T60 Blue screen memory/video, sleep

[drwho9437]

My T60 with X1400 graphics and Atheros N type wireless has been having blue screens.

I didn't really get any for the first 6 months of use, much of that use was under XP but about half of it was Vista.

The error often shortly after resuming from a hibernation (suspend to disk).

I had suspected the memory as the most common halt was a memory parity error. One of my DIMMs would fail memtest some of the time (perhaps only 5 loops in). I pulled it, tested it in both slots and checked the other stick for 20+ loops until I was convinced the one stick had two semi-bad bits and the other none. Problem solve right...

Nope. I reinstalled vista from scratch and do minimal driver updates. I am using the most current BIOS. I almost think it is a bug that was introduced in the BIOS at some update at this point...

But in any case it still has this problem. I don't think I have ever had it halt unless I have hibernated at some point before on the current log-in.

It either give a BSOD and normally related to an interrupt, device or most commonly memory. Or it has lines (single pixel) across the screen in many colors. Which to me almost seems like the shared or main video memory has been corrupted (it is an ATi X1400 128MB I believe).

There certainly are a lot of threads about similar issues to this but I can't determine much from them so I am putting this out there. To see if anyone has made a study of this exact thing.


EDIT: Let me add this error is not reproducible really as it can happen 1 hour after turning the computer on, or 1 min. It really doesn't have anything I note reproducibly to cause it. I have no Lenovo tools install on Vista other than active hard disk protection, and Lenovo specific drivers to make the hardware work. I have not installed the driver for the fingerprint reader as I do not use it (Biometric Processor).

[makai]

I always read threads with hibernation problems all over the net. It tends to make me think that it's a very poor implementation... that's why I never use it. Besides that, hibernation requires not only good ram, but also as much disk space as the ram installed... but I guess you already knew that.

One thing that might be happening is that your hard drive is fragged up. Bit and pieces during the hibernate state are being stored all over the place on the disk and because the computer has to wake up from a deep sleep and retrieve those bits, it crashes while searching. Hard to say, of course but something to think about.

I only use Standby mode with my laptop as any need to go deeper/longer than that and I shut it down and restart it later. Basically, hibernate is a restart anyways.

Good luck finding the problem, I know I wasn't any help.

[drwho9437]

I always read threads with hibernation problems all over the net. It tends to make me think that it's a very poor implementation... that's why I never use it. Besides that, hibernation requires not only good ram, but also as much disk space as the ram installed... but I guess you already knew that.

Really it shouldn't require "good ram", suspend might as the holds the data in a perpetual refresh in the RAM. But Hibernation is essentially one read and one write out of the whole ram and page file. You do make a point that if the hard disk has errors in reading then you might get problems. However, I suspect you would see much worse problems.

I suspect a low level driver issue, or some hardware being out of sync with a driver some of the time because of a state change. That is your system is saved exactly how it was when you hibernate. You turn it off, then you turn it back on, if some of the hardware doesn't get back to the same state perhaps when the software decided to communicate in some particular way it dies.

If it truly is correlated with hibernation then it really has to be something like that. Since I am often hibernating my idea that it is correlated could incorrect though.

[makai]

"good ram" only meant ram with no errors. Good luck!

[Crunch]

I also have read many posts and articles on multiple websites and forums alike, and when it comes to the topic of hibernation, the consensus does seem to be that it can, and does, cause problems.

I've never really used hibernation, but not because of these problems, bur rather because the way I use my Thinkpad simply does not call for the use of hibernation. I'm saying this, so as not to dissuade you from trying to find a resolution to successfully use it, just because a bunch of members, myself amongst them, don't use the feature. There must be a solution, or at least some kind of workaround. I'm sorry, but I don't know what it is.

Best of luck to you!