Random Freezes with the 8130 and 8150

Well I installed my own drive, and my own copy of Windows.

So mass imaging wasn't an issue, as before SP1 I also experienced freezing issues..

 

Not to mention several people have said they have tried formatting/clean install of OS but the freezes come back. I think the people who havent had freezes yet are just lucky enough to have received a bit more stable hardware.

This issue is happening on multiple Sager laptops, some Asus laptops, as well as desktops. It happens on systems that have various RAM configurations, Nvidia cards and ATI cards, Windows 7 and Ubuntu. The only thing all these systems have in common is the (already known to be flawed) Sandy Bridge processor. Draw your own conclusions.

 

I thought it was the motherboard that was flawed...not the Sandy Bridge processor.

 

It was only the SATA controller, and I think he's making the assumption that there's an issue with SB CPU as well. I doubt it though. I just hope the root cause of the issue is identified and easily corrected. For me, I clearly hope before I send my laptop in for a mobo swap for the SATA controller. I'd be ticked if I don't have the issue now, then get a new mobo that ends up exhibiting the issue.

 

I'm not really assuming that the SB processor is the cause of the problem, (and I really hope isn't) but it sure seems suspect since it is the only commonality on all these systems and 2 different operating systems. At this point, with all the people who have fixed it by upping the ram voltage, I would say it's more to do with that.

 

Has anyone run memtest for 7-8 hours to see if it locks up? If it crashes in memtest, it's a hardware issue for sure.

 

Memtest would be good

Personally, seeing lockups and BSODs on desktops have largely been due to failed RAM

I doubt it's the CPU that's failed - that would be a huge huge issue, and I doubt that one would slip through the cracks. Memory or chipset is most likely imo

 

As I've said in a previous post, I've ran memtest86+ overnight, which was a little more than 5 passes, without experiencing any freezing.

What I really want to know is what Sager is doing about this. I emailed them at the beginning of the week letting them know that SP1 doesn't fix this problem for me as they had assumed, and they still haven't responded. Given that a significant number of people are experiencing this freeze, I find it hard to believe that they can't reproduce the problem on their machines.

 

Oh cool, I hadn't seen the post about upping RAM voltage fixing it in this thread. That doesn't seem too bad of a fix. Can you adjust RAM voltage in the 8130/50 BIOS?

 

Failed memory huh? I moved my so-dimms from the slots under the keyboard to the slots under the access panel and I haven't had any more freezing issues. I was however concerned that the memory speed and capacity were written in pen on a sticker. LOL

 

Are you guys using stock RAM from Sager or did you buy your own? I'm using all my own 4x4GB G.Skill 1333Mhz. Maybe the Apacer stuff (assuming that's what's used) is having issues. I mean memory is built by only a handful of suppliers right? Maybe it's everything to do with one supplier's modules.

 

Next, I'm waiting for someone with branded memory that has been overvolted and proven with multiple passes of memtest to say "nope, mine's freezing too". LOL.

 

Sorry, I'm working on a netbook and reading through posts isn't easy, sometimes I miss a few. That's good news though, if it's OS/Software related, that makes it much easier to fix in theory.

 

Experienced another freeze, even with all audio devices disabled. So another theory bites the dust.

 

I have OCZ 1333 that I bought myself and I'm getting freezes. I havent ran memtest yet. Hopefully I can do that in the next few days

 

Can someone like set the GPU to stay at normal clocks and see if it still crashes doing stuff that usually crashes? I don't think someone has really tried this yet.

 

Out of all the 8130/8150/8170's out there right now how many are freezing and how many arent?
Maybe it would be best if someone started a poll to assess how widespread it is and to determine what is different with those thatndont have the problem...

 

How do you do this? I set the power management mode in the nvidia control panel to "prefer maximum performance", but the system monitor is showing that the clock is still dropping to a minimum frequency when I'm not doing graphics intensive stuff.

 

Is the 485m even supported by nibitor?

 

Uh... We don't have to go to modding the bios that serious. Maybe try running a game in window mode. That should keep the clock from dripping. Not sure if it would work or not. Using a GPU overclock tool and set the mhz up by 1 from the regular clocks? Will this keep the clocks constant?

 

I was just talking to my friend and he described exactly the same freezing behavior that I observe, but on a desktop machine. However, the cause of his freezes was that his power supply was not big enough to fully power his CPU and GPU at 100% simultaneously, which is not the case for me and I assume for you too. I've already verified this with stress testing software. I say this to point out that just because many people are describing similar symptoms doesn't mean the causes of those symptoms are identical. Apparently Windows likes to freeze in the same way in response to a variety of failures.

 

anyone willing to try a beta hotfix from MS? read about it here and here
here's the direct link to download it (the ms agreement page)

several sites say to be sure and reboot twice after installing

 

I'm interested in buying an 8130, and the freezes are a bit concerning to me.

Having read the whole thread, it sounds like there may be two distinct issues here:

1. "Idle freezing", where the machine does not come back from a power state change (sleep/hibernate). This has been observed in both Win7 and Linux, and there could be for different reasons for each.

2. "Live freezing", where the display and sound freeze while using the machine. This has been observed only on Win7, so far as I can tell.

Since there have been no reports of "live freezing" on linux that I have noticed, it's still plausible that this is a Windows or software/driver configuration issue, and the power management issues are something else. Bad drivers or video hardware faults (caused by bad HW or power) tend to manifest as live freezes in my experience. Without a blue screen & kernel dump, or a kernel debugger attached to the machine, it's hard to tell what state the machine was in when it failed.

 

Hi guys,

I have one of these bad boys on pre-order and have been watching and waiting for quite some time now. With regard to this issue am I correct in my observation just from sigs. that this issue seem to be prevalent with 460/470 owners, i just happened to notice a large majority seemed to have that config. as opposed to the GTX485. I havent had time to thoroughly reinspect every page just throwing it out there, how are the GTX 485 owners travelling?

EDIT: would also allow this issue to effect the 50 as well as the 30 series.

EDIT 2: Hizzaah on page 16 already had this covered, doh.

 

Lets see, with the bios on the 8130 I can switch from AHCI mode to IDE, set the boot sequence and change the system date/time. That's about it. Worst bios I've ever seen. Only thing I don't like about this laptop.

 

will the bios improve? or is this just how sager bios are...?

 

clevo is always developing new bioses for their existing models so i wouldnt worry too much about the bios

 

I don't think this hotfix addresses the same problem. The KB article (2265716) says that during the freeze the system still responds to pings, which I have just confirmed is not the case for my freeze.

On an unrelated note, has anyone gotten a blue screen with error code c000021a when rebooting after a freeze? This is the first time it's happened to me. I got the same blue screen on two consecutive reboots but the third time windows started normally. I didn't change anything between the second and third reboots except turn on boot logging, which makes me think there's some kind of weird time dependence here.

The exact blue screen message is:

stop c000021a {Fatal System Error}
The initial session process or system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0x00000000 (0xc0000001 0x001004b0).
The system has been shut down.

 

AFAIK Sager doesn't make BIOS'. They make stickers that go on a Clevo with their name on it.

 

Okay this is getting insane. I've experienced 3 freezes within an hour with almost all unnecessary devices (camera, fingerprint reader, wireless, bluetooth, all sound, usb 3.0) disabled. The optical drive didn't have a disk in it. The flash plugin wasn't running and I wasn't playing any games. All I had open was powerpoint, foxit reader, and firefox, and I was reading this forum. This seems to support some_random_guy's theory that the freezes are caused by the chipset.

Another symptom I've noticed when the computer freezes my usb devices sometimes lose power, and new devices that I try to plug in after the freeze never get powered.

Edit: Just noticed that the ads on this site are flash, so flash was running when the freezes happened. I've now uninstalled flash player.

 

Off topic, I know, but Firefox + AdBlock Plus is a great way to surf.

Eagerly following this thread as I'm considering ordering a Sager, but this freeze issue is definitely a deterrent.

 

You could just use flashblock too.

 

Just to be clear I have absofrickinlutely no idea what's causing the freezes. I when I talk about stuff like the chipset being the only common factor I do so because then someone much smarter than me might figure out how to fix the issue lol.

 

No freezes for 24 hours! I have no idea if I have just been lucky or what but I went to windows update and noticed there was an optional update to "improve reliability." I started to read what the update actually fixed but then I figured "it improves reliability so it's getting installed."

After installing it I left my laptop on all night and woke up to a black screen today. I moved the mouse and, much to my surprise, the login screen appeared. My laptop was not frozen!

The weird thing is that I have the screen set to never turn off, sleep mode is disabled and I don't have it set to require a password on resume anyway. Windows update is set to download but let me choose when to install so it didn't reboot in the middle of the night from that either.

When I got to work I let my laptop just idle for 2 hours and it never froze. I can't remember if it has EVER gone 2 hours before. Anyways, whatever that update did, my laptop has had unprecedented reliability for the last 24 hours. Maybe just luck though.

*edit - Here is the update description. Doesn't seem directly related but this freezing problem is so strange that I'm not ruling anything out at this point:
"Assume that you run an application that uses Direct2D or Direct3D and that hosts Windows Internet Explorer components on a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2. In this situation, the application may crash.

 

Nice man. I think others have reported improvement with the windows update too.
Did Microsoft come out with new software to deal with new processors? Maybe this is an issue an they have only started to fix it recently?

 

Oooooh kay got me there lol

 

We shall see...as I said, to me, the update doesn't seem directly related to the freezing problem but who knows. If I still haven't had a freeze a month from now then I'll be happy to say the update fixed it.

Since people running the Ubuntu OS have experienced the same freezing problems I will be very reluctant to say any Windows update solved everything (although I am hopeful that one will.)

 

As I mentioned a few posts up -- the only reported freezes on Ubuntu are related to changes in power states. On Windows, a similar issue has been reported, but there have also been more serious problems with "live freezing" while actually using the machine. It would be a mistake to assume that all of these have the same common cause.

It's a very plausible theory that both OS's have had issues with handling sleep on this hardware, and that Windows has had some additional issues that led to intermittent freezes during use. I would not rule out the theory that changes deployed in Win7 SP1 and Windows Update could make a significant difference.

 

Why not, if linux has the same issues, who knows.

 

I've already installed this update but it's not helping with my freezes. If yours have gone away I imagine it's something else you did, or we have completely different problems.

 

Yeah but everyone I can remember (including myself) has said that they turned off sleep and hibernate as one of the first troubleshooting steps. Unless sleep mode never actually deactivated and manifested as a screen freeze instead. That would help explain my laptop's state this morning. I'm dying to hear what caused this when it is finally resolved for sure.

 

To follow up on my last post -- everyone is calling their symptom a "freeze", but that can mean several different things. When describing your problems, it would be good to differentiate:

1. Stuttering - machine hangs temporarily but comes back, usually within a few seconds to a minute. (I'm not sure if this has been reported or not.) Usually caused by delays in kernel (OS or driver), sometimes related to HW unresponsiveness. This is sometimes a compatibility issue for certain SSD's, for instance.

2. Freezing while in use - machine hangs while in use and does not come back; still has picture and/or stuttering sound. Often caused by bugs in kernel (OS or driver), or hardware fault.

3. Freezing on power state transitions - machine hangs on way into or out of sleep, hibernate, etc. and does not come back.

 

It should be called stuttering then..

That's what I used to experience..

 

I experience #2 mostly. To summarize what I've said before, my freeze is characterized by:

1. Total screen freeze. The last image is preserved, the mouse can't be moved.

2. Speaker loops random noises, most likely what was being played when the freeze occurs.

3. Num, scroll, capslock lights don't respond to toggle keys.

4. Computer doesn't respond to ping requests.

5. Windows doesn't respond to USB devices plugged in after the freeze, i.e. they don't get powered.

Although I haven't tried leaving the computer in this state for more than a few minutes to see if it recovers, I seriously doubt it would.

 

Ditto, either while idling or watching video but never while gaming. I could swear we already covered this.

 

I did set the GPU (HDMI) sound to stereo instead of 5.1 in playback devices. I read somewhere that solved the DVD playback freezing. Strange if that fixed everything though since I've had freezes when I didn't even have the HDMI connected and was only using the laptop sound scheme.

I will set it back to 5.1 and let it idle for a few hours tonight and report back.

 

Ok so after 2.5 hours of idling I come back and no frozen screen. I had the HDMI sound settings at 5.1 surround this time. The only other thing I can think of that I have changed is a setting in the BIOS to make the Bluetooth remember it's on/off setting when starting up.

jzxu, I don't know why its been so stable for so long (and who knows it may freeze before I get done typing this) but ever since I installed that optional "reliability" update I haven't had any issues whatsoever.

 

A few relevant questions at this point:

1. What reseller did you buy your laptop from?

2. Why aren't they involved in this thread?

3. Have you had any correspondence with them that you can share in regards to distance support?

4. Why haven't you used your warranty if its that serious of a problem?

 

1. What reseller did you buy your laptop from?
- XoticPC

2. Why aren't they involved in this thread?
- Maybe they are lurking. They are probably still in the "gathering information" stage.

3. Have you had any correspondence with them that you can share in regards to distance support?
- I contacted them early on asking how we would be notified once Sager's recall begins. They said we would have to keep an eye on Sager's website.

4. Why haven't you used your warranty if its that serious of a problem?
- Because this would be the perfect laptop if it was reliable. If I warranty it I would have to settle for a different laptop since 8130s are awaiting the new chipsets/motherboards. So I'm waiting for the recall to get a new motherboard and hopefully the issue will be resolved one way or another by then.

Also, my laptop froze up again right after I got done typing this lol. 1st time in almost 2 days of constant use. Only thing I changed was that I set the task bar to auto-hide.

 

I just got off the phone with Sager, they basically told me they have no idea what's going on and they're just waiting to start the recall hoping the motherboard replacement will fix the issue. I'm not sure what to expect if I send the laptop back to my reseller (xoticpc, who did have a representative in here when the thread was young). It doesn't seem like they'd be able to fix it, and I don't really want to return it for another computer as it's one of the only gaming notebooks with a matte screen and is a great value.

Anyway, this problem isn't too terrible. It only seems to happen when I'm playing Fallout 3 or using flash, and as long as it doesn't freeze while I'm working I don't really care too much. If it's still freezing after the recall, then I would return it.