Netbook freezes randomly

Hey everybody,

I have my AA1 751h for well over a month now, and from time to time it randomly freezes. I had this under both Windows XP and Windows 7 RC 1 (which I'm running now). All drivers are up to date, processor is not overclocked.

The main problem is that I can't reproduce it. It just happens.

Does anyone else have this problem? I suspect it is heat-related (yesterday was a very warm day here in Belgium and my netbook froze about 6 times on me, today it hasn't frozen yet but it's a lot cooler outside -and inside). Even if it is heat-related, it would be the first netbook/laptop I bought that freezes when it gets too warm.

It's really becoming rather bothersome and at the store they don't really seem to know what I mean when I explain it.

Does anyone have any idea on how to fix this?

 

Sad to hear, but have you checked the temperatures of your Acer? I use this tool: http://nodadev.wordpress.com/pc-projects/a1ctl/

While using it in the garden, my 751 get very hot sometimes 70+°C but it never freezed and my CPU is overclocked. Remember, this hardware runs up to 2.0ghz in a Sony Viao P without a single fan. Maybe you have to return your 751 and get a new one

 

Mine froze around 50°C.. I had been monitoring the temp.

The store I bought it in doesn't have a "satisfied or we give you your money back"-policy. First they will send it too an acer repair centre in Holland (which means I'll have to do without it for two or three weeks) and when I have it back I'm almost certain that it won't be fixed since it is an irregular problem ("netbook freezes frequently without apparent reason. Do something about it"). So I'd have to go through the hassle of demanding a refund or a new model.

In the shop they advised me to reinstall xp (yuk) and all up-to-date drivers, but when I had xp running, I already had the same problem. There must be a defect component (the hard drive?) somewhere.

I mailed acer about the problem yesterday. I hope to have a reply by Tuesday. If not, I'll just call them.

I really like this netbook (managed to squeeze 9 hours of battery life out of it), but that irregular freezing problem is annoying me to death.

 

I have EXACTLY the same problem.

I purchased this netbook on June 28th in Bangkok, Thailand. On June 29th I caught a plane to America, where I am through Auguest 7th. I baught the computer specifically for this trip so that I would have one while traveling. Within 10 minutes after my first bootup, the computer became completely non responcive. It has since continued to do that at random intervals ranging between 3 minutes and a few hours. The mouse freezes up, no keys work including NumLk and Caps Lock. It does respond to Ctrl Alt Delete either. The monitor continues to show whatever was last on the screen and will continue to do so until I hard reset by holding down the power button for 10 seconds. I have already reinstalled windows xp. Then I have completely formatted and done a fresh install. I have updated all of the drivers, and updated the bios to the latest and still have the problem. The only modification that was made to the laptop, in the store that I purchased it at, I had them upgrade the ram to 2GB from 1GB for me. The Core temperature does not appear to be overheating as it freezes sometimes while the temp is below 70. Typically the Core temp is ranging from between 65 - 75 degrees, and occasionally gets a little bit above 80 on bootup or when running many applications. I have run microsoft ram and motherboard memory diagnostics and they all check out ok. I have never used the computer in safe mode for more then an hour, but thusfar it hasn't frozen in safemode.

If anyone has ANY ideas, that would be great.

 

Same problem here too!

Tested Win 7 but it hangs too. Switched to WinXPPro... same thing. I have also upgraded to 2 GB RAM right out of the box.
Yesterday I upgraded to the latest BIOS 3306 (dated 2009-07-01). Still no freeze since then, but it´s to early to tell if the problem is fixed yet. Haven´t found any changelog for the new BIOS so I don´t know if there is any correction for the freezing.

//Dauzz

 

I think I may have found the problem, and it's a very silly one: the temperature of the room you're using your netbook in.

A few days ago, my netbook crashed about 5 times on one particular day (I was about to throw it out of the window). It also happened to be quite a hot day, say 25 - 30 degrees centigrade here in Belgium. Now three days later the temperature has cooled down and I haven't had a system freeze ever since. If temperature is indeed the problem, one can only imagine what kind of trouble people in southern France or so must be having...

I have noticed that there are very few cooling holes in the netbook case itself and all of them are on the underside. The netbook stands only about three milimetres above my desk with the 6-cell battery so I wouldn't be surprised if cooling is a major problem here -which is ironic since the atom z520 hardly gets hot. Every laptop I had until now had cooling holes on the side of the it, and apparently for a good reason.

Anyway, I'm still awaiting the reply of the Acer customer service. I'll post what they have to say here as soon as I have a reply.

 

See this thread, if you haven't already: viewtopic.php?f=87&t=16190&p=97878#p97878

It's not a temperature problem by my testing (I've downloaded temperature monitoring programs and my machine runs really cool since I don't do anything power intensive in normal use). I tried running two 720p videos at once, with CPU at 100%, for 2 hours, and it doesn't cause any power cutting. But leaving the computer in sleep mode can still result in a random power failure while sleeping. That's with lots of battery life remaining.

So, what you are experiencing is probably a coincidence and not temperature related. More of my experiences recapped below:

 

My problem is that the store does not let me exchange it. It is against their policy. I need to send it to the repair centre first and even then it is totally up to Acer, meaning that it will probably take around six or seven weeks (three of which I will be without computer) before I might get a refund.

Oh well, so far three days without freeze, a new record!

 

I'm in the same boat. Not much else to do but send it back when I can afford to be without it. It will really stick to have to reinstall all of my software, too, when they send the new machine.

 

I know the feeling.. It usually takes a week or two before I have slowly installed and configured the pc/netbook to my needs so I don't really feel to like reinstalling windows again because some person at the repair centre decided to wipe my hard drive. Either way, if I hand it in (really don't know when), I will stick a note on the keyboard asking not to reformat the netbook, since it doesn't help and I don't want windows XP back. I'll probably hand it in somewhere in september, when my resits are over and I'm off to Germany for a week.

 

My first attempt at this Netbook had a random black screen that would not come back on without resetting power. I had to return it for a new one.

 

Still no freezes since my BIOS upgrade a week ago. Looks like the upgrade solved the problem.
//Dauzz

 

I'm also having a lot of trouble with random freezes. Had about 10 in my first 3 days with this little beauty. The first even destroyed some key files of Win7 and it could not be repaired. Might also be a HDD issue too but chkdsk found only 4KB in a bad sector...

I am surprised that this could be BIOS related but since others have reported freezes at 50°C in Linux, in WinXP and in Win7, I am willing to give it a try.

I just hope it is not a "feature" of the Z520 or GM500 because we will be all doomed...

I will upgrade BIOS to 3206 (2009-07-01) and keep you posted.

 

Upgraded Bios to 3206 .. didn't cure the problem for me. I thought it was fixed for a few days though .. then BANG same random freezing problems.

 

I still have not received an answer from Acer, which leads me to believe that they ignored my question, or simply refused to answer it. Their reputation of having a horribly had costumer service is apparently well-founded.

My netbook, however, has not frozen in over a week, but I have not been using it as intensively since I put an old desktop PC in my room.

 

BIOS 3206 didn't cure for me either. 2 hours and you guess what...

I am also trying the customer service but not expecting much from them. Engineers must be in another country and on vacations...

I think at this point that the chipset and CPU are plagged. Have a look at that spectacular bunch of erratas:
http://download.intel.com/design/proces ... 319536.pdf .
http://download.intel.com/design/chipse ... 319538.pdf

Seriously thinking of getting a refund...

 

Got a reply from Acer, asking me to send the netbook in for repairs.. I guess I have no choice.

 

Just like to say my 751 is running fine at at 53 degrees C cpu and 59 acpi (according to hwmonitor 1.0.6)
I am in Caesaria in Israel and the outside temperature will rise to 40-45 degrees today with 65% humidity.
I will have to turn on the air-conditioning soon or I will crash before the 751 .........
I am guessing that because only a few folk are posting in this thread that this is a minority problem ... hopefully!

 

I just got my Acer AO751H-1893
the one with the 6-cell battery yesterday and guess what?
It froze like 7 times in a 3 hour operation.
Today, I gave it another try, 5 more times, it froze, so I had to take out the battery 11 times just to reboot it.
I noticed when I use skype with video and I also open another browser that's where the freezing occurs.
But the day before, when I was just browsing normally, it will just freeze by itself.
Good thing I purchased this netbook from a store which offers a 20 day warranty - anything goes wrong within 20 days, they will replace it with a
new one but cannot give refunds.
One more problem is when it started to freeze, I could hear the fan making a noise... which I don't know why. Even the the video of my webcam froze.
I am so disappointed. I thought with a bigger memory and hard drive, it will step up but this netbook is just too slow for me.
So, I am returning this first time purchase of an Acer netbook tomorrow.
Hope I don't get another lemon. I thought this is not common and its good to have come across this forum.
Uninstalling the preloaded softwares helped somewhat and made it more fast than earlier.
Will update as soon as I get the new one.

 

I can confirm that the bios update for my AO751h-1948 (za3) did apparently stop the freezing problem. I bought mine a few days ago. You might also look at updating your WLAN driver because it had the nasty habit of dropping the connection after about 45 minutes for some reason.