Notebook Freezing

[Chandler]

My mum's notebook is developing an increasingly serious lockup problem.  When we first got it, it would lock up every once in a blue moon and then it stopped and has been fine for about two years.

Recently though it's begun freezing again.  It seems to both of us that the frequency of the lockups is increasing too.

It froze whilst OE was compacting folders the other day and when I attempted to recover the old database with my DOS disk recovery software (which too was mangled when I eventually recovered it) the scan by the recovery software would freeze in exactly the same place each time.  However, putting the drive in a 2.5"-3.5" adapter and running a whole host of tests revealed nothing wrong, and SMART stats were all at 100%.

Hardware specs:

• Time Traveller Laptop (Mitac 7321 clone)
  
• AMD mobile Athlon 4 1600+
  
• S3 Twister-K graphics (VIA KM133 chipset)
  
• 384MB PC133 RAM
  
• 80GB Hitachi hard drive
  
• Windows XP Professional SP2

What I've tried so far:

• Replaced the 256MB stick of Hynix RAM with a known-good Crucial stick.  When attempting to find out where the 128MB is made up, I found out that 128MB are actually surface mounted on the motherboard itself - a really poor design choice IMHO
  
• Latest BIOS (did fix some issues with screen going blank when changing resolutions but not much else)
  
• Latest S3 drivers
  
• Latest VIA drivers
  
• Changing from AMDK7 driver to standard driver and setting Power Scheme to "Always On" (to eliminate PowerNow!)

I'm at a loss here.  I'm really beginning to suspect the memory chips mounted on the motherboard in which case the whole system will probably have to be scrapped as it's not economical to have those replaced (and they can't be disabled as far as I can tell).

Incidentally it ran Memtest86 overnight without freezing.  ???

When it does freeze it really is frozen - CPU fan running at 100%, no activity whatsoever.  Checking temperature of CPU afterwards indicates no more than 45C so I doubt it's thermal protection kicking in (unless that component has a fault).

[query]

I would run a thorough diagnostic on the hard drive next.

[Chandler]

Thanks for the replies.

That is indeed the next plan.  The system had similar problems which seemed to go away when I replaced the original hard drive.  I really hope it isn't the hard drive, but it is a Hitachi Travelstar so I guess all bets are off.

I managed to find an identical machine for ?115 on eBay, and that should hopefully arrive later in the week (hopefully, because I intend to drive home Friday night).  If the hard drive scan comes up clean then I'll swap the two machines around and then bring the bad one back with me and work on it here at university.  If I get both going then my mum says she'll have one for home and one for doing presentations.

SpinRite seems as good a tool as any to test the hard drive with (it's a very fascinating thing to watch doing its work too).

[Chandler]

Well, the new machine arrived this morning and seems I definately got a great deal on it.  The plastics and screen are immaculate, and functionality wise it seems OK.  It hardly looks like it's been used - there are no signs of wear on either the base or the keyboard.

I was expecting to have to replace the hard drive, but I gave it a run with SpinRite and there were no problems.  I've got the recovery CDs and original COA too which was a bonus.

In fact the only thing wrong with it appears to be wrong with it is one of the rubber feet is missing.  I can live with that. :)  I'd probably be kicking myself if I'd sold it for that price; I'd watched two identical models and they went for around ?250.

[Chandler]

Well, I've been using the other laptop for a week now and it's not had any problems at all.  Bring it home, and the first day of use it locks up solid just like the other one does. >:(

It looks like it's probably the wireless network card that's the problem.

[Chandler]

It seems I was wrong about the wireless card.  The older laptop still freezes and the newer laptop still blue screens without it in.

Unfortunately it seems that the new laptop is faulty.  It passed 2 days of Memtest86 tests with flying colours, yet in Windows XP it would give random blue screens, even in Safe Mode.  So, I decided to try Prime95 on it, and it fails within 2 minutes with a bad calculation, every single time.

Faulty CPU?

[Igloo]

Seems like it, though, im not sure, I dont know if there is anyway to test the old cpu in the new laptop?

THat could atleast try and eliminate the CPU (unless the old is a dud too?)