Very frequent BSODs and freezing

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Cclyde · #1 Post by **Cclyde** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 12:54 pm

I've read through every post I could find, but none really exactly described the problems I'm experiencing, so please don't shoot me for this post. Maybe it's all totally obvious, but I highly doubt it.

Before I got my T60, I had a four year old Dell desktop which would run for months (sic!) without as much as a single bluescreen or problem of any kind. Nowadays I kinda miss the "good old days", because i'm having serious trouble keeping my T60 alive for even as little as 12 hours. I've tried to put up with it for months now (I got it in November) but I'm slowly running out of patience as well as things to hit instead of the machine (so I won't break it entirely

).

I've reinstalled Windows a few times since, and am currently running Vista Ultimate (it came with XP Pro), but the OS didn't really make a difference, the symptoms are more or less the same.

I'm experiencing the following three crash scenarios frequently:

BSOD IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL - most frequent
BSOD NMI Memory Parity - also very often
Screen and sound freezes - not so often

Most of the time, they occur when I'm watching a movie and/or have a virtual machine running in VMWare, but since I'm doing one or both of these 95% of the time I'm on the laptop, I can't say if there's any connection.

At first, it felt like memory problems to me (my specific T60 model comes with 1 gig and the dealer threw in an extra gig which I kinda doubt is original Lenovo material), but memtest86 says everything's fine with it after running for eternity plus one.

I don't want to send the laptop off to Lenovo since the end of the semester is nearing and all of a sudden, project work just happens to pile up, plus I'll be working abroad all summer and will probably be needing it.

So - does anyone want to take a stab as to what this could be?

#2 Post by **jdhurst** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 1:26 pm

The only "family group" of recent ThinkPads I have NOT had are the T6x series. Any ThinkPad from the A22e up to a T43 worked flawlessly for me using the preload supplied modified to fit my needs for service and performance.

So, one approach would be to re-image it to "out-of-the-box" specifications and see if you continue to have problems. If so, and if you didn't change the hardware, then it needs to go back for service.
... JDH

mitchellst · #3 Post by **mitchellst** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 3:28 pm

From what I understand, there was in issue with wireless drivers causing the NMI parity error in XP. I had a situation where the card itself was causing the error. I just replaced the wireless card, and the problem went away.

You might try pulling it to see if it stops the issue. I've seen stranger things happen.

#4 Post by **Harryc** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 4:00 pm

Remove the added RAM module as a test. There are times when Memtest86 will not catch incompatibilities.

#5 Post by **ryengineer** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 5:08 pm

Update your BIOS.
See this.
Also see this.

Dodge DeBoulet · #6 Post by **Dodge DeBoulet** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 8:42 pm

I had exactly the same symptoms with my new T60. One of two things resolved all of those problems: A motherboard replacement, or the removal of Daemon Tools (more specifically, the removal of the SPTD.sys driver that DT uses).

Cclyde · #7 Post by **Cclyde** » Thu Jun 14, 2007 10:38 am

Thanks for all your replies.

BIOS is the newest version, as are all drivers. I've reinstalled Windows a couple of times over the last months, with some installs the problem got a little better, with some it got a little worse. With my current Vista install, it hit rock bottom.

I'll try taking out the WiFi card and the extra RAM, if that doesn't do the trick I guess I'll have no choice but to send it in

shahineo · #8 Post by **shahineo** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 3:38 pm

Cclyde wrote:I've read through every post I could find, but none really exactly described the problems I'm experiencing, so please don't shoot me for this post. Maybe it's all totally obvious, but I highly doubt it.

Before I got my T60, I had a four year old Dell desktop which would run for months (sic!) without as much as a single bluescreen or problem of any kind. Nowadays I kinda miss the "good old days", because i'm having serious trouble keeping my T60 alive for even as little as 12 hours. I've tried to put up with it for months now (I got it in November) but I'm slowly running out of patience as well as things to hit instead of the machine (so I won't break it entirely ).

I've reinstalled Windows a few times since, and am currently running Vista Ultimate (it came with XP Pro), but the OS didn't really make a difference, the symptoms are more or less the same.

I'm experiencing the following three crash scenarios frequently:

BSOD IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL - most frequent

BSOD NMI Memory Parity - also very often

Screen and sound freezes - not so often
Most of the time, they occur when I'm watching a movie and/or have a virtual machine running in VMWare, but since I'm doing one or both of these 95% of the time I'm on the laptop, I can't say if there's any connection.

At first, it felt like memory problems to me (my specific T60 model comes with 1 gig and the dealer threw in an extra gig which I kinda doubt is original Lenovo material), but memtest86 says everything's fine with it after running for eternity plus one.

I don't want to send the laptop off to Lenovo since the end of the semester is nearing and all of a sudden, project work just happens to pile up, plus I'll be working abroad all summer and will probably be needing it.

So - does anyone want to take a stab as to what this could be?

The fix for this:

BSOD IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL - most frequent

is to download the latest Synaptics driver from the Synaptics website.

http://www.synaptics.com/support/drive.cfm

sr. Technician · #9 Post by **sr. Technician** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 8:52 am

Memtest 86 doesnt work very well with ThinkPads in general. Try PC Doctor from the service partition over night. Loop the tests.

The NMI parity error is often associated with PCMCIA cards (may need motherboard replacement) and or broken motherboards in general. Other than that try replacing memory chips (undo screws with keyboard only).

Hope me helping doesnt break anything for you. This problem is a [censored] to diagnose. My condolences.

Cclyde · #10 Post by **Cclyde** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 9:29 am

Well, when opening up my TP to take out the extra stick of RAM what I saw wasn't quite what I expected...

Instead of one original or two original sticks of RAM, I noticed that both chips were cheap no name material - the dealer must have pocketed the original brand RAM when installing the extra gig (remind me to go kill them

)

Right now I'm testing them both on their own with PC Doctor and 3dMark (since I've narrowed the problem down to viewing video and playing games, and who knows, it could be the combination of RAM and graphics) and I'll just wait until my TP craps itself and maybe I'll be a step closer to a solution...

Cclyde · #11 Post by **Cclyde** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 11:25 am

Interesting... Both sticks work fine on their own, but with them both, 3DMark05 crashes faster than Lindsey Lohan.

Now I'm puzzled. Motherboard? RAM slots (when I tried them on their own, I just put them in the bottom slot, maybe I should try the top one and see if I can reproduce the problem)? Combination of RAM and GPU?

Very frequent BSODs and freezing

Very frequent BSODs and freezing

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