T42 lockup

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brian251 · #1 Post by **brian251** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 11:08 pm

For the past 10 days my T42 (2379dxu/winXP) has been locking up about twice a day. I've been doing typical stuff in Firefox, MS Office, and Windows Explorer and had the PC lock. After the lockup I can't get the PC to shut off by holding the power button down for several seconds and have to pull the power cord and remove the battery to shut off the computer.

During a lockup, when I unplug or plug in the ethernet connection I do get the dialog box to show the correct connection status on the screen. I also get a dialog box to show on the screen when I unplug the power, but the electrical outlet plug icon remains on the bottom of the screen.

After about the 3rd time it locked up I went to the Thinkpad driver site and got the latest BIOS (3.23), but the lockups continued.

I have run PC Doctor and got a clean bill of health. I've also run AVG antiSpyware and did not find anything outside the ordinary tracking cookies.

I ran ThinkVantage System Update and the only driver it asked me to update was for my network card.

Any help is appreciated.

SHoTTa35 · #2 Post by **SHoTTa35** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 8:49 am

try this:

start - run - type "msconfig" - click OK - go to the "Startup" tab and uncheck everything there. Then reboot.

When you come back run the system like you normally do and see if it still locks up. Then if it doesn't renable a group of 4 or so at a time and see if it does

sktn77a · #3 Post by **sktn77a** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 11:47 am

Hmmm..... TSRs (services, viruses, etc) usually don't disable the manual power on/off switch. When you go to task manager after the lockup, does it show 100% CPU utilization?

brian251 · #4 Post by **brian251** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 1:47 pm

SHoTTa35: Will see if disabling and enabling startup items one by one finds the problem. Since I posted last night I've been running the usual setup and haven't had an issue yet.

sktn77a: I was unable to go to the Task Manager during the lockup to see if anything was using a very high amt of CPU or memory. The only way I've been able to get out of the lockup is a powerdown via pulling the plug and battery. The system resources seem to be fine up until the lockup (e.g: no slowdown in performance).

#5 Post by **GomJabbar** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 5:42 pm

Take a look in Event Viewer and see if it offers any clues. Look for events that occurred at the time of the lockup. Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer.

brian251 · #6 Post by **brian251** » Wed Sep 26, 2007 12:25 am

It locked up again, first time in the past 24hrs. I was away from the PC when it happened, but when I walked into the room and saw the screensaver stuck in a fixed position I knew what occurred. I ended up doing the hard reset of pulling the cord and battery.

I did not do a selective start up so far because I wanted to see if anything would be captured by the Event viewer or by the NIS log while running as usual. As far as I can tell neither shows what caused the problem, although I may not know exactly what to be looking for (I see no items that appear to be out of the ordinary). I think the only apps open at the time of lockup were Outlook, Firefox (2 tabs), and Windows Explorer.

I'm going to reboot again after unchecking startup items via MSCONFIG and see if I get a lockup in the next 24hrs, if not I'll begin to add items back, reboot and repeat.

brian251 · #7 Post by **brian251** » Wed Sep 26, 2007 2:49 am

I've been looking through anything on my PC that could solve the lockup issue I have. After running the memory test in PC doctor again I saw that the system RAM size listed is incorrect. Not sure how I overlooked this, but I have never had a RAM issue in the past. The Thinkpad came with 1 DIMM at 1024MB of RAM and I installed a 2nd 1gig DIMM in the back. PC Doctor shows 2 DIMMS of 512MB each, or half the correct size.

I went into the BIOS and it matches PC doctor, a total of 1024MB with 512MB DIMMs in each slot.

Not sure if this is related in any way to the lockup issue or it's just that the latest BIOS doesn't like my PC.

brian251 · #8 Post by **brian251** » Wed Sep 26, 2007 8:18 am

Please disregard my previous message. This ThinkPad has always had 1024MB of SDRAM (two 512MB DIMMs). I confused my laptop with my brother's that I helped install more RAM on.

I think this lockup thing is making me go a little crazy since it happens out of nowhere and I can't figure out what the cause is.

#9 Post by **GomJabbar** » Wed Sep 26, 2007 10:19 am

I found the following on Microsoft's site. This isn't for everybody, but perhaps you can make use of it.
How to use ADPlus to troubleshoot "hangs" and "crashes"

You can also look through this search list and maybe find something relevant.
Windows XP Hang

brian251 · #10 Post by **brian251** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 8:56 pm

Thanks for the help GomJabbar I looked at ADPlus and don't think I know enough to use it.

I was fine the 2nd half of this week from early wednesday until today when it locked up on 2 separate occasions. Unfortunately I was away from the PC each time it locked up and can't pinpoint the time/date (the Windows Event Viewer log and NIS logs aren't helping). Basically, each time I returned to a PC in screen power off mode, but find myself forced to pull the cord and battery to turn off the locked up ThinkPad.

In the past the lock up has happened while I was using Firefox or Excel so I don't see any significance in the fact that the 2 lock ups today happened while my screen was powered off.

sktn77a · #11 Post by **sktn77a** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 9:36 pm

Sounds like time for a factory recovery from the hidden partition. Just make sure to back up all your data first.

If it still locks up after this, it sounds like a hardware problem.

SlamX · #12 Post by **SlamX** » Sun Sep 30, 2007 11:06 am

I am suspecting a hardware issue here. Usually due to overheating, RAM problems or mainboard problems.

To rule out software problem run a Live Linux CD like Ubuntu or knoppix and see if it still locks up. if it doesn't most likely its software or driver problem.

Also take out the one stick of RAM on the bottom and see if it still locks up.

brian251 · #13 Post by **brian251** » Thu Oct 04, 2007 3:35 pm

Had the ThinkPad running for about 4 days with no problem until earlier this afternoon when it locked up. This time it happened while the screen saver was running. As usual the PC keyboard, mouse, and power button were unresponsive so I had to pull the electric and battery.

The strange part was that the screensaver continued to work during the lockup. It was set to cycle through pic in a folder on the hard drive and did not seem to have any problems while I was hitting any key or holding down the power button for 10secs. My guess is that the screensaver mode would have reached its set length of time and eventually powered off the screen.

Would this change anything for me in searching for a cause of the lockup problem?

Thanks.

rbena · #14 Post by **rbena** » Thu Oct 04, 2007 5:41 pm

sktn77a wrote:Sounds like time for a factory recovery from the hidden partition. Just make sure to back up all your data first.

If it still locks up after this, it sounds like a hardware problem.

I tend to agree. I used to attempt to troubleshoot problems manually, but then with Registry corruption and other issues both time consuming and not easy to detect, I simply reload a Ghost image of my C-partition. This brings my T42 back to perfect working order in 3 minutes, including all program and personal settings. Any continuing problems would be hardware related, so off to warranty repair.

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