M6809 on battery sometimes just shuts down - Page 8

Okay, reply to my own post.
I decided to check out the Live Chat option on eMachine website. I can't say I am overly impressed. I know this is super long, and I apologize, but I am afraid of paraphrasing and leaving something out.




Support says: Thank you for contacting eMachines Live Chat. My name is Support. Please hold while I review your issue.
11:59:35 PM>LexDivinia says: ok
11:59:58 PM>Support says: Hello Frances, how are you today?
12:00:17 AM>LexDivinia says: Good, other than obvious iossues, lol
12:00:24 AM>Support says: Okay.
12:00:41 AM>Support says: I will be glad to assist you with your issue, Frances.
12:01:17 AM>Support says: Before we start, I will ask some questions, kindly verify if they are correct.
12:01:27 AM>LexDivinia says: ok
12:01:45 AM>Support says: According to your submission, the serial number for your system is xxxxxxxxx and this is an eMachines m6811 (notebook). Is this correct?
12:01:51 AM>LexDivinia says: yes
12:02:04 AM>Support says: My information shows that your computer has 512 MB of memory installed, while it supports a maximum of 1280 MB. I would suggest doubling the original

amount for better overall performance. For the best performance, I would suggest the maximum amount.
12:02:40 AM>Support says: According to the submission, you are having issues with your notebook that spontaneously shutdown, is this correct?
12:03:16 AM>LexDivinia says: yes, within seconds of a cold start up, the fan kicks in high speed and then shuts down
12:03:28 AM>LexDivinia says: also does this occasionally with computer on for a period of time
12:03:44 AM>LexDivinia says: I know when the fan starts up at that speed, it will shut down within 5 seconds
12:03:59 AM>LexDivinia says: it started as a minor annoyance. it has become a serious issue.
12:04:13 AM>Support says: When did this started?
12:04:52 AM>LexDivinia says: Been happening for about 3 months
12:05:16 AM>LexDivinia says: I thought it to be a heat issue , but when it happens on a cold comp, I don't undertand
12:05:37 AM>LexDivinia says: I researched on forums and have read detailed accounts of others with the same problem
12:05:49 AM>LexDivinia says: but I could not find a solution
12:06:25 AM>Support says: Okay. I understand now your issue, Frances.
12:06:31 AM>Support says: I apologize for any inconvenience or frustration caused by this issue.
12:06:40 AM>LexDivinia says: thanks
12:07:31 AM>Support says: Just for verification, the system still boot up but shutdown after a few seconds, am I correct?
12:07:44 AM>LexDivinia says: yes
12:08:21 AM>Support says: So you can't do anything on your notebook, not even browsing?
12:09:37 AM>LexDivinia says: I can. I am on it now. But, for example, when I came home today, the laptop had been sitting off for at least 8 hours. I hit the power button, and the light

flashes, the laptop starts, the fan kicks in high hear, and then it all shuts down. I then hit the power button a second time and it started up fine.
12:10:10 AM>LexDivinia says: other times this happens in the middle of browsing, or word programs, etc
12:10:18 AM>Support says: Okay.
12:10:22 AM>LexDivinia says: but easily it happens 3 out of every 4 boot ups
12:10:40 AM>Support says: This situation could be environmental, hardware or software related.
12:10:51 AM>Support says: This routine will make it so that Windows will show an error instead of just auto rebooting when a problem is encountered.
12:11:09 AM>Support says: You need to follow the following steps to resolved your issue, Frances.
12:11:27 AM>Support says: You need to be logged into an account that has ‘Administrative’ privileges to do the following routine.

12:11:28 AM>Support says:
1) Click on Start.
2) Right-click on My Computer.
3) Click on Properties.
12:11:34 AM>Support says: 4) Click on Advanced tab.
5) In the Startup and recovery area, click the Settings button.
6) Inside System Failure area, take the check out of Auto Restart then just click on OK.

12:11:42 AM>Support says:
This will cause your computer to come up with an error. You will want to search Microsoft's web site for this error or email us back with the exact error message and we will search for

you.
12:11:49 AM>Support says:
The easiest way to tell if it is software is to restart the computer in MS-DOS mode.

12:11:55 AM>Support says:
Put the Recovery CD in the CD-ROM drive and restart the computer. At Microsoft Windows Startup Menu, choose to boot to the command prompt.
12:12:03 AM>Support says:
Leave the system on this screen overnight and follow the instructions below based on one of the two outcomes and solutions listed below.


12:12:10 AM>Support says:
1) If the system does not restart, then you probably have a software problem. You may consider restoring your system with the recovery CD. This will verify that there is no software

corruption that is causing the issue.
12:12:14 AM>Support says: To run a full restore:
12:12:46 AM>Support says: Disconnect everything from the tower except the monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers and power cord. Do not leave any cable or DSL modems,

scanners, cameras, etc connected to the tower.

12:12:49 AM>Support says: Backup any important data that you cannot afford to lose and have added to the computer since taking it out of the box.

12:12:55 AM>Support says: Place the recovery #1 CD in the CD-ROM drive, restart the computer and choose the restore option from the menu that it gives.
12:13:04 AM>Support says: Change the CD when prompted and do not leave the last one in before restarting the computer.

12:13:09 AM>Support says: 2) If it reboots during the night, then it is either defective hardware (most likely the power supply) or there is a problem with the power outlet to which the

system is attached. You may wish to test it on another outlet.
12:13:17 AM>Support says: To save your chat log, please click on the "View Live Log" button at the bottom right side of the chat window. It will open a new window, which has the log

for the entire chat. You will have the option to "Save log to disk". Please click on the same to save the chat log on your computer.
12:14:05 AM>Support says: That steps will resolve your issue, Frances.
12:14:42 AM>LexDivinia says: so, your thoughts are that this same issue, as reported by multiple people , is most probably a power supply issue?
12:14:52 AM>LexDivinia says: or a software issue?
12:15:06 AM>LexDivinia says: I mean hardware
12:15:21 AM>Support took ownership of the incident named LexDivinia from Support
12:15:38 AM>Support says: Its only between a hardware and software issue, Frances.
12:15:54 AM>LexDivinia says: sorry, got confused.
12:16:03 AM>Support says: Its okay.
12:16:45 AM>LexDivinia says: I will see what the above steps does for the situation.
12:16:51 AM>LexDivinia says: thanks for your time
12:16:54 AM>Support says: Okay.
12:17:04 AM>Support says: You are welcome, Frances.
12:17:18 AM>Support says: I will document this chat session, wait for the case number, Frances.
12:17:22 AM>LexDivinia says: okay
12:19:01 AM>Support says: The case number is 200487670. Please take note of that.

12:19:11 AM>Support says: Have I addressed all your issues for today?
12:19:27 AM>LexDivinia says: for now. I hope this works
12:19:31 AM>Support says: I would appreciate it if you could kindly share your comments about our chat session. If you feel that you need to test first if the issue is resolved, you may leave the resolve rating to No Response and comment at a later time. The survey form will appear after we close this chat session.
12:19:45 AM>LexDivinia says: I love all else about his laptop... seems to be its only drawback
12:19:56 AM>Support says: It was a pleasure working with you. Thank you for using eMachines Live Chat. Feel free to chat again anytime and have a great day.
12:20:04 AM>LexDivinia says: thank you
12:20:56 AM>Support says: You are welcome, Frances, we are always here to help valued eMachine customer's like you.

Those replies only make me more angry. Number one, how is it a software issue? It shuts down in both Linux and Windows, and sometimes in simple boot-up. Logically, it cannot be software. The tech support doesn't listen to you, but just give a routine answer. Oh well, mine doesn't do it too often, so I'll just live with it...

This is why I didn't push the issue. I knew I was not going to get anywhere, and any argument would have brought about the "I am the techie and you contacted me for help" attitude.

I have to admit I am happy to know I am not the only one with the issue. I don't have the money to get another one yet, so I have to make due with this one, but I am looking!

Lex,

You are not the only one with this problem. On my machine, the card reader does not work either but I could live with that one. Customer support does not listen and I actually had to copy various post from the forums into my chat session with the tech and send links before the tech would admit that there may be a problem.

He eventually issued be a RMA and the box arrived promptly. I have not sent it back in yet, because I have critical data and code on the machine that I have to setup on another machine before I wipe the disk and re-image..

I actually like this machine a lot but one of my biggest fears is that they will not really fix the problem and send me another machine that may have a more problems than the one that I have now.

It is this head in the sand approach that really ticks me off.

Good luck to you and I will probably send my machine off next week ( finally ) and see what happens.

Eunix

I purchased the laptop on ebay, so I am rather limited on my options to "get it fixed." Unless you guys know of something I don't. Which is very possible since I do not even know what an RMA is. :P

A RMA is an authorization to return merchandise to the manufacturer.

Depending on who you purchased it from on Ebay.
I purchased mine on Ebay and eMachines issues me my first RMA because the machine was barely still under warranty. I accidently let the shipping date expire ( I wanted to see if I could fix it myself first ).

When I calle back this time, they told me the warranty had expired. I told them that I had only purchased it a few months earlier and the asked me to fax them my ebay receipt and Voila I have a new warranty for a whole year from the date of MY purchase.

Note : This may not work in everybody's case because I did have to give them the serial number of the machine. I would think that if a bad unit was in the wild, there would be a limit to the number of times they would issue a new warranty just because it keeps changing owners.

Eunix

I had a similar "BSOD/Machine Check" problem when I used mismatched memory. It seemed to be a timing issue that came and went. Make sure to test with only one memory module inserted. Two modules of differerent types of memory can cause problems at times.

speedswitchxp

I also have the power-on shut down problem for approximately the last 6 months. My opinion is that it is a temp sensor issue and that i'm willing to live with it. (i live in a cool damp climate and the development of these systems probably occured in taiwan, hot damp so there is the potential for differences in performance). Reseating the heat sink and tightening the fans probably is a good idea as well.

I experienced my first overheat shut down during normal operation last week however. This is a much bigger problem for me. If it continues to occur I will probably crack the case and do the heatsink/fan maintenance.

In the mean time, I installed speedswitchxp which overrides the windows power management system (although you're still stuck at 800 on battery) and puts your current processor speed on the taskbar. This way, you can see a little bit about what's going with your clock before the shut down. Of course, I haven't experienced a shut down since last week.

It would be great if we could also see the current temperature but haven't found a utility for doing so. Has anyone else?

Anyway, just thought it was a handy tool. RM clock utility is another option.

FWIW - I'm running shipped 6809 bios 0F02.P00 with xp pro sp1 but am considering the bios upgrade and sp2. My OpenGL fails with sp2 which is why I haven't upgraded yet. I'm hoping upgrading the bios will fix the opengl problem - although it's a time consuming experiment if it fails.

M6811 Shutdown

Following my recent post the shutdown problem became intolerable. The unit would shut down spontaneously withing 10 -30 minutes of startup each and every time. I had resigned myself to putting this in the garbage and buying a new non-eMachine, non-gateway, non-AMD, notebook computer.

Figuring I had nothing to lose since I was going to waste it anyway I opened the unit once more cleaned off all the thermal couplant and going against dogma put the heatsink back in WITHOUT THERMAL COUPLANT and screwed it down tight! I didn't put in thermal couplant for two reasons. One was the fact that nearly all the couplant gets sqeezed out when you tighten the heat sink anyway and secondly there just aren't too many better thermal conducters than that beautiful copper heatsink so I don't see where putting goo in there helps anything.

Lo and behold it has been near perfect in performance. NOT ONE SHUTDOWN YESTERDAY OR TODAY running numerous programs, multiple windows and on line games all at the same time. I ran Prime95 torture test on it last night for 3 hours and it didn't miss a beat. I'm going to run Prime95 all day today to see what happens figuring if I burn up my CPU I haven't lost anything since I was going to junk it anyway.

The only negative so far is I still have to delete into the bios screen at startup then exit and save once I hear the fan come on. This takes about 3 minutes in the morning. After that I've had no shutdowns. Too early to tell if this is a viable solution but I will provide follow up as I go along. Also, I wouldn't have tried this unless I was at the end of the road with this unit, out of warranty and willing to lose it all!

Specs: eMachines M6811 Bios Version 0F08.P00

This is exactly the same problem I have at times. Lets work on this together. I am RMA'ing a Kingston memory module at the moment and will let you know if this is the problem. I am starting to think it might be a memory slot issue. In other words you can't run two SoDimm's in both slots at the same time.

No Gooooo - What are you smokin?

Although you may not have the problem right now but you are just asking for trouble with no thermal compound on your processor. The chip gets how...very hot and fast! If you take the cover off and remove the heatsing and fan and fire the machine up, it will only stay on for a hot second before it locks.

Keep us posted but I would not be surprised if you end up frying your chip.

"No Gooooo - What are you smokin?"

Smokin? I wish. This eMachine ordeal drove me to drink though. Frankly I am surprised it is running so good. I was expecting (possible wanting) it to burn up considering conventional wisdom is that you need thermal couplant OR ELSE! But no problems encountered although only day 3. Ran Prime95 torture test on it all day yesterday along with tabbed web browser, mirc, yahoo messenger, paltalk, games and more. Yes it got warm but it didn't lock up and it performed flawlessly. At this point I am disinclined to reapply any artic silver 5 to this CPU considering the marked difference in character between with and without.

Still have the shutdown at cold boot to contend with but booting into the bios screen and waiting a few minutes seems to take care of that. Perhaps it is a memory issue so will be interested to see how that works out.
("I am starting to think it might be a memory slot issue.- Mobile Hackbox")

I would go for the lemon policy and demand that a replacement be sent. They will send a gateway 7422gx or 7426gx which is a better machine. Then you can sell it or keep it as a spare.

Here is an excerpt from my live chat transcript, if you're in for a laugh or two.

Im not laughing, it was pathetic that the representive was stalling the real problem while they know damn well what the real problem is, but don't want to admit it.

What really gets me is that eMachine has this same problem with the M53XX series of laptop. In fact, there is a class action lawsuit that has been filed against them, and eMachine is now fixing this series of laptop because of this suit.

Why does the M68XX series not fall under this case? It seems so obvious if the same company has the exact same problem with another series that the solution is the same. How can we get a class action suit for the M68XX series???

Here's the article...
http://www.sheller.com/Practice.asp?PracticeID=176

Thanks for the article. I used the link to ask them about expanding their cast to include the M68xx models.

If you have experienced the same problem with your M68xx machine, I would encourage you to do the same. Who knows, If they get a ton of request, they may expand their suit or start another one and maybe we can get relief for a poor design and mediocre customer service.

Eunix

I think this problem may be thermally related. I've noticed that when it happens on my 6805 it is not because of high temperature, but because of a rapid change of temperature. It happens on mine especially after it cools down overnight (to around 58 F, our night time thermostat setting) and I start it in the morning before the house warms up. It has also happened once or twice when I go from screen blanked idling to a processor intensive thing like MP3 encoding.