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Problem with freezing

post #1 of 14
10/31/04 at 6:29pm
Thread Starter 
Hey guys, I've had my sentia since the end of august and haven't experienced any problems until as of late. While I'm using the Sentia or if it's just sitting idle, sometimes the system locks up and I get these columns of discoloration across the screen. Now, it happens really inconsistently but as I recall, I heard this may be a motherboard issue or heat issue?

Just wondering if anyone knew what was up and I figured I'd post here before I call AW tech support.
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post #2 of 14
10/31/04 at 7:46pm
I had a similar problem with an old Gateway laptop and it was the motherboard.
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post #3 of 14
10/31/04 at 8:36pm
What programs have you loaded lately? Also, is your virus protection software and spyware detection/prevention software working and up to date? Need a bit more info before we can troubleshoot your syste.

Huck
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post #4 of 14
10/31/04 at 8:52pm
Thread Starter 
It's not that the computer is just locking up. I'm getting one of the classic "motherboard might be going down" type screens. Windows is completely up to date, I'm running an up to date virus protection, and I really take care of everything on the computer (no spyware, malware, anything). Only thing I can think of is a hardware issue and maybe a pre-install error.

I might try to reformat tonight to see if it was some software issue and if not, it might have to go back to the depot
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post #5 of 14
10/31/04 at 9:03pm
Thread Starter 
Uploaded a picture of what it looks like:

Find it here:

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post #6 of 14
10/31/04 at 9:33pm
I've seen the screen artifacts many times. You either have bad memory or a bad video board. Try running Memtest86+ and see if you get any failures.

http://www.memtest.org/

You might also try reseating your memory module.
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post #7 of 14
10/31/04 at 10:08pm
Thread Starter 
I'm running memtest as we speak. Going to check the interrupts on the rams in a second as well.
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post #8 of 14
11/10/04 at 11:57pm
Thread Starter 
After some testing, I think it was the extra ram chip I put in there. Funny, it was working for a while and then I guess it just went bad. I popped it out, and the freezing stopped.

Note: AW's tech support was great in running me through a series of tests, I'm very pleased.

I'll update you guys on the situation later :P

PS: Putting in RAM doesn't invalidate the AW warrantee does it?
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post #9 of 14
11/12/04 at 3:35am
Same problem here.

I got my Sentia two weeks ago and I got crashes and the same video "crash" as your picture. I hadn't installed any special software. The computer would just start to slow down and then lock up for a few minutes. It would be slow to reboot and once or twice it could not detect the hard disk. The hard drive kept becoming corrupt and I reinstalled windows (at AW techs recommendation) twice but the problem remained. Running the respawn once it failed with "bad image" error. Chkdsk kept finding errors and was taking 6 hours to run. AW thinks its a heat problem and its on its way to Depot now.

It sucks as I waited two months for it to get here and I just had to basically use it for a couple weeks and send it right back.

Oh, and we swapped around the RAM a few times and it made no difference.

-BoX
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post #10 of 14
11/13/04 at 1:23am
Thread Starter 
I've confirmed that my problem was not an AW issue.

After receiving my Sentia, I installed an extra corsair chip of the same type (pc-2700 i think) and it worked fine for about a month.

Now, I found out the chip went bad sometime in the past two weeks. I pulled the chip out, memtest ran fine. Switched the good chip to the other slot to make sure the slot wasn't bad, it runs fine. Put the bad chip back in, I got freezing up.

So that's that.

P.S. Any of you notice that your fan is pretty loud at times?
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post #11 of 14
11/13/04 at 4:15pm
i am having similar problems
the screen backlight stays on but nothing can be seen
there are vertical rows of different shades of grey
nothing can be seen and the computer cannot be turned off without removing the power source and the battery
i have only had this problem 2x recently
everything is up to date and the computer is very clean
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post #12 of 14
11/14/04 at 3:12pm
I just received my sentia, in the first 24 hours it has locked up/frozen a lot. I don't know if it is heat related but I can not get it last more than 30 minutes when running sisoftware sandra burn in test.

Just in case the problem was Sandra I let a video rendering app run (high cpu usage) and it locked up just the same.

At first I thought it was related to the corsair memory I added, but after further testing and retuning to just the delivered config the problems have continued.

Monday I will contact tech support and see if they have any ideas. But after waiting nearly a month to get this laptop it appears I may be returning it.
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post #13 of 14
12/9/04 at 1:03am
I have my fingers crossed. Mine is stage 2.
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post #14 of 14
12/11/04 at 1:08am
Just to update my previous post, I have eliminated all my lockups by updating the intel video drivers and chipset drivers (alienware delivered several versions old ones) and I turned off the overclocking setting in the BIOS.
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