np5793 still freezing at random

clueless to what is wrong, yesterday I was doing some photoshop work and had itunes playing, then without warning the screen went bright blue & started flashing with the audio a nasty buzzzzzzz.

Now this morning, do the same stuff, the screen went dark red and corrupt and the music kept playing but I couldn't do anything.

Any ideas or is the laptop dying? I've only had it since December 09. Contacted the chap on ebay about it (I believe he's on this forums or was on these forums) but no reply yet. I can't afford to replace anything at this time either.

Help!

edit, it only only freezes when using normal apps, sofar I have had ZERO freezes while gaming which doesn't make a lot of sense if it is over heating..does it?

 

Do you have that notorious 8800M GTX? Could be the card that is slowly dying. If so, you could at least try baking the card which should revive it for a couple of months. Its not directly connected to overheating (overheating just decreases the life span of that card and increases the already high failure chance).

 

I do have a 8800M GTX but I'd rather not bake it. How come it plays games without any crashes or freezes? Yet If I playing some tunes or watch a video in wmp it likes to suddenly freeze. It's annoying.

 

You shouldnt bake it if its still running, but it seems to be just a matter of time until it completely fails and if that happens, baking it is the best option in you case. Changing drivers can also help, with some drivers my 8600M GT used to have the same problems, with other drivers it was running fine - but it still failed eventually. It also used to play all games fine until it failed. I also had a faulty GTX 260M that could run Furmark + Prime for 2 hours without a problem but would give me a blue screen after watching some avi for 15 mins... such things can happen. It turned out my GTX 260M had some faulty vram, lets hope that is not your problem since you will not be able to solve this by baking - buying a new card would be your only ooption in that case. But it is most likely that you just have one of those many faulty 8000M series GPUs.

 

did some reading on flashing 8800M GTX to 9800M GT and have just flashed mine, all seems good. I only did it because on some sites people were saying it fixed various things from screen corruption to other crashes. So we shall see....

 

ffs, it's still freezing, in fact it did it again a few minutes ago..last time I buy a laptop from ebay....

 

does anyone have any other ideas besides baking my video card?

ok, gave something else a try, flashed the vbios to the stock bios. *i have never overclocked the card either or used a overclocked bios*.

 

I saw similar symptoms on a different model, random freezing while streaming video or radio, or when watching movies with media player. Problem wasby the stupid vista drivers.

 

interesting, I never had a problem with vista on the laptop, but when I put seven on it, the freezing started a few months later. I've now upgraded all the outdated drivers and installed the latest hotfixes etc.

my wireless and nic drivers were old and my sound driver was a little out of date too.

 

These G92 cards unfortunately came very faulty...

But I think I have a theory. In the last months I've been thinking why this happen in low stress situations and not when the card is on full power.

One feature called Powermizer came to my attention. This feature downcloks and undervolts the GPU and VRAM when in 2D working situations.

There are three low power profiles. They switch between then when the card needs some extra juice in 2D mode. Things like seing a video that uses a DirectVA codec, some effects on windows AERO UI, etc, can trigger the card to the last low power profile.

But there is a problem with that. GPUs age, the components on the card itself age, and when they age they rise the need for voltage per clock.

As you can see, the voltage on all low profiles is the same! Despite the rise on the clock, wich in last profile can reach almost 80% of the 3D mode. Thats may be the cause!

It needs more voltage than just 0.85V on that last profile(performance level 2). Because it's not enough, and card becames instable, giving all kinds of artifacting and instability.

Code:

2D modes-------------
Performance Level 0
  Core Clk: 200.00 MHz
  Mem Clk: 100.00 MHz
  Shader Clk: 400.00 MHz
  Voltage: 0.85 V
  Fan Speed: 100%
Performance Level 1
  Core Clk: 275.00 MHz
  Mem Clk: 301.00 MHz
  Shader Clk: 550.00 MHz
  Voltage: 0.85 V
  Fan Speed: 100%
Performance Level 2
  Core Clk: 383.00 MHz
  Mem Clk: 301.00 MHz
  Shader Clk: 767.00 MHz
  Voltage: 0.85 V
  Fan Speed: 100%

3D mode--------------
Performance Level 3
  Core Clk: 500.00 MHz
  Mem Clk: 799.00 MHz
  Shader Clk: 1250.00 MHz
  Voltage: 1.00 V
  Fan Speed: 100%

It worth trying. First, change the powermizer feature to work with the 3D profile only. For that you can use the Powermizer Manager Tool:

Code:

http://somemorebytes.com/wp/wp-content/plugins/download-monitor/download.php?id=1

Check later, after reboot, with GPU-Z/CPU-Z if the card is fixed on the 3D frequencies.

Then use the computer on the tasks that could lead to the problems. If they don't appear, great!

Just use NiBiTor to change the voltage to 0.90 or 0.95V on the last low power profile(performance level 2) of your VBIOS. Flash it and it's done!

 

I've got another question, I just put some new thermal compound on the cpu, and then booted up to see if it was still working, I loaded cpu-z and noticed a (ES) next to the cpu name (never noticed that before) is my cpu a engineering sample or is the program reading my cpu wrong?

 

Sounds like you have an ES. Did you check the reported ID to see if it is coming back as an ES ID? Did you happen to note the ID on the chip before putting the thermal compound on?

 

Also, where did you but the laptop/cpu from?

 

I bought it from ebay from a guy on these forums called alitunay; http://forum.notebookreview.com/member.php?u=147506

I tried contacting him on ebay but got no response, I asked whether anyone who bought a laptop from him, had complained about faults etc. I was told he could be trusted by some users on this forum.

 

I wasn't looking at the time, I only noticed when i'd closed it up and booted it back up.

 

Give Everest Ultimate a shot, it can read whether your chip is an ES as well. If it says it is I would say it's highly likely.

 

I couldn't see anything in everest but the intel processor id tool said;

The tested Intel(R) processor appears to be an engineering sample, not a production processor. The utility is designed to support production Intel processors only. Sample processors are not warranted by Intel, and are not intended for resale.

edit, opened it up again, on the cpu it says ES clear as day. Something else I noticed was the wireless card says engineering sample not for re sale.

I also got a pm from the guy who sold it to me but all he said was check for dust and the freezing could be anything, so no help there. So now i'm left with an 8 month old, £700 laptop with dodgy parts which may or may not of been new.

This does not help my depression & anxiety.

What I'd like to know is if anyone else has bought a laptop from him only for it go bad? There must be someone, he is a member on this forum.

 

well the freezing seems to be getting worse it froze when I was just staring at a website, I could still move the mouse around and the fans stayed normal. Man this annoying, I wish I still had my old laptop, never had any problems with that other than it being too slow for gaming...

Been on ebay and did a search for video cards, damn they are ridiculously over priced. Don't see why they can't make them more available and cheaper. I think i'm better off saving for a new laptop altogether but not sager / clevo. I don't trust them anymore.

& don't buy from ebay seller alitunay.

 

ah screw it, I'm gonna bake the b*tch. Wish me luck.

 

success! card still works after bake, the black bit round the core curled up and came off but everything else seems fine. Just gotta see if it makes a difference, I've just played some eflc and no crashes or over heating. *touches wood*

oh and I had to drill through one of the screws that held the video card in place because it was real tight and I fudged the screw head trying to undo it, then I removed the remains with some pliers and cleaned up the dust.

 

Well, wadda know? After installing a new cpu and wireless card the machine seems to have a new lease of life. *pats self on back*