Netbook freezes randomly

I got in touch with Acer, pointing them at this thread, and asking whether there was anything that could be done prior to be losing work should I suffer from this problem (I haven't had a lock-up yet, but I've already upgraded the memory to 2Gb, and installed Win7). This was the response I received:

"Regarding the issue you have informed us, having gathered information from the e-mail we have checked with serial number and this unit doesn't have any alert to send the unit in for repair.

As these machines are electronic products, we cannot know when the unit might have a problem. As the unit is still under warranty, if any hardware problem occurs to the unit we would repair the unit free of cost."

So there obviously isn't a recall situation in effect in the UK.

Cheers,

Steve.

 

Thank you GuHaid, appreciate it... Have a G'day!

 

I can confirm that after two weeks of having the motherboard/cpu replaced by Acer Australia I have had no further problems or lockups. My advice would be to contact them and organise a repair if under warranty, it really is a quick and painless process. Obviously backup any important data as they state a reformat will be done, but I got mine back without a reformat.

 

i see. thanks nachoman for your attention and concern.
Have a great weekend!

 

I previously noted on this forum that my Aspire One started freezing after the end of warranty. I almost reached the point of binning it but took it down to TechGuys at our local Currys where I had purchased it. They stressed tested the RAM, CPU, motherboard and hard drive. I have no idea what this consists in as I am not that computer literate. They said the problem was the HDD which they changed to a Samsung about ten days ago. Since then it has been running perfectly. I wonder if the £120 parts and labor fee should have gone for a new other brand netbook with warranty. Now that I have posted my experience on this forum the freeze bug will probably come back to bite me. But be sure, my next computer will not be a Acer.

 

cahyojc and others, here is my interim report and unfortunately it is not a good news.
I have given my 751 a good workout over the past few days. The first freeze happened about 2 or 3 hours into working on the first day of work after getting it back from Acer (who had replaced the main board). The next day was trouble free despite a HEAVY workload including a few very long Skype calls (which had before been an almost certain way to cause a lockup).
On day three the second freeze happened. Same thing as usual, I was browsing and during scrolling it just stopped.

So I sadly have contacted Acer again with a plea for assistance. They seem also a bit confused and head towards the "its gotta be a software issue now" solution. But they asked me to run a diagnostics program that I downloaded from a link they provided. The problem is that I currently cannot even get the diagnostic program to run. It makes a USB stick bootable and when booted from there it is supposed to run some lower level diagnostics. the boot from the USB works, but the program does not run properly, no mater what USB stick I try or which USB port or how often I download the little program.

One might think that this is a clear sign of an issue on the netbook - the problem I have however is that the same issue happens on BOTH 751s I own (only one of which so far is showing the freeze problem). So, either both netbooks have the same hardware issue (I consider that quite unlikely to be honest) or I am doing something fundamentally wrong (not trying to show off, but I consider that not very likely either, I am quite good with this kind of stuff).

So I am working on the issue with Acer support. BTW, you can get that program from the Acer web page at http://www.acer.com.au. Click on "Service & Support" and then "Support Inquiries". On the right bottom is an option to download a diagnostic tool. Just in case someone wants to have a go.

One thing that Acer did besides changing the motherboard is downgrade the audio driver. I had "upgraded" mine to the latest one available on the Acer Web page (6.0.1.5854) and it was downgraded to what it had shipped with (5.10.0.6024). I am DEFINITELY happier with that driver, sound quality is way way better. The other one had this kind of echo in it that was really annoying. That driver change may(!) also have to do with the fact that my Skype now not only seems to run stable but also with was less CPU usage. Before I could not make a video call, the CPU would max out too much. Now I am happily video'ing around without a problem and a CPU around 50%-60%. Not sure if it is that driver change or the new motherboard, but something changed to the better, no doubt.

I will be back when I have another update.

 

Hi GuHaid, thank you for your update and it's quite sad to know the result. appreciate it.
have you upgraded your RAM to 2GB? some ppl reported upgrading the RAM could fix the problem.

I recently uninstalled skype and somehow the freeze becomes less.
anyway,..just got to live with it,..
Thank you and have a great day!

 

It is quite frustrating of course for me. As much as I love the 751, I really do, but working on it always leaves me worried that any minute now it will freeze on me. Since its one of those problems that cannot be reproduced reliably, it is very hard to trouble shoot. There are plenty of other reasons why this is happening, other than the main board.

Changing the main board (or changing the audio driver?) got rid of my Skype problems, so far at least. Of course I can now look at changing RAM, CPU or the HDD come to mind, all possible. But I assume that Acer did in fact test those before they sent it back to me. I may run a few tests myself on the RAM and the HDD.

Talk soon.

 

Hi, everyone! I'm from Brazil, and this is the first time I write in here, and I would like to tell that I'm having this annoying trouble too: ramdomly freezing, mainly when scrolling up or down web pages or Office documents. Sometimes the system simply locks, without any action done. I bought my AO751h here in Brazil, and since then the problem exists. Well, I took my netbook and left it at maintenance under guarantee; there they exchange the HDD and the 2 Gb RAM memory for similar ones. Now the computer freezes a little less, but it still suffer from this ill! I'll leave it in maintenance again probably tomorrow, and I'll propose to exchange its motherboard. Any good news will be notified in here.

Now I'll run ACER's PC-Diagnostic and see what news it could bring!

I tried to run Windows 7 in it, but wasn't so good. System got much slower than XP, but I noticed that freezing stoped. Does anybody knows about something alike?

Thanks for now!

My AO751h: 2 Gb RAM memory DDR2-667; 250 Gb HDD; BIOS 3212; running Windows XP Home Edition SP3 fully updated; Realtek sound vers. 5.10.0.5817. Did I forget something?

 

Hi tomoaca, thanks for chiming in.
If you read a bit in this thread there have been a few different "solutions" that actually worked. One had the motherboard and the CPU exchanged, another one I recall was solved by a HDD change and another one seemed to have been fixed with changing the RAM module. Come to think of it, that is about all there really is to swap in a PC more or less, right?

I am a bit surprised that Acer has not found THE solution or at least THE one and only fail safe test procedure for this issue. It is perfectly clear that a large number of the 751 owners to experience this problem. Whether it is a certain batch that is affected or all, I don't know - but I am surprised that Acer does not know - or at least seem to know. It really should not be too tough to get o the bottom of this issue for the manufacturer of the product.

I can't wait to hear from you what happens when you run the diagnostic program. Please do report back.

PS: You guys are gonna win the World Cup, right?

 

:cry:

Well, as I suspected I might, I had my first freeze today.

However, my 751 is significantly different to how it was delivered. I've installed Windows 7 Professional, I've upgraded the RAM to 2Gb, and had also just installed an SSD (64Gb Western Digital). Consequently, I guess that rules out the solutions of installing Win7, changing the memory, or changing the hard disk.

I spoke to Acer, and although the gentleman I spoke to was very pleasant, I didn't get the feeling that he had more knowledge about the problem than me. His suggestion was to restore to factory settings, but he claimed that my installation of Win7 would prevent the recovery partition from recovering - it worked fine when I managed to get the <ALT> <F10> to stick.

Obviously, I'm not very happy at having to restore everything back to factory settings, but if that's how they want to deal with the problem, then I'll comply if it brings about a quick solution. Basically, I need to try and get this puppy to hang again soon so I can hand on heart say that it's got a problem with the default configuration, and get it sent back to Acer. Does anybody have any experience of repair of this problem in the UK?

Cheers,

Steve.

 

I tried the diagnostic utility, and I suspect it stalls in the same place as it does for you - the Oak Technology ATAPI CD-ROM device driver. I have exactly the same problem with old Norton Ghost bootable CDs and I suspect it's a lack of IDE connected CD drive that's causing the problem (the software is 13 years old, so I guess it just doesn't expect to see no CD drive, and consequently hangs).

I managed to get around the problem by simply renaming the CDROM folder, and it got as far as running the diagnostic utility (ACER - v09.09.08), but hangs at the "PCDUSB.exe ..." step (the previous 8 steps load ok).

I changed the ACER.BAT batch file, and removed the parameters to "pcdiag" on the first line. When you boot in this mode, you get the option to press "M" to select which modules are loaded. I found that PCDUSB, and PCDPCI2 cause the machine to hang, and so I skipped them.

I'm now in the process of running a "Full" test suite, but I'll be surprised if I encounter any problems running the diagnostics.

The only thing I've seen that strikes me as a little strange, is that I've had reason to use a couple of Linux based boot disks (GParted and Clonezilla) and both of those complain about an IO problem during the boot phase - I can't remember the details, and after a few retries it gives up and carries on. Not sure if this is expected behaviour or not.

If nothing else, the Acer diag disc has done something that I haven't been able to easily do so far, and that's create an editable bootable DOS flash drive. There's a possibility I'll be able to get Ghost to work now.

Cheers,

Steve.

 

Man... We've lost the World Cup! Netherlands beat us!!! Ok... But Argentina could not win too! I'll be cheering for this! Haha!


Back to the subject: PC-diagnostic didn't run here. Says it doesn't found USB drives... What should I do?

 

Good job Steve! Yes, mine stops at the same point. This is the screen shot if you want to have a look.

Another thing I notice on that screen is the "InitDiskWarning" (pretty much half way down) and associated text. But I cannot make any sense of it. Do you have that too?

Acer has contacted me by the way and they will send out the Diag program to me. They must have suspected that there is something wrong with the USB stick(s) I use. Reading what you guys have to say, that looks like a futile exercise.

I had two hangs yesterday, the first one happened when I was not even touching it. I was transferring a 11GB file via Wifi from my netobook to a different computer (it was an Acronis image of the misbehaving netbook, I keep regular images so I can at any time go back to a "clean' = never crashed version of the OS). During the transfer which takes a few hours, my 751 was just sitting there, copying - and when I came back, it had frozen. The possible culprits in my eyes: Wifi driver issue? HDD? RAM?

tomoaca - I am not sure what you can do, but I agree with Steve that running the Diag proram will most likely not lead to anything anyway. Lets see what Steve has to say when his is finished. (and so sorry about the world cup ...)

 

Yes, your screenshot shows the point where it first stops.

Unsurprisingly, the diagnostics all ran through without a problem (took a while).

I'm in the situation where I've now got my 751 running an OS I didn't want it running, with a 2Gb memory stick and a SSD hard disk just sat on my desk waiting for the thing to lock up so I can send it back. It seems a crazy set of affairs, but if I do get things sorted out, then I suppose it will be worth it.

Cheers,

Steve.

 

Steve, do you also get the "InitDiskWarning" that I get when running the Diag Program?

 

Not that I recall - at which point do you get that?

Cheers,

Steve.

 

Steve, it is a message on the screen when it stops. Have a look at the screen shot. It is pretty much in the middle of the screen.

BTW, last night I get informed by Acer Support that they have sent out the Diag Program to me. And then it says: "Please use this tool to assist us with diagnosing the fault." And the case is now CLOSED! Not exactly the kind of assistance I would have expected. Without even getting the Diag program, I have a pretty good idea what will happen when I run it though ... :roll:

 

Apologies - was too busy looking at the CD driver, to notice the other.

Yes, I get the InitDiskWARNING too. I get "using suspect partition Pri:1 FS 0e: with calculated values 245-200-19 instead of 244-254-63".

Cheers,

Steve.

 

Has anybody ever tried running a Prime95 stress test on their 751? I've run a test today, and have had a hardware failure detected by it on one of the cores. I wonder if this instability is the cause of the problem, and also whether Acer will accept evidence from Prime95 as cause for a problem?

At least if Prime95 fails, then that might be more repeatable than a potentially random freeze?

Cheers,

Steve.