Freeze Crashes and Reboot loop on laptop, tried a lot of investigation without success, seeking help

Aug 24, 2018
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Hi,

I got a crash / reboot loop problem on my laptop. I investigated for several days without success. My system configuration is at the end of the post.

Symptoms :
- Computer freeze after a completely random usage time (can be 5s after startup, before or after the bios, can be after 5 hours of normal usage. Right now I had no freeze since yesterday evening). Sometimes with graphical glitches sometimes just freezing on whatever it was displaying. I noticed that moving the laptop or simple pressing on it move the graphical glitches patterns (and sometimes activates it). Unable to do anything but power off the computer (long press on power button or sometimes I had to unplug battery + Power). It can happen 15 times a day or 0 time, completely random. However it tends to not crash for several hours if it doesnt crash for the 10 first min, but this is purely theoretical.

- Often after a freeze + crash, the computer would reboot for 1 second, emit one short beep, shutdown, reboot again, one short beep, shutdown and so on until I power off and wait some time (totally random) and try again to start it. No POST, no BIOS, nothing. Just the fan launching and then the laptop shutdown as if the power were cut.


These are the 2 problems I had. Here are the investigations / analysis I already made :

- I installed a brand new Windows after completely formating my disks (HDD + SSD).
- I removed my hdd and ssd from the laptop and launched a GParted light OS on a usb device : the problems still happened (freeze and crash).
I assumed the problems could not come from my disks.

- I removed one of my 2 RAM modules and tried : problems still happened. Tried to switch the modules : problems still happened. I used memtest86 on both ram modules, no errors.


- I used FurMark and Prime95 to stresstest my GPU and CPU : no freeze crash happened, both my GPUs and CPU went to 90~ degrees celsius and no problem happened.

- I tried to use it without the battery on, problems still happened.


From my point of view, what is left is either the motherboard or my PSU. The problem I have is that given the complete randomness of the crash, I cannot just take a friends PSU (who has the same laptop as me) and test it for a few hours since the crashes might not happen.


I hope you guys can help me.

System configuration :
MSI GE602QE Apache Pro on Windows 10
CPU : Intel Core i5 4210H
GPU : Integrated Intel HD Graphics 4600 + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
SSD : SanDisk SDMSATA 256G
HDD : HGST HTS721010A9630
PSU : ADP - 120MH D
RAM(x2) : 4GB 1rx8 pc3l-12800s-11-13-b4
 
Solution
The fact that this problem occurs on movement makes me believe that either your cpu has come off or some other cable internally. You should open the whole laptop, clean it, remove the cpu, replace the thermal and put it again, disconnect and reconnect every cable. Or if you are lucky you would be able to see the bad connection instantly, but no guarantee. Try that and if it doesn't work then it might really be the psu or mobo.

Gingerbread

Distinguished
Nov 2, 2009
248
0
19,110
The fact that this problem occurs on movement makes me believe that either your cpu has come off or some other cable internally. You should open the whole laptop, clean it, remove the cpu, replace the thermal and put it again, disconnect and reconnect every cable. Or if you are lucky you would be able to see the bad connection instantly, but no guarantee. Try that and if it doesn't work then it might really be the psu or mobo.
 
Solution