Laptop randomly freezing. No known cause?

[MrWhaleTrain]

Hi there, just wanted to ask for a bit of help diagnosing a laptop I have. A few years back the laptop was put onto the arm of a couch and overheated due to no ventilation. After that point the laptop just freezes completely meaning a hard reboot is needed. I know this is hardware related but unsure where to look.

I have checked both memory and hard-drive, both work fine in other machines. One thing that intrigued me though was the fact that when booting Windows, for example, you would get the HDD activity light flashing to indicate activity. Once the machine freezes I notice that light stops flashing. Could this be related to the connector?

The laptop is a HP Pavillion DV6-1131ea.

Any help is appreciated

Thanks.

 

[womble]

Well a couple of things to try first to get the ball rolling:

Does it work in safe mode (hit F8 as you are booting up)? - If so it could be a driver problem, though the basic drivers running in that mode might not tax things if it is heat related.

If it is a few years old I would imagine that the cooling system may have a lot of dust and lint in it. Really wish laptop manufacturers would beef up the cooling a bit to allow for the fact that not everyone lives in clean room conditions. If the outlet grill looks dusty a blast with an air duster may improve airflow, a pair of lungs will suffice at a pinch. It is usually fairly easy to get at the cooling mechanism to remove and clean it.

A live linux cd is sometimes handy to try. If it is working with that with gpu acceleration etc it could point to a Windows driver issue.

Laptops can be awkward to troubleshoot though. Sure some others will chime in.

 

[Feldmarschall]

Hi,

Since you had overheating it is possible that everything inside is damaged even CPU. It could be failure do to initialization of GPU, accessing drivers from HDD or RAM. If your RAM, and HDD work in other computer it is possible that only controlers are damaged. If HDD can pass random read/write tests in other PC then it is your mobo problem. Conector is first on the list, but it does not mean that he is problem.

Once i managed to diagnose bad conector by moving laptop arround while in windows. It would freeze imediately. But that laptop did not had any overheating problem.

 

[MrWhaleTrain]

Well a couple of things to try first to get the ball rolling:

Does it work in safe mode (hit F8 as you are booting up)? - If so it could be a driver problem, though the basic drivers running in that mode might not tax things if it is heat related.

If it is a few years old I would imagine that the cooling system may have a lot of dust and lint in it. Really wish laptop manufacturers would beef up the cooling a bit to allow for the fact that not everyone lives in clean room conditions. If the outlet grill looks dusty a blast with an air duster may improve airflow, a pair of lungs will suffice at a pinch. It is usually fairly easy to get at the cooling mechanism to remove and clean it.

A live linux cd is sometimes handy to try. If it is working with that with gpu acceleration etc it could point to a Windows driver issue.

Laptops can be awkward to troubleshoot though. Sure some others will chime in.

Thank-you for the reply, I have done this but still nothing - I even replaced the thermal paste on both too which didn't work.

Regarding Feldmarschall, so you're thinking that motherboard could be knackered and I would have to replace it? I was going to say shall I try another CPU?

Thanks.

 

[Feldmarschall]

You can try another working CPU. That would be great if you have one arround for testing. Other than that it should be mobo problem. Replacing mobo would solve every other possible problem (connectors, power supply, chipset issue, ram slot issue) altough is most expensive thing to replace.

 

[Brett928S2]

Hi

Run a hard drive test in DOS... HIRENS BOOT CD etc, it sounds like a failing hard drive... do NOT do this if you have an SSD...

All the best Brett

 

[MrWhaleTrain]

You can try another working CPU. That would be great if you have one arround for testing. Other than that it should be mobo problem. Replacing mobo would solve every other possible problem (connectors, power supply, chipset issue, ram slot issue) altough is most expensive thing to replace.

We have progress, sort of. I replaced the CPU and it allowed me to get to the Windows install - before it would freeze with the Windows logo and "Starting Windows". I managed to get to the actual install ands initiate it BUT when it was going through it switched off, i turned it back on and I'm back to square one

@Brett sorry to say but I already said I've tried both memory and hard drive and they work fine.

 

[Brett928S2]

You can try another working CPU. That would be great if you have one arround for testing. Other than that it should be mobo problem. Replacing mobo would solve every other possible problem (connectors, power supply, chipset issue, ram slot issue) altough is most expensive thing to replace.

We have progress, sort of. I replaced the CPU and it allowed me to get to the Windows install - before it would freeze with the Windows logo and "Starting Windows". I managed to get to the actual install ands initiate it BUT when it was going through it switched off, i turned it back on and I'm back to square one

@Brett sorry to say but I already said I've tried both memory and hard drive and they work fine.

Hi

HOW or rather with WHAT did you test the hd ?

All the best Brett

 

[MrWhaleTrain]

You can try another working CPU. That would be great if you have one arround for testing. Other than that it should be mobo problem. Replacing mobo would solve every other possible problem (connectors, power supply, chipset issue, ram slot issue) altough is most expensive thing to replace.

We have progress, sort of. I replaced the CPU and it allowed me to get to the Windows install - before it would freeze with the Windows logo and "Starting Windows". I managed to get to the actual install ands initiate it BUT when it was going through it switched off, i turned it back on and I'm back to square one

@Brett sorry to say but I already said I've tried both memory and hard drive and they work fine.

Hi

HOW or rather with WHAT did you test the hd ?

All the best Brett

I tested it in another machine and it worked flawlessly. It also does it without a hard-drive.

 

[Brett928S2]

Hi

Laptop repair shop for DIAGNOSIS...

All the best Brett

 

[doxtor]

your laptop have problems with southbridge = replacement of chip required if available in your repair shop.