Netbook freezes randomly

ROFLMFAO LOVE it mate, finally those idiots at Acer Repair will have some real knowledge behind them.

P.S Speaking from experience here, your computer won't always go straight to Acer. They'll "Certify" corner store tech's to work on their machines, that happened to me years ago, I had to personally take my machine to Acer in my local capital city to actually have it repaired. Acer will never admit they're wrong about something and unfortunately won't take on any outside knowledge, so as much as they may be forced to have this forum open (if they even boot your own hard drive, chances are they'll swap out for a factory diagnostic drive while they work on it) they're not gonna read this.

 

I've had mine since October 2008, it's worked like a charm and it's never frozen randomly. These netbooks are cheap and fun, and I suspect people experiment with them in ways they wouldn't do with more expensive equipment, then go nuts when they "freeze randomly".

 

I don't think you could be more wrong. Whether this cheap little machine should be able to cope with showing a high definition video stream or not is something I'm happy to discuss and have a debate about, but the machine should NOT ramdomly freeze, potentially losing hours of work. I don't think people are "experimenting" with their machines - I certainly didn't. I just installed software as you would on any other PC.

At no time have we tried to suggest that repair isn't the way to go. However, the nature of a random event, is that it's random and not predictable. If it's possible to find an indicator that predicts the likelihood of a machine suffering a freeze, even before it has one and potentially loses work, then that's a definite benefit. Also, the ability to be sure that your machine has actually been repaired once it is returned, without having to wait for a freeze, is obviously invaluable.

Cheers,

Steve.

 

Dude, the netbook we are talking about is the ao751h. You stated you had your netbook since October 2008 and it never froze radomly. The ao751h netbook wasn't even released until 2009. The one you have is the AOA150. So you might be right that your netbook doesn't freeze. That's because the problem isn't with your model !!!!!!!!!

 

Here's an interesting article from wikipedia....

"There have been reports of some AO751h units randomly freezing, which has led to recalls in Denmark.[48] Users have reported that having their motherboards replaced by Acer has apparently solved the problem.[49] Acer officially reports that the fix is to install an updated BIOS.[50]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acer_Aspire_One

 

D'oh! My Netbook has been "repaired" by installing a new hard disk. Obviously this is going to make no difference whatsoever as:

a) My original freeze occured with a SSD installed, and not the one they have found to be faulty.
b) The Prime95 test doesn't really touch the hard disk.

I suppose it is possible they've done something other than simply replace the hard disk, but the repair report doesn't say anything more than "replaced hard drive". I'm running the Prime95 test again, and if/when it fails again, then I'll arrange for it to be returned once more...

Cheers,

Steve.

 

I have neve had this problem but my netbook is now randomely freezing! i dont understand this. it only seams to happen when im scaning for viruses

 

Steve,
so what is the update on your netbook. Mine is coming back to me in 3 days. I will post my results.

 

My machine ran the "In-Place large FFT" without problems for around 20 hours - I've just run the "Blend" test, and it's failed on one of the threads just under 3 hours.

I'm going to contact Acer now.

Cheers,

Steve.

[EDIT - It's being picked up tomorrow, and will be dealt with by a "senior technician".]

 

Just got mine back after sending in to Texas for repair. On the comments section on the repair request of "Fix MY Acer" I mentioned this 80 page thread and requested that they replace the mainboard as that seemed to be the most successful fix and I don"t want to be sending it in multiple times until it was fixed right.
What they did was update the bios to version 12 and reload the OS. So what I am doing is leaving all the preloaded crap on here and activating the McAfee security suite instead of installing NIS. That way if it does freeze up within the first week it is still the same configuration they sent it back to me. I did update Windows to the latest updates. So far in 3 days it hasn't froze up yet even after deliberately trying to get it to on a couple websites it almost always did on before.
Not really getting my hopes up since it has only been 3 days.After a week or so if it doesn't freeze I'll download Firefox since that is my preferred browser and install NIS and start getting rid of some of the bloatware.
Anyone know if Acer owns this website or is it a private effort?

villasbill

 

I'd really be tempted to run the Prime95 blend torture test, and see what results you get.

Judging by the ownership details of this domain, this is a private forum, and nothing to do with Acer.

Cheers,

Steve.

 

Hi everyone!

As I said these days, my AO751h is now going ok. If you remember, I said it gone to assistance and came back. One thing I didn't say was that when it arrived, I erased it, and reinstalled Windows XP SP3 fully uptaded. However, it froze for two times. I'd like to share with you two things I did:

1) Control Panel, "power management" (or "power options", I don't know what is the name on English XP version), at "power schemes" tab, I selected "minimum power management";

2) Control Panel, "System", "Hardware" tab, "Hardware profiles", I entered the properties of the one profile there, and selected the box "this computer is portable", and "this computer is docked", or something like that.


Well... Since then my netbook never froze again! And, believe me: that's awesome! Even when I'm running firefox, word, skype, msn and MS security essentials on the back!!!

I do not know if that has something to do, but I am so very happy!


Excuse me for my poor english! Hope I could help you!

 

I will try this later today, however I doubt it will work. This won't make sense because other people have the same problem with windows 7 and linux. I think your freezing will occur as you play with it more. After all it is random. I remember originally when my netbook started freezing, I was 100% sure it was the "MagicJack" software. So reinstalled Win XP from scratch. It worked fine for a few days and then it started freezing again.

 

Yes, I don't believe netbook was healed either!

Another thing I didn't mention is that I didn't update audio driver. I'm using that one delivered in ACER's CD: Realtek high definition audio ver. 5.10.0.5817.

All other drivers are updated.


So ... When freezing here again, I'll warn you!

 

I've tried this on my computer. It froze twice in 5 minutes.

 

How to make your A0751h Acer Aspire One freeze - GUARANTEED!

I'm sure there are many different ways of making your A0751h Acer Aspire One netbook freeze. However, I found a very simple way that is guaranteed to work. (This works even after a completely fresh install of Windows XP.) The only program you need to download is the Opera 10.60. Here's the link for Opera....

http://www.opera.com/download/

After you install Opera, go to the beginning of this forum in the Opera browser. That's the funny thing, it will freeze while you are in this forum. Here is the link for the beginning of this forum....

viewtopic.php?f=87&t=16164

Make sure all your other programs are closed. On my machine, (since it's a fresh install) the McAfee pops up on the bottom left hand corner and says, "Your Computer is not fully protected. Please check your protection status in McAfee SecurityCenter and fix any problems." Make sure you "Close" this also. If you don't close this, it will NOT freeze.

Now stroll 'up' and 'down' the page with the 'up' and 'down' arrow button on your keyboard. Do this and it should freeze within 1 minute. I've done this over 20 times already. It freezes every single time. The strange thing is it doesn't work for all the pages in the Forum. For sure it works on the first page though. When I say stroll up and down, you have to continuously press either the 'up' or 'down' button so the screen is actually scrolling until it freezes.

PS. My username is Freezer. Obviously because I opened my account while using my Aspire One freezing netbook.
PSS. I've sent my netbook in twice already and it's still freezing. I already got approval to send it in the 3rd time on their postage.

 

villasbill, tomoaca, freezer, It would be great if you could all run a Prime95 blend test on your machines. It looks like we are on to something here, but we need more people to run the test. Have a look a bit earlier in this thread (around Page 80-81 or so) Steve gives a good explanation on how to download and run that program.

@tomoaca: I don't want to rain on your parade, but I agree with Steve and really think that that change in the Control Panel will not make a big difference. Just a question of time I think.

@freezer: hmm - not so sure about your test either. The main problem is that by using a non-mainstream browser (sorry, I do not want to start a browser discussion here at all) and then find a page that causes a machine to freeze - as unpleasant as it is, but that is not really that great an indication. Especially since we are adding another variable (the browser and its capabilities). I must say though that most of my freezes come when scrolling web pages too (and MS Word less frequently).

The good thing about this Prime95 test is that - whether failure in that test has anything to do with the freezes or not - a new computer should pass this test every time. No buts about it, there cannot be calculation errors on a PC. Full stop. So if our freezing 751s freeze because of this errors or not does not matter. They fail a computation floating point test and that alone could be seen as a reason for repair. For those of you who came in a bit later, I have two 751s. One freezes, the other one dos not. The one that does not freeze passes the Prime95 test, the other one does not.

A friend of mine bought one (as a result of me recommending it - before mine started freezing). There are no problems with that 751 - and it also passes the Prime95 test. It would be great to have more people running it giving us more data points.

Mine left back to Acer yesterday. I explained all I have done, the problems with the Diag program, the tests with Prime95, linked to this thread and asked for the machine to be dealt with by Level 2 or 3. It took a while for Acer to get back to me (unlike the first two times), so hopefully things have gone a different path. Lets see what happens next. I will report.

 

I've had notification today that my 751h has been repaired and is being sent back to me. Although there's not been sufficient time for them to have run the Prime95 blend torture test for 24 hours as I requested, when I enquired about the nature of the repair, I've been told that the motherboard was found to be faulty and has been replaced (and since I believe the CPU is surface mounted and not in a slot, then I guess the CPU has been replaced too). This is the repair I requested in my covering letter, so hopefully this new motherboard will be the cure, and won't suffer from the same problem.

I'll keep you posted.

Cheers,

Steve.

 

I thought that when my computer actually freezes, it probably the hardware of the computer. However, if it's only the software, the program should crash.
BTW - I just downloaded the Prime95.

 

Instructions for Prime95

Download Prime 95. Here's the link.....
http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=103


Here's the instructions written by StevePrichard.....

I'm running the Prime 95 right now. I will post my results later.