My other lappy could also use some troubleshooting help

CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄ƷDer Millionendorf- Icrontian
This discussion began over here and I was getting some good input, but I decided that the issue needed its own thread, so here that thread is.

The story so far:

I have this Compaq Presario V6000 that stopped working due to a bad HD about 4 months ago. Betsy gave me her old HP to replace it, but that one gave in to irreparable issues a few weeks ago, as documented in this thread. That story is only important to this one because it was the poor HP's sacrifice which made it possible to get the Compaq up and running again.

I moved the HD (which passed every conceivable test) from the HP into the Compaq, and got it running. I installed Windows fresh (Win7 64), and got all the software I need on it to do the minor jobs I task my side lappy with (mostly just watching various chat rooms and project websites). It seemed to be doing just fine.

The issue:

After everything was up and running, and I was no longer installing stuff, the system started freezing (the system stops responding (as far as I can tell), but the screen continues to show a static image. I can see exactly what was going on when the system stopped).

It'll consistently freeze 2-4 hours after each restart. It restarts just fine, other than assuring Widows that everything is cool. It's usable, sure, but annoying, and since it's mostly just watching things that don't constantly change, I usually wouldn't notice until a couple hours after the freeze.

This seemed like a heat issue to me, so I installed Core Tempand left it up, so I could see the temps when it crashed. The temps were high (between 55 and 75c), but not super high, and the lack of consistent temp on crash was suspicious, so I got a CPU tester to both test the CPUs function, and to give it a good load. At 100% load for 6 straight hours, with temps up in the high 80s, the system did not freeze. Two hours after the test was over, andthe CPU was back down around 55c, the system froze. So, that seemed pretty clear that it's not heat.

As a standard diagnostic measure, I also ran Memtest86 overnight that night. No errors, and it didn't freeze.

So, in summary of that summary:

System ( Presario V600 - Win7 64) frequently freezes.
Not a heat issue, determined by load testing.
HD passes CHKDSK and CrystalDiscInfo tests 100%
RAM passes memtest86 10 passes in a row.
CPU passes all Hot CPU Tester PRO fitness tests 100% from

Any suggestions? Do I have another hopeless lappy?

Comments

  • I have a hunch that it's the gpu if you are getting away with these other stress tests. Can you try allocating a bit more of your system ram to video in bios? Do you ever see any artifacts or odd rendering on the screen, even when just working in a browser?

    Any one application that is open every time it happens?
    CB
  • RootWyrmRootWyrm Icrontian
    It's not the GPU. This particular behavior is specific to Compaq, and there's a reason for it. You're missing a system driver - but damned if I could tell you which off the top of my head. But the symptoms are that exactly. And Compaq doesn't have the nice HP Envy update tool, which makes it a royal pain in the ass. And they have to be slipstreamed. Prepare for the misery that is HP's website, and a lot of back-and-forth between a dozen plus pages.

    75C isn't even remotely high for the V6000 - the CPU is rated for TJmax 90-105C depending. Same for GPU - 100-105C. So it's gotta be a driver issue. And you cannot use manufacturer GPU drivers - HP modifies the hardware and BIOS and introduces all kinds of not fun stupidity without warning or labeling.
    CB
  • BLuKnightBLuKnight Lehi, UT Icrontian
    Just fixed an issue in a desktop where windows would freeze. No blue screen of death and no abnormal hard drive behavior. It was like it was stuck on a screen shot. I ran the GPU through some stress tests and found that the card was getting as hot as 106C before it froze. (Running idle was higher than 90C.) After I replaced the video card, temp dropped back down to below 50C on idle and only got up to upper 90s when I was stress testing it. I think it's the GPU.

    Funny thing, the tech that looked at it (I wasn't available the week it happened), said it needed Windows reinstalled and they didn't have any Windows 7 disks. My friend was going to have to have Windows 8 put on the machine.
    CB
  • I also had the same issue @CB is having on my brand new desktop, which is not a Compaq. The only consistent thing I ever found was that I had firefox open when it was happening. The only weird thing with firefox is the menus had artifacts on them occasionally. I looked it up, and it was a problem with AMD gpus + firefox hardware acceleration. I disabled firefox hardware acceleration, and I haven't frozen up since.
    It can be a slew of weird things, and problems like this are a pain in the rear to diagnose. I agree with @RootWyrm that making sure you have all the chipset / atk / whatever drivers updated.

    Have you run Windows 7 on this laptop without issue in the past?
    CB
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian

    I have a hunch that it's the gpu if you are getting away with these other stress tests. Can you try allocating a bit more of your system ram to video in bios? Do you ever see any artifacts or odd rendering on the screen, even when just working in a browser?

    Any one application that is open every time it happens?

    I tried just starting up the system and letting it sit without opening anyhting else, and that actually makes it freeze faster. It's looking like the more I ask the system to do, the longer it stays up. It freezes when it idle, like my old '89 Civic hatchback used to do.
    RootWyrm said:

    It's not the GPU. This particular behavior is specific to Compaq, and there's a reason for it. You're missing a system driver - but damned if I could tell you which off the top of my head. But the symptoms are that exactly. And Compaq doesn't have the nice HP Envy update tool, which makes it a royal pain in the ass. And they have to be slipstreamed. Prepare for the misery that is HP's website, and a lot of back-and-forth between a dozen plus pages.

    75C isn't even remotely high for the V6000 - the CPU is rated for TJmax 90-105C depending. Same for GPU - 100-105C. So it's gotta be a driver issue. And you cannot use manufacturer GPU drivers - HP modifies the hardware and BIOS and introduces all kinds of not fun stupidity without warning or labeling.

    When I get back from lunch, I'll download the driver package for this computer, and see if that helps.

    I also had the same issue @CB is having on my brand new desktop, which is not a Compaq. The only consistent thing I ever found was that I had firefox open when it was happening. The only weird thing with firefox is the menus had artifacts on them occasionally. I looked it up, and it was a problem with AMD gpus + firefox hardware acceleration. I disabled firefox hardware acceleration, and I haven't frozen up since.
    It can be a slew of weird things, and problems like this are a pain in the rear to diagnose. I agree with @RootWyrm that making sure you have all the chipset / atk / whatever drivers updated.

    Have you run Windows 7 on this laptop without issue in the past?

    I don't use Firefox. This system had Windows 7 on it before the HD went out, but now that I think about it, I think I had installed some of the original drivers to fix a video stuttering issue back when I first upgraded it from its original XP install, so the driver thing is sounding even more likely...

    I'll report back this afternoon. :)

  • If it freezes quicker when idle, I would argue that a Windows service of some sort that runs when the system is idle could be listed as another suspect. It could be worth repairing the Windows Update service and clearing all of the Windows Update files using disk cleanup->system files. Could also be worth peaking at your event log to see if there are any odd things in there.
    Maybe that's worth a shot if the driver updates don't get you anywhere.
    CB
  • RyderRyder Kalamazoo, Mi Icrontian
    edited July 2013
    I was thinking it could be a runaway service/memory leak in a driver.
    CB
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian
    How would I check for that? Just watch the processes list for something to start building up a huge memory buffer?
  • RyderRyder Kalamazoo, Mi Icrontian
    Yes, sort by the memory usage column in task manager under the processes tab.
    CB
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    Programs can also drop this info into a log file for you, so that you don't have to rely on watching it/being able to see it when it happens.

    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/69332/tracking-cpu-and-memory-usage-per-process

    uses built-in windows tools (for vista or above, which you qualified in OP)
    CB
  • QCHQCH Ancient Guru Chicago Area - USA Icrontian
    I'm guessing the power states built in to windows 7. Try changing power profiles. set it to max performance and leave it idle for several hours and see if it hangs. If it does not, then some system driver is missing that handles the power states. I had a Lenovo that REPORTED no missing drivers and froze like yours. I redid the drivers and one of then, don't remember which, popped up extra devices not detected before. Put those drivers in and it has been rock solid since.
    CB
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian
    edited July 2013
    I've downloaded all the important looking stuff from this page, and I'm installing it now.

    Edit: I guess I should be specific. I'm installing the Chipset drivers, the sound card drivers, the nVidia drivers, and the updated BIOS. None of the rest looked applicable, and some (HP Quickstart buttons) I'm actively avoiding.
    QCH said:

    I'm guessing the power states built in to windows 7. Try changing power profiles. set it to max performance and leave it idle for several hours and see if it hangs. If it does not, then some system driver is missing that handles the power states. I had a Lenovo that REPORTED no missing drivers and froze like yours. I redid the drivers and one of then, don't remember which, popped up extra devices not detected before. Put those drivers in and it has been rock solid since.

    I've already got all the power profile stuff set to "Never ever shut down or sleep anything ever, thanks". I should have put that in the OP, since Straight_Man mentioned it in the other thread, but I didn't think of it.
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian
    Okay. The BIOS is flashed and all those drivers are installed except for the audio drivers. They errored part-way through. I'm guessing they are not Win 7 compatable.

    I would have gone ahead and added the Power Management driver as well, but didn't see one on that page. Would I find it somewhere else?
  • RootWyrmRootWyrm Icrontian
    CB said:

    Okay. The BIOS is flashed and all those drivers are installed except for the audio drivers. They errored part-way through. I'm guessing they are not Win 7 compatable.

    I would have gone ahead and added the Power Management driver as well, but didn't see one on that page. Would I find it somewhere else?

    Ugh. The power management driver is the most critical one. Go figure they don't offer it for download in an easy place. You're going to have to dig around - it may not be available at all except on the OEM restore media. (Which they charge you for.) I've seen them do that more than once.
    CB
  • I thought the power management driver was only for customized power profiles (ie. "HP Recommended") and for displaying the battery charge remaining. Not really critical stuff. How way off am I on that?

    You could try this, but it's supposed to be for WinXP so I'm not sure if it will work or is worth trying:
    http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=321957&prodSeriesId=1842076&prodNameId=3200955&swEnvOID=228&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=ob-41619-1
    CB
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian
    Still freezing, it seems.

    I thought the power management driver was only for customized power profiles (ie. "HP Recommended") and for displaying the battery charge remaining. Not really critical stuff. How way off am I on that?

    You could try this, but it's supposed to be for WinXP so I'm not sure if it will work or is worth trying:
    http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=321957&prodSeriesId=1842076&prodNameId=3200955&swEnvOID=228&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=ob-41619-1

    That wont install. :/
  • Did you check the event log (system) for warnings/critical notifications before it crashes?
    CB
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian
    There does not seem to be anything interesting in the system logs, but I'm not sure I would know what to look for.

    It looks like for the last hour before the most recent freeze the only events were various programs checking to see if the internet was still there, and having no trouble finding it, then nothing, no shut down procedure or attempt to recover from an error, the next event is the system starting back up this morning.
  • I've got just some random ideas left before I'm spent, and one question:

    Any usb devices connected during the lockups, like a mouse or wireless dongle? If so, I'll have more ideas in another post. Until then:

    - Make sure your pagefile is being managed by the system
    system properties->advanced->performance settings->advanced->virtual memory change-> check automatically manage
    - Clean your windows update cache (this is Windows biggest PITA service, can cause issues like this)
    right click your c: or system drive->properties->disk cleanup->clean up system files->check windows update clean up and anything else you want -> run it
    - start->run->services.msc->find windows driver foundation-> change from manual to automatic startup type

    I still suspect this is software since finding out it crashes quicker when idle. If you installed XP or Ubuntu I bet you would get by fine. In the worst case scenario you can write this off as a non-win7 laptop, sell it for $100, and find something for $300 that will run Win7 fine.
    CB
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian
    Nothing else is plugged in, just the power and network cable.

    Pagefile is already being managed automagically.

    Cleaned up everything, but it wasn't that much as for space taken.
  • RootWyrmRootWyrm Icrontian
    edited July 2013
    Yeah. People assume the power management driver is 'just for X.'

    It's not. Especially not in a laptop. On a Compaq of that vintage and newer, the power management driver also interacts directly with beyond critical elements of the system. Things like the charge circuit and battery. Yes, there is logic circuitry inside the battery itself. If said driver is not installed, bad things result. Windows has a very basic setup for ACPI + APM but it has none of the chipset specific hooks. It's impossible for Microsoft to have and support every possible chipset and implementation.
    Since an out of control charge circuit tends to do things like, oh, I don't know, burn your house down that's kind of a bad thing. Now it's not anywhere near that bad - if it was, yeah, you'd be asking us how to repair a melted laptop. But at some point down the line you're hitting an APM state disagreement, and the system goes into a halt state up to prevent things like catching on fire. Or exploding a battery. No, seriously - this is what can happen when you have an APM state disagreement.

    I honestly do not know why people have this insane delusion that somehow 'cleaning up your disk' will fix locking up systems. It never has and never will. Same for messing with system services - seriously, don't frigging mess with WDF, doubly so when you don't know how it works. (Changing default behavior is a clear sign somebody doesn't.) Screwing around with unrelated software will never fix a hardware problem.

    Here's where things go south: HP doesn't have driver packages for the V6000 for Windows 7. That is a flat out show stopper right there. Doubly so because it's a modified nFarce chipset. You have to use the HP drivers, full stop. Specifically, the APM set should actually be included in this driver package but you cannot use that driver package on Windows 7. And you most definitely cannot use the stock NV driver packages.

    And no, rolling back to XP or Vista is not a guaranteed fix either. I found numerous reports of identical symptoms on XP and Vista even with the correct driver suites installed, in all sorts of scenarios. Root cause? Yeah, you guessed it, chipset on motherboard cooking itself. (And hey guess what isn't thermally monitored or managed at all?) So all I can suggest is trying the chipset driver suite, and if that doesn't work, well, afraid you're in the same boat as you are with the other laptop most likely.
    CB
  • Thanks for the nice and useful portions of your post :D
    CBTushon
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian
    Well, at this point it's looking like my only option is to try to reinstall XP on the system, and see what happens. I feel like the chance is low of that working, since Win 7 was previously installed and working on this system, so it seems unlikely that the OS is to blame, but I'm running out of things to try.
    RootWyrm said:

    So all I can suggest is trying the chipset driver suite, and if that doesn't work, well, afraid you're in the same boat as you are with the other laptop most likely.

    That's the chipset driver set I already installed, and it appeared to install properly, unlike the sound device drivers, but didn't make a difference.
  • Maybe it's worth one more shot with Windows 7 -- reinstall Win7, see how it runs. If it is ok, do the Windows Updates ... see how it runs. If it is OK, install drivers one by one, between them seeing how it runs.
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian
    I suppose it couldn't hurt.
  • RootWyrmRootWyrm Icrontian
    CB said:

    Well, at this point it's looking like my only option is to try to reinstall XP on the system, and see what happens. I feel like the chance is low of that working, since Win 7 was previously installed and working on this system, so it seems unlikely that the OS is to blame, but I'm running out of things to try.

    RootWyrm said:

    So all I can suggest is trying the chipset driver suite, and if that doesn't work, well, afraid you're in the same boat as you are with the other laptop most likely.

    That's the chipset driver set I already installed, and it appeared to install properly, unlike the sound device drivers, but didn't make a difference.
    I agree chances of it working are very low. Bear in mind, just because it installed doesn't mean it actually works right. Don't ask. I deliberately blot out the majority of my Windows driver knowledge. Suffice it to say that while HAL is a saving grace, close to the metal is a giant migraine as a direct result of HAL. Which is why - and this part is super important - on Windows 7 you have to slipstream the entire chipset driver package. It HAS to be slipstreamed. Yes, I can explain why, but unless you grok the difference between UMDF and KMDF and how to operate WDF as part of that it will not make any sense.
    And no, the installer can't do KM properly - it's just impossible. KM install requires conflicting with actively operating disk controller drivers. You can't turn off the disk controller while using the disk. Also cannot be replaced on reboot because changing that renders the system unbootable due to boot device changes that result. That's why if you have an ICH/RST[c,e] RAID as boot device and you so much as rename the array, Windows breaks.
    Also, the WDF service has absolutely nothing to do with driver operation. Ever. Never has, never will, and messing with it is just a bad idea period. On Windows 7, the WDF Service is set to manual by design. WDF is exclusively for UM, and the requirement is that the UM request start if needed. On a laptop with no USB devices connected, you usually will NOT see WDF UM started, as there's no UMDF drivers running. (BTW, it's WUDFHost.exe in task manager, view all processes.)

    The sound drivers, it's a non-issue because they're a KMDF, but non-blocking conflicts, so you can roll post-install just fine. Plus HP tends to not do too much there, unless it's a Beats Audio. (IDT-based system, but same with non-blocking conflict.)

    If you did a Windows 7 upgrade from the original factory install, then it would have automagically slipstreamed the KM drivers inboard, so all good in the hood. New install, if you didn't specifically slipstream, could be APM state mismatch or SATA related since neither driver is actually installed or operating correctly.
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