Clevo P170HM - Major Issue

WHAT THE HELL!! I just had the following happen, in order. At the time, I had the following open: QuickBooks, Google Chrome, Grooveshark (via Chrome) playing music.

1) Laptop freezes; mouse not responsive, music stops.
2) Left hard drive bay (this is the HDD) starts making loud "I am doing something" whirring noise.
3) Right hard drive bay (this is the SSD) starts making similar, but more SSD-like noise (or maybe it was a fan).
4) Laptop starts making really loud obnoxious beep! At this point, I flip out and quickly cut the power.

I thought that maybe it was overheating, but here's the deal; it restarted in moments (<3 SSD) and temps were <50 degrees (CPU and GPU). I was not running any intensive applications at the time. My main observation was that the sequence of events started when I returned to the laptop after 5 minutes of being away counting inventory (not sure it was before or after I moved mouse). It was not in power save at the time (screen at maximum brightness).

PLEASE HELP, I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!!!!

 

Did the status led's blink to go along with the noise? Did this ever happen after that? And 2760XM..?? Was it a one beep repeating kind of thing or more beeps before repeating?

 

One beep before repeating. I don't remember status LEDs, I dove for power once I started hearing beeps because I thought that it was overheating.

 

If the lights blinked with it then it THOUGHT it was over-heating. (It may or may not have really been over-heating). Can you pop into the BIOS and tell me the BIOS Version and EC version

 

Last 4 digits of each:

Bios - 01.10
EC - 00.09

First two digits were the same (00 or 01, don't remember).

 

Yea 1.01.10 and 1.00.09

So those are up to date. The whirring noise you heard were the fans that go into default mode when the system crashes. I would say keep an eye on it and if it does it again then run Whocrashed Resplendence Software - WhoCrashed, automatic crash dump analyzer if it says GFx driver then you know where to start, if it just says "memory" then go with the memory (time for some memtesting). Or if it never happens again then it was just random =)

 

Unfortunately, WhoCrashed does not seem to be able to analyze the crash report for yesterday. What is my next step?

 

What did WhoCrashed say? Or was the dump not made properly? If it hard-locked with no BSOD then there will be no crash dump file.

 

you should do a mem test see if any errors occurs:

http://www.memtest.org/download/4.20/memtest86+-4.20.usb.installer.zip

* this is auto install on a usb key, just run it install on a usb drive, reboot & boot from it directly.

 

Well, that's exactly what happened, lol...

WhoCrashed said that it detected 6 crashes but could only read 3 logs; these were from my disastrous attempt to use the AMD Overdrive program a week ago (issue resolved).

 

Can't I just do a memtest from Windows install disc, or is this different?

Thanks for your input.

 

windows test isn't as indepth test as mem test, let it run a few passes without errors hopefully.

 

Memtest was fine. Past few weeks were fine. However, it just happened again! No beeps this time; basically everything locked up, and all fans kicked in. Temps were <45^C. Same exact set of circumstances.

Please help, or this sucka is getting RMA'd.

 

What are the circumstances? I understand from your first post that the HDD made some noise like it was working, the SSD or the fan made some noise and your laptop locked up and made a beeping noise.
Were there any specific programs you were running when this occurred?
Have you tried a full wipe and re-installation of the OS?
Frankly, with the beeping noise, I would say it sounds like a possible hardware issue. You may want to try a complete re-installation of the OS first just to see what happens.
If that doesn't help, I would certainly recommend getting an RMA.

 

Circumstances were that I was in Google Chrome (same as before), and moved the mouse. No beeps this time, clearly all the fans kicked on, hard drives did not do anything special (think I misinterpreted it last time as others have pointed out).

I had the following active: QB Enterprise 11.0, Chrome, SWTOR launcher (turned on just 2 mins prior, logged in, but did not hit "Play"). In Chrome, I had similar stuff open as last time (GMail, Pandora - not playing this time, a bunch of tabs with web pages, etc). Ironically, it actually happened at the exact same client as last time, and I have not been to his office for the past 2 weeks! Starting to think that this is a common thread. Maybe it's a problem with the wireless adapter or a print driver?

Ugh, I don't have time to reinstall all software! If I get the RMA, can I just pop the SSD in and expect everything to run fine if it's the same exact laptop?

 

Good chance it won't work, I've tried once before and when I got a new motherboard the previous SSD would hang upon boot and I couldn't get it to work with System Restore either.

But of course, it could work, but prepare for the worst and back up everything.

 

Seems silly why I cannot "plug&play" my OS + software in another identical machine. What causes this, drivers that register serial numbers of components? Maybe I can get it to safe mode and then update drivers?

 

My experience are opposite to Ryan's experience, as long as it's the same brand and model of the mobo the same windows 7 installation worked fine.

In fact we used to do this on my previous company where we had a couple of replacement Lenovos lying around where we'd just plug the hdd of the problematic unit to our replacement one and they can get back to work.

afaik they didn't have to do any repair installations as well.

 

That sounds awesome, thanks for the ray of hope, lol.

 

Hey guys, the distributor has stated that they believe the SSD to be at fault (because it is not their equipment). It is a Crucial M4 (non-SandForce). They also linked me this thread: Crucial M4 - Periodic FREEZE/HANG accessing drive ... - Crucial Community

I don't have time to do anything more with this for the next few hours (meetings); please provide input on your take on this new turn of events...

By the way, my current M4 is a replacement for one that I had RMA'd previously while I was using it on my Asus (although we later discovered that the problem was not from the SSD).

 

If it has been fully diagnosed to be the SSD, why not believe them?

Of course, you can try updating to the latest firmware of the M4 to see if it fixes the stutter.

If that doesn't work, try the LPM registry fix which has always worked for me for my Crucial C300.

 

I would agree with Ryan. If it has been diagnosed as the SSD I would start with checking your firmware updates first and make sure your firmware is up-to-date.

If that doesn't work and it turns out to be something like the mainboard, you may have a chance of not performing an entire Windows 7 OS installation when you get it back.

The reason why the OS doesn't play nice with a new mainboard is because when you register Windows with the product key, it is tied to that mainboard BIOS. You might be able to get away with not having to re-install Windows though because if they replace your mainboard Windows may still see the same mainboard manufacturer and just carry on as normal.

Microsoft did what they did though for obvious reasons, to prevent people from just simply getting a new PC and installing the same OS on a different system. I have had desktop computers where the mainboard quit working after the warranty was up and when I used a different mainboard, I had to call Microsoft and explain the situation and sometimes they are nice and will re-issue the key but I haven't always been so lucky.