Laptop issue, might need a new one

[aja8888]

PS. Eh, I am not sure I would attempt the rebuild of an old Onan RV genset, like I know some "old man" recently did.

I hear that "old man" also restored a 1971 VW Beetle last year! He must be crazy or have no friends (or both!)!

 

[NW-Bound]

See!

Nowadays, my endurance is a lot better with repairing electronics than oily and dirty mechanical parts.

I can do the former inside on my electrostatic-safe work bench, in the comfort of AC, instead of crawling around on the garage floor and getting my hands, face, and clothes all soiled from dirt and grease.

 

[omni550]

Every boot ISO is not capable of booting every model computer. There may be additional parameters you need to specify. Much time can be invested.
If the computer has 2 memory modules, research how to remove 1 at a time, and see if you dodge the freeze after running for a while.

It does have 2 memory sticks. Is it possible to 'remove'(deactivate one) without physically removing?

 

[omni550]

I root for Omni550.

Don't forget that she was an engineer. And although a ME and not an EE, she successfully revived a large LCD TV that someone discarded.

Omni550 is my heroine.

If engineers threw in the towel so easily, we would not have the technologies we do now.

PS. I never did have this problem launching Memtest86. By the way, it can be run from Windoz, if I remember correctly.

Let's not forget my successful diagnose and repair of my leaking Florida dishwasher. Lol

 

[aja8888]

See!

Nowadays, my endurance is a lot better with repairing electronics than oily and dirty mechanical parts.

I can do the former inside on my electrostatic-safe work bench, in the comfort of AC, instead of crawling around on the garage floor and getting my hands, face, and clothes all soiled from dirt and grease.

New auto parts are not dirty and oily . Believe it or not, that old man had a successful computer repair business between 1996 and the late 2000's when it was sold. Repaired many laptops and desktops and installed network wiring, routers, switchgear, etc.

Honestly, today's laptops are thinner and more complex with more hard feature chips on the motherboards making them more disposable. Add the nonsense of Win 10 and all the possible software issues that can pop up, it's sometimes more efficient to replace a machine rather than go through hours of troubleshooting to maybe figure it out.

A repair shop would have a configured disk or flash drive that was loaded with routines to run a quick hardware test. If no problems surfaced, they would do a reinstall of Windows and see what happens. All of this would be about $200 and you may get lucky. If they had to replace RAM or a hard drive, the cost would be in addition to the $200. If not, they would recommend a new laptop.

Nowadays, We run two aged desktops and a Chromebook. DW has an Ipad. Laptops are sitting in the closet gathering dust.

 

[bjorn2bwild]

Yes, I changed the order in BIOS...and heard the CD spinning along with a small green indicator light on the CD cartridge.

Trial #2 ended in a freeze at 36 minutes.

Stepping back a little..... There may be a problem booting from the CD. This is not confirmation of a successful boot - i.e. you will not enter the familiar Win 10 desktop environment, instead there will be a different booting process where the Linux desktop contained on the CD appears. Just checking.

 

[target2019]

It does have 2 memory sticks. Is it possible to 'remove'(deactivate one) without physically removing?

Sorry, I don't know of a way to deactivate installed memory. It is not difficult.
One benefit is that you may find reinstalling module makes a difference.

 

[easysurfer]

It does have 2 memory sticks. Is it possible to 'remove'(deactivate one) without physically removing?

Depending on the laptop, the RAM chips may or may not be located in the same area. I currently own two laptops. One has the chips located in same area. The other has one chip located by unscrewing a small back door and the other chip located under the keyboard.

In either case, before taking out a chip, be sure to unplug power and remove laptop battery.

 

[pb4uski]

I would have gone with a new laptop about 87 posts ago.

 

[Yarnstormer]

4 years is pretty good for a laptop! My satellite died it was weird - some known issue where it suddenly locks you out when you have never made a password. It was so old and slow I just bought a new one. The satellites did have a problem with ventilation so it would run hot. Now I do all my emails online and back up files regularly!

 

[omni550]

Depending on the laptop, the RAM chips may or may not be located in the same area. I currently own two laptops. One has the chips located in same area. The other has one chip located by unscrewing a small back door and the other chip located under the keyboard.

In either case, before taking out a chip, be sure to unplug power and remove laptop battery.

Both chips are side by side. Access is by removing the entire bottom cover, which incudes battery removal.

I haven't given up on running Memtest86 yet. [emoji16]

 

[pb4uski]

I have to admit omni, you are tenacious.

 

[easysurfer]

Both chips are side by side. Access is by removing the entire bottom cover, which incudes battery removal.

I haven't given up on running Memtest86 yet. [emoji16]

Looks like the challenge is almost getting fun for you now .

 

[omni550]

I appreciate all the helpful suggestions. Thanks.


Still can't get Memtest86 to run....even downloading from a different site...

Brain is tired. Taking a break for the rest of the evening.

(Starting to feel a bit like Edison...when he said he'd "found 1000 items that wouldn't work as a filament" )

---

I did find some guy who posted on tenforum.com (for Win10 issues) about a year ago with seemingly the same laptop freezing issue on a different brand of laptop. There are more than 11 pages of "try this, do that, run xyz, etc..". I'm not sure what/if anything did the trick, as he posted 4 days ago that the issue seems to have recurred. He's in a hot part of the country, so it may be a heat-related issue in his case.

omni

 

[easysurfer]

I appreciate all the helpful suggestions. Thanks.


Still can't get Memtest86 to run....even downloading from a different site...

Brain is tired. Taking a break for the rest of the evening.

(Starting to feel a bit like Edison...when he said he'd "found 1000 items that wouldn't work as a filament" )

---

I did find some guy who posted on tenforum.com (for Win10 issues) about a year ago with seemingly the same laptop freezing issue on a different brand of laptop. There are more than 11 pages of "try this, do that, run xyz, etc..". I'm not sure what/if anything did the trick, as he posted 4 days ago that the issue seems to have recurred. He's in a hot part of the country, so it may be a heat-related issue in his case.

omni

You can't get Memtest86 to boot properly? As mentioned in a previous post, not everything boots on all computers. I've had that trying to boot supposedly bootable CD/DVDs with my Dell laptop.

You may end up having to try the one RAM stick at a time approach. It's very unlikely that both would bad at the same time. So you try running with one at a time and hope (to isolate) that one makes your computer stop, and the other not.

If each RAM stick works when run individually, then looks like RAM is okay and back to the drawing board.

 

[SecondCor521]

It does have 2 memory sticks. Is it possible to 'remove'(deactivate one) without physically removing?

Not that I know of. Usually physically removing them is straightforward: turn off power, ground yourself, move the little clips to the side, and the memory module will usually pop up (they're sort of spring loaded). Reinstallation is reverse of removal, just make sure the little gold contacts are fully and squarely seated before trying to snap the module back down - if you don't get it right the little side clips usually won't click back in completely. Oh, and there is often a rounded notch in the center of the memory module on the same edge as the gold contacts - it is slightly off center so that it can only be installed in the correct orientation.

Windows should be able to cope with the memory being removed and added between powerups, although it may run more slowly with less memory, and you may get a message saying something like "Hey, I noticed that the amount of memory changed" which you can ignore.

I like the idea of removing one, running for a while, then running with the other one for a while.

 

[easysurfer]

If testing by removing one RAM stick at a time, hopefully, one RAM stick will work and the other will fail. If that happens, then you've found the culprit as a bad RAM stick.

On the other hand, if the laptop still stops with each RAM stick tested independently, then that doesn't isolate the problem as the issue can still be something else and not bad RAM.

If the laptop works with each RAM stick tested independently, then there is even a bigger mystery .

 

[Sunset]

.
....

I tried blowing compressed air through all the holes I could see in the case...very little dust came out. But based on photos I've seen, sometimes the dust accumulates in certain internal areas and won't hardly budge.

...

I still think the issue is overheating, even if some software told you it was not.

Blowing into the machine, simply will pack in the dust, I use a vaccum to suck out the dust/hair/bugs/etc rather than push it farther in.

Best would be to open the case, then you could blow the dust off.

 

[ejman]

I think this is one of the most entertaining threads I've seen for a while. Thank you omni550 for not giving up

 

[NW-Bound]

Omni550 is not one that gives up easily.

In the thread where she asked for help to resurrect a large LCD TV, not too many posters could offer advice. It was because the problem was more specific to a particular model of a particular brand, and it was not as generic as PC problems.

Yet, she emerged triumphant later, using resources outside of this forum.

Omni550 is a true engineer in my book. If and when she throws in the towel, we know for sure that this laptop is hopeless. But it is not at that point.

 

[NW-Bound]

One of these days, I will tell you about my effort to conquer a software bug in an application software. It involved multiple PCs, multiple Windoz versions, and took me almost a week.

With that personality, I am one who roots for Omni, and am willing to bet that she will prevail.

 

[bjorn2bwild]

I did find some guy who posted on tenforum.com (for Win10 issues) about a year ago with seemingly the same laptop freezing issue on a different brand of laptop. There are more than 11 pages of "try this, do that, run xyz, etc..". I'm not sure what/if anything did the trick, as he posted 4 days ago that the issue seems to have recurred. He's in a hot part of the country, so it may be a heat-related issue in his case.

omni

Successfully booting from the CD, (unplugging the HD would be best) and getting the same effect removes the hard drive and its OS as suspect. The salient clue here is the predicable freeze-up at regular intervals - that suggests a thermal or processing bottleneck trigger. If it was a thermal trigger, it should freeze quicker when booted a second time, third time etc...
Testing one memory stick at a time by the removal/replace method will reveal if that is the problem, if not, it is down to the motherboard and its native components - i.e. GPU, CPU.
Even though it does not appear to be thermal, I would move next to cleaning and applying new thermal paste on the two processors mentioned if you are up to it.

P.S. When the screen freezes, you say can not move the cursor, have you tried using an external mouse?

 

[omni550]

I still think the issue is overheating, even if some software told you it was not.

Blowing into the machine, simply will pack in the dust, I use a vaccum to suck out the dust/hair/bugs/etc rather than push it farther in.

Best would be to open the case, then you could blow the dust off.

I little while later, my curiosity got the better of me and I DID open the laptop up...and marveled at how little dust and dirt was inside. I posted about that upthread somewhere.

While I had the case open, I did pop out the memory sticks and gently rubbed/cleaned the contacts to ensure they didn't have any corrosion...this was mentioned on some site I happened to be referencing.

omni

 

[omni550]

Successfully booting from the CD, (unplugging the HD would be best) and getting the same effect removes the hard drive and its OS as suspect. The salient clue here is the predicable freeze-up at regular intervals - that suggests a thermal or processing bottleneck trigger. If it was a thermal trigger, it should freeze quicker when booted a second time, third time etc...
Testing one memory stick at a time by the removal/replace method will reveal if that is the problem, if not, it is down to the motherboard and its native components - i.e. GPU, CPU.
Even though it does not appear to be thermal, I would move next to cleaning and applying new thermal paste on the two processors mentioned if you are up to it.

P.S. When the screen freezes, you say can not move the cursor, have you tried using an external mouse?

I must not have made myself clear, sorry.

I CAN move the cursor...both by using the touchpad or a wireless mouse (which I've since disconnnected to free up USB port). However, 'clicking' on things causes nothing (no action) to happen...nothing on the page is activated, nor clicking on the "Windows/Start" button in the lower left corner. Everything is frozen.

-----

Today I am rather pressed for time. Tomorrow I will open up the laptop case and do trials on the memory sticks as suggested. Thx.

omni

 

[NW-Bound]

Very interesting!

When my machine crashed because of RAM failure, or CPU being overclocked, I usually got a Windows error message. With the old Windows versions, some less descriptive messages would show along with the blue screen of death. I have never experienced something like the above. Or the screen would freeze up, and there was absolutely no update or cursor movement.

If the CPU crashes because of a RAM error or something else, what is doing the screen update to move the cursor around? Can the GPU (which may be part of some CPUs) operate without the CPU? I don't think so, but could be wrong. In the old PC hardware/software architecture, the CPU is involved in tracking and updating the cursor position on the screen. If it does not run and locks up, you would not see the cursor moving about the screen.

Perhaps we are back to a software bug.