Folks, I'm having real trouble with my 8890, which has been an absolute dream until just this month. (it's 4 months old and under warranty, thankfully). I've been lurking these forums since before my purchase and have been amazed by the sheer volume of useful information here. Well, I could use some info now!
I purchased my Sager 8890 from PCTorque.com in November 2003. On Friday, the system crashed hard while running Excel and a few other programs. I was unable to reboot, despite powering all the way down, waiting a minute, and then powering back up. Sometimes the PC would POST and then hang after detecting IDE devices, other times it wouldn't POST at all.
After three or four tries, I was able to get back into WinXP Home and fortunately was able to back up my data to an external hard disk. However, the system has continued to crash frequently. These are apparently not application related. Crashes are occuring when many apps are open, when no apps are open. They also seem to occur whether or not an external hard disk, network cable, or power cord is connected to the system.
I should note that for the last month or so I have noticed an intermittent boot issue. When I would first start the PC in the morning, I would sometimes come back to find that it had not reached Windows. Rather, there would be a blank screen with a blinking text cursor at the top left corner. My assumption was that a cold hard drive was the culprit. Confirming this was the fact that every time I tried booting again, the notebook would start up normally. Clearly, that intermittent problem (occuring maybe once or twice a week for about a month) was a warning of something more serious.
I should note that this PC has been almost entirely desktop bound and has taken very little physical punishment.
I'm pretty good with hardware, and I have to say this issue seems disk or disk interface related. I've not noticed any unusual noise coming from the disk, nor have I noticed any disk error messages. The only "symptoms" I noted prior to the current crashing is the fact that boots would occasionally fail. Several diagnostic steps on the drive revealed no issue:
1. Checked Windows Event Viewer logs. No obvious disk related failure reported
2. Ran a full Windows Check Disk scan and repair. The test came up clean--no errors.
3. Downloaded the Hitachi disk fitness test from the hgst.com web site. Ran both the Quick and Advanced tests. Both tests passed--again, no errors.
OK, so the problem isn't the disk platter. I haven't ruled out a memory failure (though the intermittent pre-POST failures seem to make a bad memory stick an unlikely candidate). I'll run MemTest in the morning to see what comes up. In the meantime, I'm wondering if there might simply be a loose drive connection or perhaps a short circuit related to the drive interface? If so, would it be appropriate for me to open the case and check the fit of the connections? This PC is under warranty and I certainly don't want to do anything to void that at this stage.
I've contacted tech support by email yesterday and am awaiting a response. But in the meantime, I'm hoping there might be some way to narrow things down. Thanks so much in advance for any help!
VTdesmond
I purchased my Sager 8890 from PCTorque.com in November 2003. On Friday, the system crashed hard while running Excel and a few other programs. I was unable to reboot, despite powering all the way down, waiting a minute, and then powering back up. Sometimes the PC would POST and then hang after detecting IDE devices, other times it wouldn't POST at all.
After three or four tries, I was able to get back into WinXP Home and fortunately was able to back up my data to an external hard disk. However, the system has continued to crash frequently. These are apparently not application related. Crashes are occuring when many apps are open, when no apps are open. They also seem to occur whether or not an external hard disk, network cable, or power cord is connected to the system.
I should note that for the last month or so I have noticed an intermittent boot issue. When I would first start the PC in the morning, I would sometimes come back to find that it had not reached Windows. Rather, there would be a blank screen with a blinking text cursor at the top left corner. My assumption was that a cold hard drive was the culprit. Confirming this was the fact that every time I tried booting again, the notebook would start up normally. Clearly, that intermittent problem (occuring maybe once or twice a week for about a month) was a warning of something more serious.
I should note that this PC has been almost entirely desktop bound and has taken very little physical punishment.
I'm pretty good with hardware, and I have to say this issue seems disk or disk interface related. I've not noticed any unusual noise coming from the disk, nor have I noticed any disk error messages. The only "symptoms" I noted prior to the current crashing is the fact that boots would occasionally fail. Several diagnostic steps on the drive revealed no issue:
1. Checked Windows Event Viewer logs. No obvious disk related failure reported
2. Ran a full Windows Check Disk scan and repair. The test came up clean--no errors.
3. Downloaded the Hitachi disk fitness test from the hgst.com web site. Ran both the Quick and Advanced tests. Both tests passed--again, no errors.
OK, so the problem isn't the disk platter. I haven't ruled out a memory failure (though the intermittent pre-POST failures seem to make a bad memory stick an unlikely candidate). I'll run MemTest in the morning to see what comes up. In the meantime, I'm wondering if there might simply be a loose drive connection or perhaps a short circuit related to the drive interface? If so, would it be appropriate for me to open the case and check the fit of the connections? This PC is under warranty and I certainly don't want to do anything to void that at this stage.
I've contacted tech support by email yesterday and am awaiting a response. But in the meantime, I'm hoping there might be some way to narrow things down. Thanks so much in advance for any help!
VTdesmond
