Laptop freezing in Windows XP

[sausage888]

I have three pretty much identical A31P's - one of which just started to seize up intermittantly. Since the three are virtual clones of each other, I tried swapping out various parts to diagnose any hardware issues.

My most used A31P just started freezing up in Windows XP in the last few weeks, sometimes after only a few minutes or sometimes after several hours. It doesn't seem to matter whether there is high demand or no demand on the CPU. At some point, the cursor just freezes in place and I have to hard reboot.

I have read all the threads I could find about common causes. I ran PC-Doctor (DOS version from CD) against the failing computer and nothing found. I switched out memory and it wasn't that. I finally swapped C: drives between not-failing A31P and failing A31P and the problem does not move with the drive, so I am ruling out driver related issues - also disk drive problems. After swapping drives, I plugged each A31P into each other's power packs, so I am ruling out a power pack problem. I have run MobileMeter against failing laptop and high temp is anywhere from 50-80C at point of failure - not always high or low. The problem seems to be hardware related. I have had this computer for many years and this just started in the last few weeks.

What would I be looking for as a cause for this? I am willing to clean and re-seat the CPU and HSF if that is warranted, but if I had a cracked motherboard or something - could I see it visibly? And why wouldn't PC-Doctor find CPU problems?

Any help appreciated.

[RealBlackStuff]

An often overlooked source of problems might be the wifi card. Swap/replace it to see if that helps.
PC-Doctor will not find any CPU problems, so you might try a CPU swap first between a good and a bad machine
Reseating the CPU, cleaning off the old gunk with Isopropyl Alcohol, and applying fresh AS5 (Arctic Silver 5) thermal paste quite often works wonders.
It's also the right time to clean the dust bunnies from your CPU fan. Stop the fan blades from rotating (use e.g. a toothpick) while you blow out the dust.

[ajkula66]

Run memtest86 on both DIMMs, both slots, one at the time.

If that doesn't point to the RAM or a bad slot being a culprit, you likely have a motherboard problem.

Good luck.

[sausage888]

I took apart the laptop and cleaned/reseated the CPU, also vacuumed the HSF (wasn't too bad), reassembled. A31P froze again within a few hours. CPU temp at time of failue was 70C. Interestingly, when this happens - the last thing I was watching or doing is still displayed on the screen. There is no blue screen, thus no system log of what went wrong.

Also ran PC-Doctor load tests for about 30 mins. (passed), and memtest86 for about 2 hours (passed). I have not used the wireless adapter for some time and have it disabled.

I do have a couple of spare CPUs I could try, actually two 1.8Ghz ones that were formerly on the laptops before they were replaced with 2.4Ghz CPUs. Note this replacement of the CPUs was done many years ago, so it is not a non-compability problem. I find it hard to believe that Intel CPUs go bad...

[cadillacmike68]

While not common, CPU can go bad.

I think RBS intended for you to physically Remove the WIFI card from the machine.