Invisible wrote:
> - On every laptop known to man, holding down the power button will 
> forcibly power down the laptop. 

Here's a thought. See if you can configure the BIOS to turn off APCI stuff? 
The "advanced" power control? Linux tends to handle this differently, and 
perhaps Windows is confused by some problem being caused by this.

No idea why it would crop up after a while, tho.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Why is there a chainsaw in DOOM?
   There aren't any trees on Mars.

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:52:51 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> - Repeated memory tests reveal no problems of any kind.

What are you using to do the memory tests?

Jim

Post a reply to this message

>> - Repeated memory tests reveal no problems of any kind.
> 
> What are you using to do the memory tests?

memtest86

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:16:52 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> - Repeated memory tests reveal no problems of any kind.
>> 
>> What are you using to do the memory tests?
> 
> memtest86

86, or 86+?  ISTR that 86+ is more thorough, but 86 should be sufficient.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

> The utterly weird thing is, it behaves perfectly under [several different 
> variants of] Linux, but continues to randomly freeze when running under 
> Windows. [I have reinstalled Windows several times now. Interestingly, it 
> always seems to hang at the same places in the installation sequence.]

Sounds to me like it is one particular piece of hardware/driver 
malfunctioning.  Under Linux it either has a different driver or is just not 
used at all (as already mentioned).

I would try booting Windows in safe mode and seeing if that is stable.  If 
so then I would reboot normally and disable all non-critical hardware in 
device manager.  If it is still stable then selectively restart hardware 
until it you find the culprit.  If you are really lucky a driver update 
might fix it...

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> The utterly weird thing is, it behaves perfectly under [several 
>> different variants of] Linux, but continues to randomly freeze when 
>> running under Windows. [I have reinstalled Windows several times now. 
>> Interestingly, it always seems to hang at the same places in the 
>> installation sequence.]
> 
> Sounds to me like it is one particular piece of hardware/driver 
> malfunctioning.

This is my feeling also. It used to work just fine, and now it doesn't, 
despite multiple reinstalls, which suggests a hardware issue. (But I 
have no idea which bit of hardware.)

I did think perhaps it was the audio - my sister mentioned the sound 
suddenly stopped working a while ago, and sure enough the machine locked 
shortly after I installed the audio drive.

...but then I reinstalled without the audio driver, and it still 
randomly hangs. *sigh*

> I would try booting Windows in safe mode and seeing if that is stable.

Ah, the joy of intermittent faults. Is it *really* gone? Or is it just 
not happening right now? :-/

> If so then I would reboot normally and disable all non-critical hardware 
> in device manager.  If it is still stable then selectively restart 
> hardware until it you find the culprit.  If you are really lucky a 
> driver update might fix it...

Well, currently I have installed Windows plus every update that Windows 
Update will give me. I haven't *seen* it crash since that time, but.....

Post a reply to this message

> Well, currently I have installed Windows plus every update that Windows 
> Update will give me. I haven't *seen* it crash since that time, but.....

Ah, the joy of *extremely* intermittent faults :-)

Have you looked in the Event Viewer (I think it's called that in XP too) to 
see what happened when it crashed?

It seems from your comments that the laptop is still running, just not 
responding to user input.  Is this the internal mouse and keyboard? Try 
plugging in an external USB mouse next time it "freezes".

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:

> Ah, the joy of *extremely* intermittent faults :-)

Indeed!

> Have you looked in the Event Viewer (I think it's called that in XP too) 
> to see what happened when it crashed?
> 
> It seems from your comments that the laptop is still running, just not 
> responding to user input.  Is this the internal mouse and keyboard? Try 
> plugging in an external USB mouse next time it "freezes".

Yeah, "crashed" would seem an exaggeration. More like "suddenly going 
extremely slowly". (IIRC, the CPU graph in Task Manager stops scrolling, 
for example.)

I'm using the internal glide pad. I didn't have a USB mouse with me. I 
guess I could give that a try...

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> - On every laptop known to man, holding down the power button will 
>> forcibly power down the laptop. This does not work while the laptop is 
>> frozen. (Fortunately the battery typically dies after ~5 minutes or so.)
> 
> Wow. I was under the impression this was built right into the power 
> supplies. Maybe not on a laptop, tho.

Indeed.

On the other hand, I was *also* under the impression that the cooling 
fan is hardware-controlled. But it turns out to be software-controled. (!!)

I discovered this while trying to install SUSE on my dad's ancient brick 
of a laptop. The install kept failing in bizare and unexplained ways. 
Until I picked up the laptop and almost burnt my hand off!

We rebooted the laptop, and as soon as the BIOS screen showed up, the 
fans started spinning like mad. We waited for them to slow down. (It 
took a while.) Then we resumed the installation attempt. Same problem. 
No matter how hot the laptop got, no fans.

The solution in the end was quite simple. Reboot with the laptop hot. 
The fans spin up to full power. Rather than waiting for them to stop, 
just start installing. The fans remained at full speed until the system 
soft-reset onto the new kernel. After that they appeared to work "normally".

GO. FIGURE.

Post a reply to this message

> We rebooted the laptop, and as soon as the BIOS screen showed up, the fans 
> started spinning like mad. We waited for them to slow down.

What software was running then while you were waiting?

> The solution in the end was quite simple. Reboot with the laptop hot. The 
> fans spin up to full power. Rather than waiting for them to stop, just 
> start installing. The fans remained at full speed until the system 
> soft-reset onto the new kernel. After that they appeared to work 
> "normally".

I notice when I boot up my Vista box, that every fan runs at full blast 
until some point during Vista boot, whereby first the CPU fan virtually 
turns off, then a few seconds after the desktop appears the GPU fan 
virtually turns off, all I can hear then is just occasional blips of hard 
drive head movement - until I fire up a 3D game, then all hell breaks loose 
again :-)

Post a reply to this message