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m38aw problems

post #1 of 7
2/13/06 at 12:10am
Thread Starter 
Hello,

I run a UK OEM company, I am interested in expanding in to selling laptops and recently bought 1 m38aw chassis from a supplier as a sample, but I am having problems all over the place and I was wondering if anyone else has had the same sort of problems.

From the start, day 1, fitted Pentium M (forget number, I think 760 :S) the 2.0ghz one, 1gb ram (2 x 512mb 533 ddr2), and a 80gb hard drive (7200rpm ultra ata, seagate momentus 7200.1)

The first problem I had was with jumpers the optical drive defaults to master with no visible way of changing, and there is a weird bump on the chassis of the motherboard that prevents full jumpers from being installed, and the hard drive defaults to master. It took me ages, but I have a custom made jumper now as I can not find anywhere that has low profile ones.

Next, I installed windows xp sp1, it was all fine, then before installing drivers, I upgraded to sp2, on the first boot, it did a bsod, it did this every time I restarted, then I went once in to safe mode, and next time it restarted, it was fine.

I installed the drivers and it works fine, no further problems, but I wanted to do a clean install with no problems whatsoever, so thinking it was something about the upgrade to sp2 and a driver issue, I used my xp with sp2 cd, It again installed fine, but then doing the audio install, I got a bsod, and it kept restarting, but again, a safemode start, and going back fixed it.

The next time it was the bluetooth cd, I installed bluetooth cd, it worked fine, I uninstalled it, it crashed, did safe mode, and it was fine but complained about registry problems. I restarted and it was fine.

I have done this several more times and have had problems, but the weird thing is, each time it is in a completly diffrent place, and when I go in to safe mode, it seems to work after that!

It seems that these drivers from clevo are unreliable, or it is the laptop itself, I am not really sure.

I thought it could be the memory, but to tell you the truth, out of all the machines I have built, it has been less than 1 in 75 with memory problems, and it seems that it can be detected when installing windows as it usually has problems on certain files, this being said, I will do a memtest in the morning.

I was wondering if anyone could give me any help here, I want to sell this laptop, and have got a model for someone who is going away, and it needs to be reliable, from what I have seen, the problems are not happening any more, but I do not want to risk anything.

Thanks
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post #2 of 7
2/13/06 at 1:15am
Sorry to hear about your bad experience. It's my opinion that most clevos sold under 2nd or 3rd tier distributors are not ready for mass consumer because I don't think they do enough QA. These laptops are for people who want the "newest" technology and are usually capable of diagnosing problems and fixing them for themselves. Their reliability, so far, is not a shining point. Aside that, so far my m38aw has been fine (knock on wood, hehehe).
Why are you trying to change put jumpers on the drives. The board has two controllers but they are designed (bay wise at least) such that you can only use one spindle on each controller. I'm curious as to why you want to set the jumpers. But if you need small jumpers, I usually use the jumpers used in setting SCSI ID.
I would not recommend you use drivers from clevo, sager, or whatever company; instead, go to the part manufacturer. Only thing I used from the driver cd is for the Nvidia. Sound, wireless, etc.. go to the individual companies and download drivers.
Like you, I've rarely ever experienced bad memory (this is from building close to a thousand PCs, everything from Pentium Pro 60's to 8-ways, I used to work for a very very busy consultation firm). It does sound like the random problems you are having is memory related. I'm sure you've already done this, but have you tried cleaning and reseating the memory? Another thing about windows is that it appears to be more tolerant of semi-faulty memory (probably related to how it checks/uses extended memory). I've installed MS OSes on machines that other OSes refuse to install one because of bad memory.
If it is not the memory, could be a component on borderline of going bad. If you have the time, take it apart and make sure everything is seated properly. If you hold the laptop from the corner, you'll notice there is a slight flexing. I don't know how many layers the PCB in the board is, thus a possibilty. Another quick check would be to run a live-cd (something like knoppix). Speaking of which, have you tried to install other OSes on it to rule out software issues?

Hope some of this rambling helps.

P
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post #3 of 7
2/13/06 at 1:36am
Thread Starter 
I like rambling if it gets the job done!

I will conduct a full mem check in the morning,

Sorry but I did not understand where you wrote this "such that you can only use one spindle on each controller"

The reason I am using a jumper is due to the fact both bays I think are set to the same controller. I installed the optical drive, I installed the hard drive, Bios took ages, and when I went in to setup 2 mins later, it could not detect either, from my experience, I thought it could only be one thing, I took out hard drive and it detected optical, then took out optical and it detected hard drive (after I put the hard drive back in!)

I realised from here that the optical drive defaults to master, and the hard drive comes with no jumpers, and it defaults to master, I put in a full size jumper, and they both work together, but the jumper is to big for the case to close fully. I made a madeshift one out of a bit of solder... I know this is not recommended, but this can not be the route of the problems, and I will replace it with a jumper the moment I can find a slim one, seagate told me about digikey, and a part code, but it costs 25p each, and they charge about 22.50 in delivery and packaging if under £100, and I do not really feel like ordering 400 jumpers :S

Anyway I have a ubuntu live cd, I will try that and see if it has any diag tools on it.

also, time to hunt down all the manufacturers online tommorow to find drivers!

It also seems that leaving the PC on for over 2 hours idle, not exactly sure when it occurs, it makes the screen go black, and nothin seems to respond, upon restarting windows (through holding power button), I get a windows recovered from a serious error message.

I have enabled dr watson debuging, and I am hoping to catch it out tonight and read a full debug log tommorow morning, after which I will do a memory check.

anyway, thanks for the help.
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post #4 of 7
2/13/06 at 2:13am
Spindles was the old way of referring to a drive (be it HD or CD because they are both essentially platters connected to "spindles"). Sorry for the confusion, from your post sounded like you might be okay with the terminology instead of me having to write out hard-drive, CD-ROM, etc..

No, don't buy from Digi, they're only good if you need to order a bunch of components at once. You can try going to computer stores that sells SCSI components, use those jumpers used to set ID, or twist a wire, but solder is not a good way to use as jumper. But anyway, the way the m38aw and most two "spindles" laptops, the layout is such that each device goes onto separate channels. On the m38aw, the HD bay goes onto the primary, while anything else in the other bay goes onto the secondary. You should not have to jumper anything. If you do need to jumper anything, jumper the CD drive to cable select.

For some of the drivers:

sound is realtek ALC880: http://www.realtek.com.tw/search/sea...?search=alc880
NIC is Marvell Yukon: http://www.marvell.com/drivers/drive...?dId=116&pId=3
Wireless is Intel 2915ABG: http://support.intel.com/support/wir.../cs-010623.htm
Vid: use the ones that came with CD, download from clevo site, or use "third" party drivers.

The screen going black and not responding thing may be hibernation/sleep. When that happens, the power light should be blinking. To wake it up, close the lid and open it again (to trigger the lid switch) or use Fn + Esc.

Before hitting the sheets, you might want to burn onto CD and load up memtest: http://www.memtest86.com/ and let it run overnight (it's a long process).

Another thing to help further pinpoint possible faulty components, you can use some of the stress test programs you can find online. Couple of years ago, I used to use a little utility called Satan (not the kind used for security penetration testing) that tested most of the subsystems. I don't know if it's still around or if it is relevant to m38aw components. Google, you should find quite a few of them.

P
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post #5 of 7
2/13/06 at 10:27am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for that, I will also be needing modem, but I know that is motorolla, I will look on their site.

And, I tried pluging in my memtest disk on a usb floppy drive, it went loading and just hung... not working at all, but I found my old ultimate boot cd that has the latest version on it.

It is currently at 44% of the pass, (I will run 3), usually to be honest, in the times when I have a error, it usually picks it up in the first couple of mins or not at all.

all of these problems have been a nightmare, and it sounds rather stupid, but I have never been so egar to find faulty memory as it will be the answer to what these problems have been!

Also, I like the additional features of the mouse drivers such as two fingers, three fingers, corner tapping and scrolling, is it unsafe to install this driver then?

The other drivers is the ap-key ones, is this safe? obviously I need the wireless button.

and, I am going to leave out the mail check program.

Anyway, just rambling again! but thanks so much for this help!
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post #6 of 7
2/13/06 at 12:46pm
Motorolla should be detected by WinXP, I haven't bothered looking for newer drivers for the thing b/c I haven't used modem in ages. Mouse drivers aren't necessary in my opinion. WinXP should install generic drivers for the Elantech touchpad. The Windows drivers does support corner tap and scroll. The scroll "buttons" do not work with Windows' drivers though. Your ap-keys should also be detected by Windows. Only key that needs software installation is the mail checker.

If you are selling this laptop to a customer, I would keep things as simple as possible. For starters, don't install the full gauntlet that comes with the software packages. For Intel Wireless, extract the installation file and install only the drivers, don't use the built in management suite, use Window's built in. Repeat for sound, and everything else. The less stuff customers get to "play" with, the less trouble for you in the long run; also less computer resources consumed.
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post #7 of 7
2/14/06 at 1:03am
Thread Starter 
Tracked the problem down!

It was faulty memory, I feel ashamed that I did not track it down earlier!

anyway, everything seems to work fine!

As for what you say about drivers, I have to say, I do understand what you say about using the ones built in with windows, but I do not think the Intel ones are that bad as you get the option to use the Microsoft console if you wish, and it is basically nypass it.

However, I am really not sure with bluetooth, for a long time I have just used the default bluetooth programs that come with windows, that being said, I have mixed feelings about the software the comes with the bluetooth module, I guess I will offer this is a free option to give people the choice.

Anyway, thanks very much for the help, the black screen problem has appeared to go away, It was a problem as there was a crash log when I restarted, now it does go in to sleep mode, I am sure it was another problem remotly caused by faulty memory.

Anyway, thanks very much for the help!
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