Netbook freezes randomly

Mine just came back from Acer with a new motherboard. I have installed Windows 7 on it and tried everything I know to make it freeze and it just keeps on ticking. No problems so far. BTW, the new intel drivers raised the video and processor WEI score.

Lance
www.lancemoreland.com

 

Even when looping 3dmark 2001? Because on my first repair, the "engineer" said that the machine cannot run 3dmark and that the freeze is "normal"

 

Hey everybody,

For those living in Europe, I managed to retrieve the name & email adress of the guy responsible for Customer Care in Europe (senior management). I already sent him an email explaining my frustration on this freezing issue. Who knows this will help. (Although knowing ACER for their arrogance, I highly doubt that.)

Let me know if there is any interest in having this name & email made public. Ah what the hell, here is a heads up (if you can read german :? ) :
http://www.informationweek.de/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208700863&printable=true

Cheers,

 

Yes, there is. I'll grab the netbook tomorrow and see if it's fixed. Then maybe we can create a email template with an email list, that people can copy & paste to get their attention. We'll target any emails that ends with @acer.com that we can find on the web.

 

Hi Guys I would like that email address i have the mail already written up.
Just got my 751 back from service they had it a whole two days sent it back
no details of what they did. went on skype and in 5 min froze up
downloaded the new intel drivers just in case still froze up
This is the MOST fustrating experience i have ever had
I just want it fixed I thought it was a good model from all the good reviews it had back in the summer
so i bought 3 of them for the family to keep in touch with as we lead active lives .....wrong
for me its war with Acer they will have to do something
As a note I have had 4 other Acer laptops thats wprkes as advertised. :evil: :evil: :evil:

 

I think a lot of people would be interested in sending an email to those in charge at Acer. I live in the USA, however, so I don't think that the European branch would care about my opinions.

I do wish that someone from Acer would have the courage to let us know what the heck is going on with this netbook's freezing problem. It isn't a matter of pushing the computer with heavy-duty number crunching or video processing. I can leave mine on doing nothing and come back to find it has frozen.

I wonder if Jerry Brown, our State's Attorney General would be interested in this. We have Lemon Laws in California. It would seem that certain runs of the 751H have a serious flaw to them and should be replaced by Acer.

 

I am sorry it did not work for you. Out of curiosity, could you post the information on the sticker on the module?

Still never had a problem with mine after the RAM replacement. Regarding the heat theory being discussed now, I notice that my air intake on the underside is beginning to clog up. Its about 2/3 blocked with dust. Reading temps at the bottom of the case with a IR temp gun, I can see that my temps have increased approximatly 10' Celsius from earlier readings under same use. The hottest part of the case is under the RAM slot which is now around 60 degrees under medium use. I will disassemble the laptop before I blow it clean since I dont want to blow the dust further inside or spin up the fan. Just need to get time to get the gps working first so I can install the antenna at the same time.

 

Well, this past week it did not freeze at all, even when idle. Maybe it needed a little "burn-in" time but I suspect it will freeze again at some point. It has frozen twice while idle and once while scrolling since I have had this memory. Overall, not bad and certainly much better than the original memory that came with the unit.

The exact label on the memory is as follows:

Hynix Korea 01
2GB 2Rx8 PC2-6400S-666-12 C
HYMP125S64CP8-S6 AB-C 0837

I have an "E3H" motherboard for what that is worth.

 

Same here. Installed and shortly thereafter experienced The Freeze. I guess I'm going to do a backup and get the motherboard replaced. Starting to get tired of this issue (though it's not nearly as prevalent as before).

 

Well Gentelmen I am on the attack to solve this problem

Acer Headquaters Pan Europe.
Service Director -- Thomas Riege
Manager for TSD and Call Center -- Arwid Stemke
Acer Computer GmbH,
Hamburg,Germany

I have sent them a very strong letter
pertaining to the situation we have with the 751h model
I have told them if they ignore this situation it will send a dtrong message to all of us that thier product Brand is not worth investing in future models
aslo I (we) will have to advance the attact in order to protect our consumer rights.
maybe some of you have some ideas as to whom we can take this to in a legal sence .
we need a pitition list to see how many of us that have a problem with this model.
I dont think wI will hear back from him until January some time. and that will give him a chance to rad our forum
so he can see the depth of the stuation
Merry Xmas to you all and a happy new year
I will see you in the new year maybe we can get this thing sorted out
Regards
Pdam lux

 

Good for you, Pdam lux! I hope that you get a response. Keep us posted.

Merry Christmas!

 

I got the ****ing netbook back today, then ran a 3d program in a loop and found out it got into a BSOD when I came back home.
This is after it is fixed for the second time. They have replaced the motherboard and the ram for the first repair, then the fan plus heatsink for the second time.

I am very pissed now.

@Pdam lux
please post the content of your email, and the email address you're sending to.

I'll be sending an email to [email protected] tomorrow, which is an email I've got from Acer's customer service department in Hong Kong.

 

That (the mail) was a nice move, since it will probably get us a responsible answer and maybe lead to recall of specific s/n models.

I will be more than glad to sign a petition, about the freezing problem and maybe a refund. A petition will show how many of us face this problem and it will be a way to put some pressure on Acer in order to do something effective about it.

Count me in anyway!

Just for the info, since my 751h froze a couple of times, I decided to use some fan-controlling software. Right now I use AA1 Fan Control (Fan On 60C / Fan Off 50C) and haven't had a freezing so far. I also updated the video drivers to the latest version from Intel, but I've heard that they won't fix the problem...

 

Ah ok. Thats interesting. Make sure to let us know how it performs the next weeks.
Your numbers are like mine, except you have an extra C. I guess the last 4 digits is the production date, mine being 0833 (week 33 of 2008?).
I also have the E3H.

Merry Christmas everyone

 

Hello everyone! I've been monitoring this topic for quite a while, and now would like to say something. To make a long story short, i got my 751h with Windows XP and experienced the freeze problem in some time. That was very disapointing, as you all know, so i checked the Internet and tried some things, like installing the aa1fancontrol. That seemed to solve the problem, but after one more freeze (which appeared for a reason i have no idea of) i tried updating the BIOS (to 3210 version). And after that the program wouldn't work! "oh man" - i thought, and started to try all other kind of stuff. Driver updating wouldn't help at all, and i continued to have trouble with hd-videos (which is not the part of the problem, but anyway), and i decided to install Windows 7 (and i never regreted).
I can't say that solved the problem completely, but here is what i discovered:
1) The Google Chrome definitely had something to do with it. FF 3.5 never caused a problem. (Thanks to the author of the post few pages ago, i would've never suspect the browser).
2) It once froze while i was working with the Bluetooth (that may have been a coincidence, but the netbook was not even warm)
3) When the computer is charging, the fan is working nonstop, and it never froze while charging. Therefore i agree with those, who say that it's a temperature problem. And, if anybody had the same problem (aa1fancontrol wouldn't work with the 3210 bios (at least i think it's because of the bios)) and solved it, would he please be so kind to share the solvation?)
You see, one of the main problem is that i live and bought the netbook in Russia (excuse my English, by the way), and therefore can't ship it anywhere to get a replacement. Believe me, with you guys waiting for the replacement for weeks it would take at least 3 months here) tough luck. I e-mailed the local acer support, and they suggested updating the BIOS. When i did, and it didn't work, they said i should give it away to the service-center (why i won't, i've already mentioned). So this topic is my only hope to solve the problem. Sorry for such a long post, hope it will help someone. Waiting for a reply.
P.S. The windows 7 is almost perfect in HD-videos. 720p won't lag unless there are more "heavy" programs opened.

 

I've installed the 2019 build of the GMA 500 driver for windows 7 today, downloaded from Intel. It seems to have solved the freezing in 3d apps (at least no freezing for today).
Maybe you can try it ->Bistrform .

 

Ugh! I JUST got this Netbook for x-mas. So far it has locked 3-4 times since owning it. This is absolutely unacceptable. I will try what I can from this forum but nothing seems promising judging by the 50 pages of posts. STEP IT UP ACER - used to think Acer's were descent. :?

All of us can't be wrong...

Very unhappy at the moment, just letting Acer know another one of these Netbooks is problematic. *Sigh*

 

Can you just return the netbook and get another unit? I would do that and not mess with any workarounds. If your netbook freezes, chances are that resolving the freezing problem will be a long and complicated one. Why waste your time? The problem seems to stem from a variety of issues.

Also, just to let you know, even with that one-year warranty from Acer, after the first month should your netbook need repair, YOU will have to pay for the shipping back to the repair center. Depending upon where you live, that can be $25 - $50 if you include insurance, etc.

So, bottom line, either take the netbook back now or get Acer to repair it immediately.

Better yet, consider another brand altogether.

 

I do have 30 days and may very well end up doing so. This machine was gifted to me for "ultra-portable" work. I have (sadly...maybe?) fallen in love with the darn thing but if it can't simply stay operational when I need it all the love in the world isn't going to help.

Out of the box it froze (just like everyone else's) every 2-3 hours. Very randomly might I add. I clean installed with XP Pro, ran latest BIOS update and all latest drivers. I also patched the ACPI driver to stop the event-logging every time an app. (PowerDVD for example) checked battery status on start-up or accessed other hardware info.

Also, the hard "click" the hard drive emits every so often because of power management settings locking the HDD's head was also remedied at the cost of slightly more power consumption.

I have been running "lock free" for the past 4-5 hours - knock on wood. Maybe some or all of the above had something to do with it? Maybe nothing helped and it's doomed to lock again, we'll see.

Will try not to add any "bunk" to this already massive thread...
thanks
--------
edit: Yep, didn't run hard enough I suppose. Froze almost instantly in Google Earth. Will place a (probably pointless) call to Acer in the AM and work from there. I see this unit being returned... :cry:

A big F* you to Acer.

 

Something extra for the mix:

As I said before - I have access to a number of these netbooks with the E3H board (the latest so-called "fix" that isn't really a fix). The problem seems to be thermal - laptop bases with fans and AA1FC solves the freeze problem substantially, but does not eliminate it completely on any unit I've worked with.

Here's something interesting, however - I've installed SiSoftware Sandra on four E3H's. In all cases, running the video stress & test software freezes all four netbooks almost immediately, even with AA1FC and external fans. In all cases, running motherboard, memory, and other system stress & test software does not freeze the netbooks, unless AA1FC is not running - in which case freezes occur occasionally.

Different Intel GMA drivers do not substantially affect the problem.

Might be two different issues here - a thermal issue affecting various components of various makes (Acer uses different brands of memory in these units, etc.), and a specific video hardware or driver issue.... :roll:

They've stopped selling these netbooks at my usual outlets. I suspect Acer is fully aware of the issue and is moving on - hoping that the relatively few consumers who've bought this dog will sink without a trace. I'd like to be proven wrong.