Strange crash on the Z1190

I had a weird issue with my new Z Series today. I wasn't home at that time and my girlfriend was using the computer to watch some videos online. From what she told me the screen suddenly went black and she heard a constant noise coming from the laptop (probably the fan). She called me and I confirmed that:
- the power was still on (green light)
- no SDD activity was present
- she unplugged the power cord but the graphics setting remained on speed (auto on)
- the laptop did not react to the keyboard
- Ctrl+Alt+Del didn't do anything
So finally I told her to force shut down the laptop and wait till I am back home. When I returned I booted the computer, Windows offered me safe mode but I chose the normal startup and everything seems fine since then. There seemed to be no errors in the logs from that time, no viruses or other security risks were found. I have no idea what actually happened. Did anyone else have a similar situation? Any ideas what might have caused the crash?

 

Hi, Nivel!

Yes, I've had exactly that crash, and the noise wasn't from the fan, it was the sound DMA continuously repeating the last data block that it had been sent. I haven't yet had the chance to isolate this since it happened before I installed the Windows debuggers and O.S. symbols on this machine, but they're there now. The next time I see this crash, I'll know whether it is the Intel wireless drivers or the nVidia GT 330m drivers, which are the two primary culprits. It's not a H/W problem, based on my investigations thus far.

FYI!
Mark

 

I've had this exact crash before. It is definitely a common problem, but I hope it doesn't happen again. I lost some work in the process..

 

I didn't hear the noise myself, I was only relying on my girlfriend's description It's good to hear that I'm not the only one with that issue and it's definitely good to hear that it's not a HW problem. What tools are you using to investigate this issue? I'm not very familiar with Windows debugging, but perhaps I can try doing some tracking down on my own.

 

Hi, Nivel!

The most useful help? Download the Windows WDK, burn a CD-ROM, then install the debuggers from that disk. After that, download the symbols which are relevant to 64-bit Windows 7, and you should be in business! It's quite handy for chasing down problems like this one. Note: If you can't find the problem initially, turn on O.S. debugging, and you'll have even more detail to work with.

Cheers!
Mark

 

Can u clarify a bit MJFlash? My laptop JUST did this.

I was playing some online poker...then the screen went blank (like when u first turn it on) and a constant clicking sound from the speakers. I had to force restart mine as well...has me a bit freaked

I have an F series if it matters.

 

When this happened to me I didn't get the clicking from the speakers, but the fan did go crazy. I thought it overheated or something.

Zoinks felt it was the nvidia drivers causing the issue, which could make sense. Did anyone have this happen on Stamina mode? Mine was on Speed.

 

I took these readings with speed fan just a few minutes ago...are these abnormally bad? I dunno....they've been staying pretty constant at those temps for the past 20 minutes or so.



Also, I did update my nvidia drivers recently to the modded ones for F series owners....i may rollback to the previous drivers if these temps are considered pretty bad.

These drivers in this thread.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=472664

 

I am not sure about the temps since i haven't done that, but how did you use F series drivers in the Z? The Z has the switchable graphics which makes it different from other PCs which is why most drivers won't work fo he Z.

 

In my first post you quoted, u'll notice I said I had an F Series

 

@crzytimes, the temps is normal, seeing that you are using i7, 44~46c doesnt hurt much. my p8600 varies around 36 ~39. so yeah. its fine.
the gpu temp is fine too.

@topic, as i do not have the new Z, i think it might be driver? (if the stamina mode do occured the problem too). maybe you can just log the temp, and analyze it when recover from the black blank screen.

 

Same thing happened to me. Was watching a 1080p trailer on youtube and it just froze -black screen and buzzing sound from speakers.

Looks like a serious bug. I have noticed that sony are very poor when it comes to testing their official drivers. I had a tx which crashed with the default touchpad driver. Swapped the notebook for a new one and same thing. Managed to find some stock alps touchpad drivers and that solved it.

The only reason I had an inkling that it was the touchpad at fault is that it always happened when I was scrolling using the normal one finger scroll. When the tx froze the little animation on the touchpad icon in the sys tray always had the blue line on the side - depicting that vertical scroll was engadged before the crash. What's even worse is that sony never bothered to release new drivers. I wonder how many people with tx were randomly crashing but just didnt know what could be the cause.

I fear that if this issue with vpcz (and other noteboks with 330m) is not brought to sony's attention they will never bother updating the current drivers.

 

Oops... Sorry about that. Wasn't expecting that since this is a Z thread.

 

I've got it as well with a 1080P movie(The Descent 2 ) I guess its really a serious bug. I hope we(or sony) can solve this thing.

edit: it was in speed mode.

 

Same thing happened to me last night while watching a video on CNN website. Pretty sure it was while in speed mode. Video was not even high resolution, but I did have it in fullscreen. Video seems to be the common denominator among most users who experience this.

 

Thank you sir.

Fair enough, after reading the OP though, it seemed more like a Vaio issue and not a "z" issue as i was the same symptoms and I didn't want to start an identical thread

 

Hi, Folks!

Sorry I've been off getting absorbed in my new iPad for a while! Gang, I'm sorry, but getting into kernel or driver debugging requires a steep learning curve that fills entire forums, so it would really be too much here. Let's start simply. If anyone has seen this crash while using hard-wired Ethernet (or when playing back video that's already stored on the drive), that would be a great way to help eliminate the WiFi driver. On the other hand, if everyone's been using WiFi, then we're back to my initial belief that it's either the WiFi or the video drivers.

Any exceptions out there?

Cheers!
Mark

 

I was using Wifi.

 

Same here: WiFi and I believe the video watched didn't download fully yet when it happened (I wasn't the one using the computer at that time).

 

I am actually using the slightly newer wifi drivers from intel's website. I still think the problem is nvidia drivers because I never had this crash when playing back all kinds of video content in stamina mode. While the first time I tried playing back the 1080p youtube video (testing the 10.1 rc release of flash player) using speed mode, it crashed.

 

i had a similar problem today. as i was opening up a webpage, the screen went blank (black) and the Z rebooted.
the error given by the windows was "bluescreen" something.

 

also, i have an Atheros card and not an Intel.

 

Hi, Folks!

Vask: I'm running the latest drivers which Intel has released - two revisions newer than Sony has released, and they're still causing the same class of problems for some of us unfortunate few.

CrzyTimes: Now that's truly interesting! While the code you're running is different enough to leave some doubt, that's the first intriguing evidence that I've seen which suggests that it may well be the nVidia drivers (which is especially hopeful since Intel's been unable to actually correct theirs, despite their best efforts). Anyone else have data that they could share with us?

Thanks, everyone, for helping to allow us to identify the real culprit here!

Cheers!
Mark

 

I'm afraid I can't add much at this point. So far I've only had the single crash, and I *have* been playing a lot of videos over WiFi.

I had some bizarre graphics corruption issues with a particular emulation game, but disabling the render cache seemed to solve it.

 

I can tell you this, I only had the crash once and it was in Speed Mode. I almost always run in Stamina mode because right now I am not doing graphic intensive stuff and on battery a lot. So I am thinking it has to be the nVidia drivers.

 

I have had this crash several times.... and the last time IT RECOVERED ITSELF!

I got a message saying the 330GT drivers had crashed BUT successfully recovered themselves... it was a little balloon popup down in the right hand system tray

I'm always in speed mode (manually toggled), Z11 with 256GB SSD 4GB RAM

the last time it crashed was when i opened a PDF file in explorer 8 as a webpage and was trying to print it

at least we know it is the NVIDIA drivers

 

I haven't had the hard freeze in a while, but it did stutter the other day whilst watching youtube.

It occured when the Windows 7 Autodimming feature kicked in and while on the Nvidia GPU.

Still think we have a bunk viddie driver. Not a huge issue, but should be addressed.

 

Hi, ZoinksS2K!

Indeed! Colonels' feedback would seem to cement the issue. We've got two known lockup/crash scenarios on the new Zs. First is a rare lockup caused by the Intel WiFi drivers, and the second is a much more prevalent and common lockup caused by the nVidia drivers. We'll keep our fingers crossed that Nautis is able to make more progress soon!

Cheers!
Mark

 

if there is a logfile recorded since it recovered itself tell me where to look for it and ill try and post it

 

update:

had crash again and it recovered again... this time i don't think i was doing anything similar to previous crashes

too slow to screenshot it but it said something like this

display kernel 1.88 has stopped responding.... but has recovered itself

 

Just had this crash 4 times today T_T. 3 times were from youtubbing. One time, my screen just turned black and wouldnt respond. =[

I believe I was in SPEED mode.

 

I am getting really tired of this crash. Every time I watch youtube in speed mode there is a good chance that the vaio will totally lockup.

Anyone know of aan official way to report such issues to sony so they would hurry up with updated drivers?

 

I faced exactly the same issue yesterday when I put it idlely for a while. I was also in speed mode and the Z freezed for a while.

 

I'm so sick of my Vaio crashing like this. Happened for the 5th time overall today. How does it look when I spend all this money for my computer to crash upon watching videos my 5 year old computer can handle flawlessly? What the hell is going on?! I'm getting really frustrated..

Anyone try calling Sony yet? I might do so tomorrow afternoon.. Getting sick and tired of this.

 

I was getting these crashes once every other day for awhile... Always right after I full screen a flash video in google chrome. I used to leave it in auto mode, so I decided to see if I will still get these crashes in Speed or Stamina mode. So far I haven't gotten a single crash yet. Its either that or selecting Performance Mode in Thermal Control Strategy. I really doubt its either and I am just lucky this week.

 

I had one of these last night - but it wasn't when playing a video, it was in a game (nothing fancy - Visual Pinball 9).

 

I've had this happen to me randomly, seemingly when i leave it alone and it turns the screen off / goes to suspend.

The weirdest thing is that one time the system was off but wouldn't turn on no matter what (removed battery, held power for 10 secs). I had to plug it in and it booted fine, then I removed the power cord a few seconds later and everything worked. It was like it needed a jump start or something. Hope it doesn't become a common occurrence.

 

This happens to me when I am streaming videos too, HD or regular. I am connected through an Ethernet cord, so it can't be the wireless. Is there a solution to this? I tried to talk to some dude in sony support, and he said do a system restore. Which I do not think would solve the problem. Is there a way to fix it?

 

I had this issue twice again. Both are in speed mode. This happens when I was playing a game and adjusting the resolution.

1. The sims 3 900P windows mode -> 1080p full screen
2. football manager editor 1080p full screen -> windows mode/pressing the start button on the keyboard

Just be patient. I force shut down at 1. but I wait for 2.
The machine will be freeze for about 10 minutes with black screen and it will finally come back.

 

I have duplicated this crash consistently but not sure if it is video driver related. This crash reboots entire system in 30 seconds.

It happens usually when I'm mounting a truecrypt volume or external drive with truecrypt encryption. It might be a windows 7 issue as I've heard it has problems with how it deals with networked volumes

 

how can you be patient if it buzzes nonstop?

 

any of you guys try flash beta?

 

is it possible to be i7 fault, considering that Sony cannot deliver z11 with i7 at least for now?
did anybody have problems with z11 i5?

 

yeah i had it today.
first time after more than a month. git i5-540 and it was in speed mode. im pretty sure its caused by nvidia driver cause i watch youtube videos all day without ac, meaning in stamina mode. nothing ever happened. today in speed mode, youtube and crach with reboot.

anything new on this??

 

For those who are getting the crash:

Can you disable Adobe Flash's hardware acceleration? Not sure what that will do to video performance, but it may bypass the lockups.

To disable this, you need to:

1. Open your Flash video of choice
2. Right-Click on the video or animation
3. Select Settings
4. Uncheck "Enable hardware acceleration"

If the issue persists or the video playback quality is poor, re-enable the acceleration in Flash and try some of these.

In the Nvidia Control Panel:

1. Disable PhysX GPU Acceleration
2. In 3D Settings, under "Adjust image settings with preview," set to "Use the Advanced 3D image settings
3. In 3D Settings, under "Manage 3D settings," reset all values to defaults on the "Global Settings" tab (hit restore button)
4. Under Video, set "Edge enhancement" and "Noise reduction" to "Use the NVIDIA setting." I'd recommend leaving the slider at 0%, but have at it if you want.

Let us know what you've set for each of these and your results.

 

Oh, also, please post your screen refresh rate and color depth at the time of the crash as well.

 

Does anyone experience the BLACK SCREEN OF DEATH after viewing videos on Windows Media Player?

 

Thanks for the solution.

What about for Windows Media Player?

 

The stuff I posted wasn't a fix. It is for troubleshooting.

Did it work? What did you try?

 

I have this crash on my Envy frequently too. lol