Netbook freezes randomly

Re: How to make your A0751h Acer Aspire One freeze with fire

I am so pissed off at Acer. I enclosed a letter to them explaining how to make the netbook freeze in firefox. I just called Acer Customer Service to asked them how the repair went. They responded that are sending me back the netbook, they reformatted the hard drive, and they told me "NOT" to use firefox. What kind of stupid advice is that. Now I have to send it back to them again for the 4th time!!!!!!!!!!!

 

My firefox just automatically updated to 3.6 this morning, coulda sworn it did the update only a few days ago. Try the new version see if the same bug exists?

Also you should try your method to cause the freeze again, but this time, completely uninstall Macafee.

 

I guess I should of told the technician more of the problem. My netbook freezes sometimes when turning on, sometimes when uninstalling a program, many times in firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera. Also when using VOIP and Prime95. So the problem wasn't firefox. Firefox was just an example. Now I have to send it back to them for the 4th time. Every time I send it I try to explain to them the problem. When I write long letters, it didn't work. So I wrote a short letter, and it still didn't work. Next time I will just tell them to run their diagnosis program.....Orthos.

 

I'd include a copy of my repair report, and tell them that you were experiencing exactly the same problem as me.

Cheers,

Steve.

 

Orthos, You are banging your head against a wall and you need to try something else. How about this: Call Acer Headquarters in your country. At the switchboard ask for the name and the mailing address of the highest person who is in charge of customer service. If they ask you why, say that you want to send that person a letter. If they can't give you the name, ask for the name of the COO (Chief Operating Officer) - that is definitely high enough up. Customer service will be in this person's hierarchical tree.

Then sit down and write a polite (but very brief!) letter outlining your problem. Apologise for taking this unusual route and ask whether someone with deep technical knowledge can contact you and help you sort your problem out.

As long as you are brief, professional and polite, I would think you have a much better chance of getting a step further towards a resolution of the problem than with trying the same route over and over again.

I have done this now a few times with large multinational companies when I seemed to get stuck with a problem in the lower levels of customer service and every single time it has worked perfectly. I make sure that I have given the official channel of support a good and fair go, but if that fails, I try the "top down" approach. I think in your case its time for that or similar change of tactic.

Good luck with it

 

Hi All,

Try this http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-re ... =-1#bottom

worked for me a treat thus far!

Cheers,

Comms

 

Hi Comms, thanks for chiming in over here.

I will give this a go for sure. I wish I could say that I was hopeful, but whenever I ran my Prime95 stress tests, I had all the power settings to off (it was the ones not running on battery though) and it never took long to get errors reported (no freezes, but errors from Prime95)

But hey, I got nothing to lose and will change the settings right now. Thanks again.

 

I wouldn't waste your time.

I think everybody should simply realise that the freezing is due to poor hardware design or implementation in earlier mainboards. As my repair report said "The unit was fitted with an old revision mainboard which was found to have a weakness regard system stability under extremely heavy loading."

As far as I'm concerned, you just need to mainboard swapping for a newer revision.

Cheers,

Steve.

 

Looks like you're right Steve - froze on me overnight.

I had hoped the power settings were somehow intrinsically related as trying to get Acer to do the right thing is like pulling teeth (I've had 2 'warranty repair/returns' both apparently without issue now)

Cheers,

Comms

 

Comms, just out of interest, if its not too much hassle, could you run the Prime95 program for us and report back if you get any errors? Here is where to get it and how to run it in a few lines.

 

Running the prime95 torture test now as specified in the link

Comms

 

Tested until the battery died out:

[Tue Jul 27 16:29:55 2010]
Self-test 1024K passed!
Self-test 1024K passed!
[Tue Jul 27 17:03:18 2010]
Self-test 8K passed!
Self-test 8K passed!
[Tue Jul 27 17:37:00 2010]
Self-test 10K passed!
Self-test 10K passed!
[Tue Jul 27 18:12:19 2010]
Self-test 896K passed!
Self-test 896K passed!
[Tue Jul 27 18:45:38 2010]
Self-test 768K passed!
Self-test 768K passed!
[Tue Jul 27 19:17:52 2010]
Self-test 12K passed!
[Tue Jul 27 19:23:46 2010]
Self-test 12K passed!
[Tue Jul 27 19:51:34 2010]
Self-test 14K passed!
[Tue Jul 27 19:58:19 2010]
Self-test 14K passed!
[Tue Jul 27 20:26:15 2010]
Self-test 640K passed!

Now testing running on mains

 

Good plan. 4 hours isn't really enough time for a test.

Cheers,

Steve

 

Thanks Comms. I agree with Steve, let it run for a bit longer, say 18-24 hrs. If you get an error, you will see that one of the two windows representing the "workers" will turn red and say that it stopped because of an error encountered.
Looking forward to reading the results.

 

I'm sorry to appear awkward, but I can't agree with most of this.

 

Yeah I'd have to agree, thanks for the input but its not a malware issue, fresh installs off legitimate iso's kept off net don't usually have an issue.

BTW when I first encountered this issue I upgraded my RAM - so I have 2GB instead of the standard 1GB. I still experienced issues obviously.
I have noticed a significant reduction in the freezing (touch wood) since the power settings adjustments - only the 1 mentioned since application.

Testing output had to be halted as I wanted to leave work.
I restarted when I got home (still running now) and can leave on for the next 24 hours.
Test results thus far (prior to last restart tonight)


[Wed Jul 28 10:08:15 2010]
Self-test 1024K passed!
Self-test 1024K passed!
[Wed Jul 28 10:40:43 2010]
Self-test 8K passed!
Self-test 8K passed!
[Wed Jul 28 11:13:38 2010]
Self-test 10K passed!
Self-test 10K passed!
[Wed Jul 28 11:48:02 2010]
Self-test 896K passed!
Self-test 896K passed!
[Wed Jul 28 12:20:39 2010]
Self-test 768K passed!
Self-test 768K passed!
[Wed Jul 28 12:52:18 2010]
Self-test 12K passed!
Self-test 12K passed!
[Wed Jul 28 13:25:18 2010]
Self-test 14K passed!
Self-test 14K passed!
[Wed Jul 28 13:59:20 2010]
Self-test 640K passed!
Self-test 640K passed!
[Wed Jul 28 14:30:31 2010]
Self-test 512K passed!
Self-test 512K passed!
[Wed Jul 28 15:02:47 2010]
Self-test 16K passed!
Self-test 16K passed!
[Wed Jul 28 15:36:43 2010]
Self-test 20K passed!
Self-test 20K passed!
[Wed Jul 28 16:09:30 2010]
Self-test 448K passed!
Self-test 448K passed!
[Wed Jul 28 16:41:44 2010]
Self-test 384K passed!
Self-test 384K passed!
[Wed Jul 28 17:12:40 2010]
Self-test 24K passed!
Self-test 24K passed!
[Wed Jul 28 17:46:08 2010]
Self-test 28K passed!
Self-test 28K passed!

 

It was a SPAM post, deleted and user Banned.

 

Despite the replacement mainboard, I'm still suffering from freezing. I've notices that the hard disk light is lit contantly when it freezes, and it seems that it occurs for me when the machine is under load.

It's back off for repair...

 

Steve,

Very interesting that your computer is still freezing. I have 2 questions regarding your replaced motherboard....

1. Did it pass the 24 hours test of Prime 95 with no anti-virus installed?

2. Did it pass the 24 hour test of Orthos with no anti-virus installed?

My computer passes the 24 hour test of Orthos with no anti-virus installed, however it will freeze in Prime95 with no anti-virus installed.

Freezer

 

It passed Prime95, but I didn't bother trying Orthos. When it has frozen, I noticed that the disc light was lit. To be honest, I must admit, I'm just thinking this machine, despite the promise, is simply not up to standard, and am wishing that I never bought it.

Acer are taking it back, but I made it clear it's the last time, and they seemed to fully understand that, and promised that it would get sorted out. What that actually means, I don't know, but we'll see.

Cheers,

Steve.