Athlon 4 - Lockups/Fans

[Chandler]

We purchased a used Athlon 4 notebook a few months ago which is a Mitac 7321 clone, specification as follows:

CPU: AMD Athlon 4 1600+
Chipset: VIA ProSavage KN133
VGA: S3 Twister-K

Initially, it came loaded with a pirated copy of Windows XP, which I was very unimpressed about, this soon got sorted out.

With a new copy of Windows XP Professional, I set it up (which meant using the 6no. boot floppys from MS) and installed SP1, all Hotfixes and drivers.  Everything was fine except that it would suffer from random crashes, it would occur either when in the t'internet (Northern England term) or when watching movies.  When it crashed, the whole thing would just lock, no BSOD or anything and the CPU fan comes on full just after.

I mucked around with different S3 drivers and updated AMDK7.SYS driver etc and seem to have got it stable but...

I keep in touch with my parents while at university using the video/voice facilities of Windows Messenger.  When using the Quantex this works perfectly, despite being quite an old machine, however with this new one, whenever the CPU fan kicks in the video and voice just freeze at both ends, i.e. they can't hear what I'm saying and I can't hear what they're saying.  Once the fan goes off everything comes from in little chunks (with bits missing).

Could the CPU be overheating?  I suspected this since the fan comes on, and maybe the PowerNow! technology is reducing the processor speed too, to a point where it isn't capable of sustaining audio over Messenger (which would mean a very low speed).

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Chandler]

Is no-one going to help with this problem?

Update:  Sorry about this poast, I didn't mean to come off sounding rude :-[ but upon reading it I do.

[query]

The CPU could be overheating - Compaq has shipped a lot of the Athlon4 systems (built by Inventec) and had several BIOS updates aimed at addressing heat problems - it's worth looking for a BIOS update.

There is a possibility the fan isn't properly grounded as well.

[Chandler]

Thanks for the reply, I'll take a look into these.

I have always wondered, should that thermal compound be used on notebook processors?  I have always put it onto desktops but on notebooks the heatsink/fan just seems to sit on top and screw in. ???

[Mark H]

I would say you would want to use thermal compound for the same reasoning as in desktops.

Mark H

[query]

Just be careful if you add thermal paste. The stuff is electrically conductive as well as thermally conductive, and the components in a notebook are crammed very tightly together - if it migrates away from the CPU, it could spell big trouble for the system board or other components.

[Mark H]

In addition to Query's warnings, don't use too much. Too much will act as an insulator instead of allowing heat to escape properly. One drop in the center of the processor is all that is necessary.

Mark H

[Chandler]

Well we've managed to sort out the Messenger Voice problem.  Rolled back the audio driver to the MS provided VIA AC97, rather than VIA's special drivers.

[Chandler]

I've just been told that this laptop is still locking up.  It happens when watching films or when talking with video on Windows Messenger.

When it locks up, the CPU fan goes on full and the thing it totally unresponsive.  Windows doesn't report a crash when it reboots so it's a hardware crash, not BSOD.