perfectly, with no modification needed whatsoever (not even to the heatsink). The temperatures are really nice - varying from 49-55 Celsius while idling, to 87 while playing NFS Hot Pursuit 3.
There is one problem though - occasionaly, the laptop just shuts down unexpectedly, without even a blue screen - what's even more intriguing is that out of the 4 times this happened until now, it was always while playing youtube videos. The temperatures were low, so it can't be from overheating. I even did a stress test with Orthos and only managed to get the CPU temp up to 87 degrees Celsius.

My HD3650 has an Acer bios and was recognized by Windows 7 instantly. I went on and installed the latest Catalyst and everything is fine, except for one strange thing - my Compal 1.16 bios reports the card as having only 256mb, instead of 512 - every other app I've tried reports the full 512mb.

What could be the problem? I tried to see if the problem is flash-related, but I couldn't get it to shutdown while I was monitoring it.

The only errors that the Event Log reports during normal operation are

Code:

: The embedded controller (EC) did not respond within the specified timeout period. This may indicate that there is an error in the EC hardware or firmware or that the BIOS is accessing the EC incorrectly. You should check with your computer manufacturer for an upgraded BIOS. In some situations, this error may cause the computer to function incorrectly.

- which sound fishy

and

Code:

"The shadow copies of volume C: were aborted because the shadow copy storage could not grow due to a user imposed limit." 

- which I don't believe to be the cause.

Oh, and there was another one that said

Code:

ATI EEU the creation of a class has failed

- this only happened once

Can anybody help?

/later edit:
I discovered another error in the logs:

Code:

The embedded controller (EC) did not respond within the specified timeout period. This may indicate that there is an error in the EC hardware or firmware or that the BIOS is accessing the EC incorrectly. You should check with your computer manufacturer for an upgraded BIOS. In some situations, this error may cause the computer to function incorrectly.

 

I have BIOS 1.18, also "upgraded" to a ATI 3650 DDR2 512MB. My BIOS also reports 256MB only.

But my machine is stable so far - fingers crossed.

Can you do a new installation next to your current installation? A clean install is preferable ... oter than that, I have no idea what could be the cause of this.

Good luck!

 

Same here. 256 reported by bios. Stable so far, but external vga not working. I also had shutdown issues, but more strangely, when using gpu-z for a long time ¿? I suspect it has a problem accessing the temp sensors or something like that.

 

I don't have an external monitor to test my vga-out; perhaps I'll take it to work one day and test it there, and then report back. Installing a fresh copy of Windows doesn't sound too joyful, as I have lots of development software installed and configured, and I'd really hate to go through that all over again. Considering that the system is stable except for this one inconvenience and that it has run like this for more than a year, I guess this is a no-go. I've considered the bios update to 1.18, but from what I've read the difference is of no use for my system, as I have a first generation FL90, no SRR. And I would really hate to see the fan go even wilder than it does now. I remember the good old days with 1.10 when my lappie used to be so silent...

 

later edit: I just realised that I have a spare hdd somewhere around the house, maybe I'll use that for a clean install this weekend

 

Yeah, you also could install it next to your current OS, if you have space available.

Also, gparted could make some space that is unused. You only need 2GB, afterall it's for a test installation, only.

Good luck!

 

I just tested vga-out with an external monitor and it works flawlessly. I must be one of the luckiest persons that have tried the hd3650 upgrade.