Crashing Problem with Sager NP8275-S

Hi. I was hoping someone might be able to help me out with a problem with my Sager NP8275-S.

I close the lid to my laptop at night. In the morning when I open the laptop again, the Windows 8 lock screen appears as expected. I can move the mouse cursor around. I have no password set, so I click the mouse button and it brings me to the desktop. A second later my laptop freezes and I have to hold the power button down.

Additionally, the Windows Event Viewer notes the same problem every day. It says that "The previous system shutdown at 1:44:58 AM on 12/27/2013 was unexpected" (the time is usually 30-60 minutes after I close the laptop) and it will also note that "The driver \Driver\WudfRd failed to load for the device SWD\SensorsAndLocationEnum\LPSensorSWDevice". I think the driver may be related to the fingerprint sensor. I never installed it. Is it necessary?

Other notes:

If I close the lid to my laptop during the day for half-an-hour or an hour, it resumes as expected with no problems.

I ran the verifier tool and when I reboot I always crash to blue screen -- which I understand means I have a driver problem. The minidump file doesn't say anything (to me) that is too clear, but here are the primary comments:

Code:

Unable to load image \SystemRoot\system32\ntoskrnl.exe, Win32 error 0n2
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for ntoskrnl.exe
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for ntoskrnl.exe
Windows 8 Kernel Version 9600 MP (8 procs) Free x64
Product: WinNt, suite: TerminalServer SingleUserTS Personal
Built by: 9600.16452.amd64fre.winblue_gdr.131030-1505
Machine Name:
Kernel base = 0xfffff803`27a72000 PsLoadedModuleList = 0xfffff803`27d36990
Debug session time: Sat Dec 28 13:45:48.995 2013 (UTC - 6:00)
System Uptime: 0 days 0:00:10.823

Code:

BugCheck C4, {4100b, fffff8000028df60, 0, 0}

***** Kernel symbols are WRONG. Please fix symbols to do analysis.

Code:

Probably caused by : ntoskrnl.exe ( nt+14dca0 )

Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!

 

could you download who crashed from my sig below as i cant read that dump file.
load it, run it, post it

 

Wow! That WhoCrashed program is awesome. I may not need any more help than that! I ran it and analyzed the dump file and it says it is indeed the fingerprint scanner. I installed the drivers for it, turned my laptop off for a while, and resumed with no problems. I also did the verifier.exe routine and no problems there, either. Since it's happened to me every single overnight, I'll try again tonight. If it clears that hurdle, then it would appear that the fingerprinter scanner drivers were the culprit. Thank you for the help!

 

your welcome. glad youve got it sorted

 

Unfortunately, it didn't last! It worked that first time, but the next two times in a row I've come back to a laptop that freezes immediately after resuming Windows.

I'm still getting "the driver \Driver\WudfRd failed to load for the device SWD\SensorsAndLocationEnum\LPSensorSWDevice" as an error.

There has been no new memory,dmp file created since the 28th.

I turned on verifier.exe this afternoon and rebooted. After 5 reboots, no blue screens. Don't know what to try next. :\

 

Have you run a memory test to make sure maybe just not something like bad RAM?

The WudfRd driver I wouldn't worry much about as far as causing freeze/crash, I don't think it's really that.
As for the fingerprint reader, if you don't use it just disable in dev manager. Mine otherwise spawns errors too but still doesn't impact my machine. Even my last gen laptop I didn't use and it spawned errors always from just basic drivers lol.

But run some memtest and see how it fares. Maybe even let one run overnight and see what happens (if it's frozen or found errors) when you get up. Use a bootable one like MemTest86 - Download now!

If it's RAM related that bsod program won't give accurate info as far as possible cause so it's best to eliminate the memory before you waste too much more time.

 

Thank you for the response.

I took your advice and disabled the fingerprint reader. I don't use it, so it made sense. I noticed two devices did not have drivers installed for them. One was airplane mode, and one was the Intel Management Engine Driver. I installed both drivers.

I then ran your linked memory test utility. It ran one pass in one hour and one minute, and reported 0 errors.

 

how old is the laptop and whats its full spec cpu/gpu/ram/hdd/ssd

if its a normal spindle hard drive then it might be worth doing a sector scan to see if theres any bad sectors.
things like these errors is trial and error so go through everything one at a time to check they are working properly.

you can find HD Tune in my sig below. run a full scan test and report back.

 

Thanks again for another response.

This may sound weird, but... I usually plug my laptop in, wake it up, and it freezes within one second. This morning I woke it up and was surprised to find it did not freeze. I played around with it for about 30 seconds and it still did not hang. I plugged it in, went to grab some juice, and when I came back found the laptop had froze. Is it in any way possible the charger could create a problem, but only when resuming from a low-power state?! Doesn't seem likely, but...

Anyway, you asked for my specs. I have an 8275-S from XoticPC which I bought 2-3 weeks ago. This is more detail than I'm sure you need:

• 4th Generation Intel® Haswell Core™ i7-4700MQ (2.4GHz - 3.4GHz, 6MB Intel® Smart Cache
• AMD® Radeon™ HD 8970M (4.0GB) GDDR5 PCI-Express DX11
• Ram 16GB - DDR3 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory (2 SODIMMS)
• Primary Hard Drive 250GB Samsung 840 EVO Series SSD [SSD2 - SATA III]
• 1TB 5400RPM [SATA II - 3GB/s]
• Optical Drive Bay 8X Super Multi DVDRW/CDRW Combo Drive
• Intel® Dual Band AC 7260 802.11 A/AC/B/G/N 2.4/5.0GHz + Bluetooth™ 4.0
• Memory Card Reader Internal 9-in-1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD/Mini SD/SDHC/SDXC/MS/MS Pro/MS Duo)
• Sound Card Sound Blaster Compatible 3D Audio - Included.

My primary drive (the one with Win 8.1 installed on it) isn't a spindle drive, but I ran the test anyway. Here are the results:

HD Tune: Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250G Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 177.4 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 422.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 327.0 MB/sec
Access Time : 0.1 ms
Burst Rate : 135.9 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 6.0%

And:

HD Tune: TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 50.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 117.0 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 87.5 MB/sec
Access Time : 18.3 ms
Burst Rate : 2.7 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 3.7%

 

A whole bunch of things change when you plug the charger in so while it can cause issues it may just be revealing a symptom when the GPU or the memory or the CPU clock back up.

 

I would say let it run a bit more. One pass doesn't mean it's good still. Let it run for 5-6 hours if you can, if not let it run just before you go to bed and check when you wake up.

If it's still going without issues we can probably say it isn't CPU, RAM or MB related because memory tests generally stress the CPU and RAM somewhat. That would only leave a possible driver issue.

How comfortable are you with doing a complete fresh reinstall?

I am running 8.1 on basically same machine (fancy version lol) and no issues. I however don't use any drivers from the CD and the only one I download from Clevo/Sager is AP mode and Hotkey. All the rest I source myself from the various manufactures or other places that get them as I normally am on bleeding edge of newest. I can provide a list of driver versions and links if you want. I just did a fresh install last week even lol.

If anything I am more asking for trouble vs. anyone. Running 32GB of 1866MHz 1.35v ram (many said 1.35v is not stable when all dimms full, hah), my disk is fully encrypted (due to my line of work) and random other things I have done.

It really seems like some driver or software issue though if the ram still comes back clean. Removing or adding AC power triggers a lot of things that are driver dependent.

End of the day you could always RMA the machine if you can live without it for few weeks and it's fairly consistent, but I would try a reload before that if you are able.

 

Completely comfortable. I have the disc next to my laptop -- ready for the drop of a hat.

I spoke with XoticPC again today and they encouraged me to disable/uninstall the AMD drivers and see if anything changes. If the problem happens again, then tomorrow morning I'll format the drive and reinstall Windows and see if that fixes it. I have all of my files on my D:\ drive. The C:\ drive is just Windows and drivers. I can be back to normal in no time so I'd happily reinstall Windows all day long if I thought it would get me somewhere, haha.

This is very good to know! And interesting. When I first set up, I went through all the Sager drivers one-by-one to see which ones seemed necessary or useful. I ended up using several of them, maybe too many: chipset, wlan_intel2, their amd driver, fingerprint scanner, sbx, creader, touchpad, airplane, hotkey, IME, and (realtek) audio. Then I grabbed the latest stable AMD driver and installed that. The problem persisted throughout.

Do you think it would be a bad idea to install Windows and not manually install any drivers? Just leave it as is? Are there any drivers that are considered essential? (I'd consider Hotkey essential, haha.)

By the way, I have no problems going to the source to get drivers if that's better. I always assumed the retailer drivers were better since, while outdated, they were tested for those specific systems. I'd love to check out your list of drivers and links if it's not time consuming for you in any way.

This is all very cool to learn and I thank you guys, and everyone else, for all the personalized help!

As for a RMA, I can live with it being gone for a few weeks. But if it's solvable, I'd rather solve it. To be honest, I could deal with the current problem. The laptop fully boots in 34 seconds. That's unreal to me. So if I crash and have to reboot, it's so fast that who cares. But it's a brand new laptop and it seems kind of silly to deal with any inconvenience, no matter how small, if you don't have to. Right? Thanks again for the help. Hopefully I'll be able to change this subject to [solved] before too much longer.

 

Here are all the drivers I would use in your case.

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/De...ion=Windows 8.1, 64-bit*&DownloadType=Drivers
Intel Chipset 9.4.0.1026 for 8.1 (Newer chipsets do exists but don't contain the 8.1 mappings to install properly)

http://www.station-drivers.com/down...l_mei_9.6.0.1038(www.station-drivers.com).exe
MEI 9.6.0.1038 (ver 10 does exists but is alpha ver for next gen chipset)

iGPU
http://www.station-drivers.com/down..._15.33.9.64.3355(www.station-drivers.com).exe
15.33.9.64.3355 Intel GPU (Newer ver exists but is alpha for IRIS. After installing this install the one from Windows Update. They include newer graphics driver but is missing the audio and thus other one should be used first)

LAN
Realtek
Pick Win8 and Win8.1 Auto Installation Program (SID:1624014)

Latest WiFi
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=23493&lang=eng

Latest Bluetooth (install WiFi first)
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=23449&lang=eng

Use following drivers from Sager website:

Airplane mode
Touchpad
CardReader
Audio
HotKey

(Normally they are outdated but these ones are all current as they just updated in Nov.)

For the AMD I would get the latest beta or final (whichever newer) and run those. Beta on GPU are generally fine, except for Intel ones you want to stay on production releases.


I wouldn't install any other drivers.

In the bios, if not already set change it to UEFI and enable Secure Boot.
I think by default these are off but I could be wrong as I got my machine without an OS and had to do myself.
Once you do this you can reinstall. If they are not enabled already it will probably break the current install so don't do until ready.

I would install all drivers in the order I listed them and reboot when it asks for any. Don't pile them up on a single reboot. That use to work well but sometimes causes problems, boots are fast so no reason not to.

If your install disk is not a Windows 8.1 and is a Windows 8 only that you have to upgrade to 8.1 I would install Win 8, upgrade to 8.1 and at that point load all drivers. Hopefully your disk is a straight 8.1 though as is much faster and cleaner.

Good luck and let us know how it turns. Hopefully your problems are gone. While the machine boots fast and you don't care as much you might care down the road if something goes wrong as a result or it ends up really being something HW so you should care now.
If after all this you still have the problem, RMA it and let them deal with it as you would have wasted enough time on it and could be something HW related which they can test playing musical parts and you can't.

 

This is a great write-up! Thank you so much!

My only update for today so far is that I went to wake my laptop this morning and it instead booted up. I guess it shut down at some point. One of the first notes in the event viewer is that "the winlogon notification subscriber <SessionEnv> was unavailable to handle a critical notification event."

I also get:

"The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x00000113 (0x0000000000000019, 0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000001002, 0x0000000000006801). A dump was saved in: C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP. Report Id: 010314-5093-01."

I used WhoCrashed to examine the .dmp files and it says:

On Fri 1/3/2014 6:46:29 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\010314-5093-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: watchdog.sys (watchdog+0x39CA)
Bugcheck code: 0x113 (0x19, 0x2, 0x1002, 0x6801)
Error: VIDEO_DXGKRNL_FATAL_ERROR
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\watchdog.sys
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: Watchdog Driver
Bug check description: This indicates that the dxg kernel has detected a violation.
The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system that cannot be identified at this time.

On Fri 1/3/2014 6:46:29 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\memory.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: watchdog.sys (watchdog!WdLogEvent5_WdCriticalError+0xCE)
Bugcheck code: 0x113 (0x19, 0x2, 0x1002, 0x6801)
Error: VIDEO_DXGKRNL_FATAL_ERROR
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\watchdog.sys
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: Watchdog Driver
Bug check description: This indicates that the dxg kernel has detected a violation.
The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system that cannot be identified at this time.

Conclusion
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 crash dumps have been found and analyzed. No offending third party drivers have been found. Consider using WhoCrashed Professional which offers more detailed analysis using symbol resolution. Also configuring your system to produce a full memory dump may help you.

At this point, I'm ging to wipe the drive and re-install Windows and see what happens. I'm going to follow your guide above and only install those drivers to see if it helps!

Two question:

Under the download for Intel® PROSet/Wireless Software for Windows 8.1*, do you install JUST the driver, or the package that also includes the driver?

And under Audio, you mean the non-SBX driver. Right? I think it's the Realtek one? Do you not install SBX? (I installed it but haven't touched it.)

 

I actually have never used the sound on these models, I have an external sound card as I needed Dolby Digital Live.

You can use just the audio drivers if you want. Some think they sound better with the other package as well and some don't.
Also, on the fingerprint reader, windows update will find drivers, let it install them and after that just go disable it in dev manager otherwise it causes a dumb event log error, though harmless.

I also say tonight before you go to bed let it run memory test all night. It might make one pass fine but maybe find an error on a later pass given it seems you run fine most of the time.

Hopefully between all this things work out.

 

After formatting the drive and reinstalling Windows, then installing the drivers exactly as noted above, I was curious (optimistic even) if the problems would go away. Instead of running the memory test overnight, I instead put the laptop to sleep to see if it would finally wake up properly. However, it played out exactly as it always does: lift lid, see Windows lock screen, click through to desktop, and then a second later the PC freezes. :\ Meh. I'm not sure there's anything else I can do. I'll run the memory test overnight tonight to see if that reports anything. I'll post that update tomorrow. Otherwise, I guess I'm going to exchange it. It doesn't make any sense to me. Resuming from sleep doesn't seem like something that would be a hardware issue. It seems like a software issue. And reinstalling Windows should resolve any hardware issues. At least, that's how it works in my head, haha. Thanks again for all the help!

 

I ran the overnight test and I guess it's good news that no errors were reported.

Result summary
Test Start time 2014-01-05 02:00:06
Elapsed Time 8:43:49
Memory Range Tested 0x0 - 42FE00000 (17150MB)
CPU Selection Mode Round Robin
# Tests Passed 44/44 (100%)

Test # Tests Passed Errors
Test 0 [Address test, walking ones, 1 CPU] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 1 [Address test, own address, 1 CPU] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 2 [Address test, own address] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 3 [Moving inversions, ones & zeroes] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 4 [Moving inversions, 8-bit pattern] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 5 [Moving inversions, random pattern] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 6 [Block move, 64-byte blocks] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 7 [Moving inversions, 32-bit pattern] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 8 [Random number sequence] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 9 [Modulo 20, ones & zeros] 4/4 (100%) 0
Test 10 [Bit fade test, 2 patterns, 1 CPU] 4/4 (100%) 0

 

Yup, and that basically does a decent test on the MB and CPU because they are under some load, so that just leaves a driver or software issue most likely.

If your only true problem is resuming from sleep it will be a driver for sure. I don't have AMD but it could be the AMD driver. It could also be another. Honestly, I don't use sleep. With SSD these things are stupid fast so I disabled sleep. If you want you can use hibernation instead which is similar to sleep except it does a full power down and instead of just leaving the RAM powered with the data in it ready for resume it writes the data to a file and on power on restores it to ram and puts things back how they had been. Very similar to sleep and you will probably have 0 issues resuming from it.

I don't use neither myself though.

 

Hmmm! I never really looked into the power settings. But your comments about hibernation inspired me to go looking.

I realized that my laptop, when unplugged, sleeps after 10 minutes and goes into hibernation after 180 minutes. These are the default settings.

The fact that my laptop only dies overnight may be inaccurate. It now seems more likely that it could be dying when it hits that 3-hour mark and goes into hibernation.

When I have some time later tonight, I'm going to try experimenting a little. I'll set hibernation to one minute to see if that reliably crashes it. Then I'll disable hibernation and see that does anything.

Thanks for the comment, especially since it may have inspired an easy workaround.

[Update} Blah, nevermind. At least, I'm assuming nevermind. I disabled sleep entirely and switched everything over to hibernate. I tried with the power plugged in and the power not plugged in. I have not been able to replicate the crash that consistently occurs when the laptops been closed overnight. :\

I guess the next thing I will try is keeping the hibernate-only settings and leaving it alone overnight, then seeing if the laptop wakes up normally in the morning.

 

I disabled sleep mode and instead hibernated my laptop over night to see if there would be any difference. My computer crashed in the middle of the night and shut itself down. I contacted Xotic again and they suggested it is a DirectX issue. They want me to update or reinstall DirectX. However, I am not aware of there being any way to do so. Win 8.1 comes with DirectX pre-installed. The only way that I know to update it is via the Windows Updater -- which I have run and is current. When I run games on Steam, they'll usually run their own DirectX components. Otherwise, I don't think there is anything I can actually do with that suggestion. Any thoughts?

Otherwise, I guess the last thing I can do is disable hibernation mode and rely exclusively on sleep?

 

as you mentioned steam there has been one of many problems with directx in cod ghosts.
i had to manually update the direct x folder in the steam game folder for the multiplayer to load.

so even though the game was new and downloaded 32.4gb the directx folder didnt auto update with the download.

 

Hm! Interesting. I haven't had any problems PLAYING games. I've fired up a half-dozen or so, and all seem fine. I ASSUMED that at least implied that DirectX was otherwise OK. But I suppose your comment implies I should consider this to not necessarily be the case.

Anyway, in other news, I ended up requesting the RMA today. I disabled hibernate last night to see if sleep would be any different. Blue screened overnight. :\ It HAS to be software related, but I have no clue how to fix it. I guess that gives this thread the sad, unresolved ending. Sorry to everyone who contributed to this thread! Your comments were all appreciated. I feel like I learned a bit along the way. That made it worthwhile to me.