NP8660 freezing problem? help please!

Sager hasn't been much help and I'm hoping someone on here could assist. I bought a Sager NP8660 in Sept 2008. About 2 months after I got it it started randomly freezing. Didn't matter if I was on or off the internet, had a wireless mouse, plugged in mouse, or no mouse. Didn't matter if I was running memory intensive or non-memory intensive programs, or if it was plugged into the wall or not. Sometimes it wouldn't freeze for a couple of hours and sometimes it would freeze a couple of minutes after booting and then sometimes it wouldn't freeze for more like 9 or 10 hours.

When it freezes the fans stay running, but the keyboard no longer works and the mouse stops working to where you can see the arrow, but it won't move. I've tried all of the caps lock/num key tricks, replaced the hard drive, and reinstalled everything fresh several times. Still, I end up having to hold down the power button to force it to turn off and then I can power it back up as if nothing happened. I NEVER receive a blue screen and I NEVER receive any windows errors like "your computer didn't properly shut down, etc..." It's as if nothing happened.

Sager asked me to run MemTest and get back to them, but i have to tell you that I am not that knowledgable in how to do to it. I bought the memtest CD but am not sure the steps to run the test. Sager couldn't seem to help to walk me through it.

I've been dealing with this for a year and a half and its driving me crazy and happening more frequently now. Anyone have any ideas what it could be? I still have a parts and labor warranty for another year or so.

Here's the laptop specs:
Sager NP8660 (Built on Clevo M860TU)
Inter Core 2 duo
P9500 @ 2.53 ghz
783 mhz 2.49GB RAM
Nvdia GeForce 9800M GT
Win XP Pro 32bit

Thanks in advance!

 

Have you been able to reformat/reinstall windows?

 

Yes, I have done several completely fresh windows reinstall's on 2 different, but brand new, hard drives. The problem never goes away. The only thing that seems to change a bit is the frequency of the freezes. For instance, tonight my laptop has frozen 4 times in 3 hours. After a fresh windows reinstall it's more likely that I would have 1 freeze in 6 roughly hours.

 

Try re-flashing BIOS.

 

I'm thinking that Sager wanting you to do a memtest was pretty much right on the mark. I don't think this has anything to do with Windows, the hard drive, etc.

I think it is the memory (I've had a similar experience myself). One of the major clues is that it just freezes and you have to do a hard reset but after you reboot Windows never has any events (event log) showing that anything ever happened.

Run Memtest like they said.

Or you can take the memory out and reseat it first. Or maybe try running it with just one stick in slot 1 and see if it freezes, then take that stick out and put in the other stick and see if that makes it freeze.

And I thought that Memtest was a free download!? At least the one I have around here on CD somewhere was free. I think it's an opensource program.

 

I have to concur with Schmagagled completely. This sounds like you have a bad memory module.

 

not sure if this will help but try running Who Crashed after a freeze up. it might shed some light.

 

Memtest is simple to do: Boot a CD that has it available(memtest CD:s, all Linux distributions etc.), press enter, wait, see what it tells you.

 

I found out last night that memtest CD that I had bought ($5) apparently was faulty, which was why I couldn't ever figure out how to get it to work. The guys over at XoticPC sent me a link to download the one they use. I burned that to disc and ran memtest last night for several hours. No errors were reported at all. Also, I don't know if this means anything but my laptop didn't freeze at all when running the test. However, there's no rhyme or reason as to when it freezes so maybe it's coincidence.

I read on another thread that someone had a similar problem with a different laptop altogether. Their solution was sending it back for a new motherboard, which according to them fixed the problem.

I've never flashed a BIOS before so I will look it up online to see how to do it. Just in case, I will also pull out the memory and try running on one stick to see if it freezes.

Thanks for the ideas.

 

What GPU driver are you currently using?

 

I don't recall off the top of my head, but I know that I updated my Nvidia drivers at least twice over the last year and a half that I've had the issue. I still had the freezing problem. Updated every driver I could think of, including my plug and play devices and still I have the problem.

I installed "Who Crashed?" and ran it just after I rebooted after a freeze, but it tells me that it cannot find a crash dump and therefor no crash occurred.

I called Sager last night because I can't take the freezing any longer. I'm a freelance artist and it's affecting my work dramatically (to be honest I don't know how I've put up with it for this long.) I sent my laptop to them today along with a detailed note of what's happening. Hopefully they can figure it out. Just glad that I paid for the 3 year parts/labor warranty at this point.

I'll post an update when I hear from them in case anyone else has this issue.

 

Freezing problem fixed! Details below in case anyone is interested.

I thought I'd post a follow up to my issue in case anyone else comes across it. I sent my notebook back to Sager along with a VERY detailed note. They were only able to reproduce the problem once, but couldn't get it to freeze after that. At first they wanted to just change my hard drive, but I had already bought two brand new drives and the freezing still continued. I knew it wasn't the hard drive. My memory tested fine according to all of the memtests done.

I spoke to the guys at Sager a few times about it and had told them that I had seen a couple of posts online of people having similar issues and switching out the motherboard seemed to work for them. Sager said that they have never come across this freezing issue and they couldn't find anything wrong per-say with my laptop. They ended up putting in a new motherboard, new video card, and new memory. I don't know which of the 3 worked, but my laptop is no longer freezing! Since the memory tested fine before I am guessing that it wasn't the memory. My bet is that it was the motherboard that did it, but I don't know for sure.

Anyway, I hope this info is useful to someone down the road.