Sager 9150 Random Freezes!

My laptop seems to be randomly freezing. Sometimes it happens when I am browsing the web, plugging in a USB device, or just playing a simple windows game. It has yet to freeze on me while playing an actually game that uses the 7970m. It is a hard lock. Can't move the mouse, or bring up the task manager. I have to do a hard reset to get it to work again. Any idea what this could be? I have all stock drivers. Could it be the AMD drivers? SSD? Bad cpu? I got it on Thursday and it has frozen at least 6 times since then.

 

Has it ever BSOD? If so, use bluescreenview to see if there are any stored BSOD dumps. My bet would be a memory problem...run memtest for a couple hours or even over night to see if it comes up with any errors. Is there anything you do that seems to bring about the crash more frequently, or is it really appearing to be random?

 

bad RAM modules, SSD fail and/or bad drivers

you might want to reinstall windows and see if it fixes it

 

Also sometimes the screen just goes totally black. The power is still on blue button glows, but no screen.

 

Thanks no BSOD just freezes. I'll run a memory test right now.

 

i had a dodgy windows update that totally screwed my system up a week ago. took 3 reinstalls of windows before it fully has gone back to normal.
i had all the black screens with mouse pointer showing.

 

On a side note is it weird that my hdmi cable will not fit into my hdmi port. It is a standard cable and it looks like it will fit. :/

 

MrDJ what update was that?

 

good point.
im not sure as after it started crashing i couldnt even boot so done clean instal. first update had over 130 updates which all worked. then yesterday i had service pack 2 which loaded as well but there was also one that failed but i cant see which one it was cos id doesnt show any as failed.
there are now 2 more updates but im not loading them yet.
so at the moment its a mystery

 

Why are you running XP?

Sent from my G73JH using KeyBoard

 

Just to add to my list of problems. I had to reboot 4 times to get into windows. It would load up to the Sager boot screen, and freeze. I could choose f2 or f7 boot I couldn't get into the bios. After about 4 reloads it finally booted into windows. Any idea what issues this could be?

 

Any idea what could be up with my pc it almost seems like there is a loose connection between the screen and motherboard graphics. I'm going to give Xotic pc a call Monday to see if they can help. Hopefully I don't have to RMA it

 

Also ran memtest no errors.

 

whos running xp?

the hdmi plug is a very tight fit so play with it a bit and it should go in.

 

Hi thenewguy1337,

I just received my laptop last week and I am having the exact same problems as you described in your original post.

My laptop would freeze randomly and nothing will move until I do a hard reset. When I switch on the laptop, sometimes the screen will stay black or it will hang at windows startup logo. I have to reboot a few times to get into windows.

So far I have tried to swap hard drives, swap out the RAM modules. The problem still persists. I don't know what could be causing them.

Did you manage to fix your problem somehow?

 

I know you are asking others about these issues, but what hard drives are you using and what RAM are you using? Have both swapped items been confirmed/tested to be free of issues?

Are you plugged in or running on battery when you have these issues?

Could you also try resetting the BIOS? To do this, you will need to remove your keyboard to get to the CMOS battery and connector. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3tE4_qxG7s This video should help you figure out how to remove the keyboard and speaker panel to access the CMOS battery.

You will need to be very gentle with the twisted pair of wires that run into the white plug (I believe it is red/black pair) coming off of the battery. Disconnect it for about 30 seconds and then plug it back in.

If nothing above works, I would recommend contacting your reseller and having it sent in under RMA to get it checked out.

 

I vote SSD or HDD isssue. A dying hitachi "death"star gave me all these symtoms in my desktop build.

 

Hi Heihachi and m3noob,

thanks for the replies. I'm pretty sure it's not my hdd as both of them work and my computer would freeze even without hard disk in.

I thought that without hdd, I should be able to get to the BIOS at least but it freezes even before that.

On average, it takes 3-4 restarts before I can get through to the windows startup. It will freeze at the startup logo once every 3-4 times i manage to make it until here.

When i restart my computer, it is a 100% chance that it will freeze on the next restart.

I tried resetting the CMOS as you mentioned. The problem still persists however.

As for the RAM, I have 2x4GB. I tried swapping in the modules one by one as I don't have any spare dd3 to test. But freezes occur on both modules.

As of now, I am quite clueless on what could be causing the problem. I guess I will send it on RMA. But I hate to think that I will be laptopless for a couple of weeks more.

 

Aww man...so it's not hdd or ram so its gotta be board or cpu. Time to RMA.

...tapatalk...

 

before you rma it try the operating system disk and click repair to see if it finds any errors.
sounds like you need to reload windows just to check if it was a dodgy windows update like what happened to me.
took 3 reloads of vista before its all gone back to normal and working perfectly again.

 

I think I narrowed down the issue to the AMD 7970M...

I went ahead and installed windows 7 64 bit despite the freezes and surprisingly I could get into windows consistently although the system would freeze with a black screen if I restarted and I only needed to hard reset ONCE to get back into windows....

... that's until I installed the drivers for the 7970, then the system would just freeze at the windows logo no matter how many times i restarted.

so i went to safe mode and disabled the driver and I could get back into windows.

Then i tried installing both catalyst 12.6 and 12.7 beta. In both cases, device manager will report that "Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)" and windows will run on standard VGA graphics Adapter.

Note: windows will also freeze at the start up logo if i install the intel HD drivers instead of the AMD drivers that came on the dvd.

I was wondering if the above symptoms mean that my GPU is dud or if it is because of some driver problems...

 

that sounds like a ati driver problem but it could also be a duf card.
ive never used ati but there are loads and loads of posts on here with almost the same problem.
best search through the last 2-3 pages on clevo thread and also Gaming Thread as well.

 

Do you think I should RMA it or buy a new one? Shipping the system both ways is going to cost me at least $600 anyways.

 

Did replacement of the 7970m fix the issue?

I am experiencing the exact same issue. If I disable the 7970m in the Device Manager I am fine, I have tried different drivers and re installed windows twice.

 

Same thing happens here except the freeze would happen for 5 seconds then I would get mouse movement back. Usually happens when opening new tabs in Chrome. What happens is, the mouse works but I can't click anything for 10 seconds or so, and then the mouse freezes, but audio some times continues if a video is playing, but the screen itself freezes. 5 seconds later I hear a loud beep and then unfreeze to normal.

I agree that it may be the 7970m. It causes the BSODs with 12.11, and memtest showed no errors. Weird thing is that I never have these freezes while gaming. In fact, I think it has ONLY happened while using chrome when opening new tabs like I mentioned. Really annoying but since it only happens in Chrome I know it is some thing in my browser or plugins that is causing the problem. Possibly a loosely controlled loop in the code some where in Flash. I'll switch to Opera for troubleshooting.

Do you guys really NEVER have these temporary freezes? Has anyone literally never had one?

 

Hi tss,

Yes, I RMAed the unit and now it's working fine. To be sure that it's your card's fault, you could try to swap hard disks (it could be that your amd drivers lie spot on a bad sector), and swapping RAM modules (I did not have spare modules so I took out the modules and tested them one by one). If the problem persists one each and every module, then it's most likely your amd card.

Hope this helps.

 

Hey Ryuukan,

Thanks for your reply and advice. I am currently trying it on the 750gb HDD that I ordered with it. I was using my Plextor M3 128gb SSD and re installed twice was having a lot of issues. Now that I am on the HDD I am running back to back 3dmark tests. Surprisingly it appears more stable though I did have one hard lock while trying to run winsat.exe, so I am not totally convinced its working yet.

Also I want to be able to use my SSD and so this is not acceptable to me since it was running for almost 6 months perfectly in my other computer. It feels so much more sluggish running a rotational drive now heh.

I will be purchasing 16gb of Corsair ram soon so I will hopefully be able to rule the ram out once I get the replacements.