R40 2682-NU2 crashes only when "cold" - updated ag

[mmmkay]

This is a funny one.. when I don't use my R40 for a few hours it will crash repeatedly on startup. Doesn't matter whether it's been sleeping or shut down, it'll hang at least once when I get into Windows.

I've had this issue on three different installations of Windows XP across two different hard drives.

It runs fine once it's warmed up.. lol. Starting to sound like an old car now.

Any thoughts what this could be? or if anyone else has a similar problem on an R40 with a P4-m / celeron

[dsigma6]

Are you installing any particular piece of software on each hard drive you have had the problem with? I had an R40 p4-m and never had any problems like that.

[mmmkay]

Just all the IBM stuff like battery maximiser

[SeanM]

Sounds like you have a bad component. Could be memory, you can try taking out your dimms one at a time and see if it still happens. Odds are good it's the system board. Does the screen look funny when it freezes?

It may have been this way for a while, but you didn't see the problem in the warmer months.

[mmmkay]

No, it just freezes
It could be the battery too. It's nearly dead, and most of the time when I put it to sleep I unplug it too (carrying in my bag)

I got nearly 2 hours 45 min out of the dead battery by disabling all power management, when I bought the machine..but it's been going downhill since. Putting the laptop to sleep for a while usually results in a battery that's significantly drained .. like from 100% down to 70% or 50% or less.

I have an ultrabay battery coming soon.. and supposedly CDI is replacing my battery under warranty but they're really slow to do anything.

[mmmkay]

just an update on this.

I tested the memory, it was fine
I tried disabling power management for the ATI video, didn't help

Finally I put the old Cisco Aironet miniPCI card back in, and so far it survived the suspend/resume without any trouble, and it's nice to have the wireless light back on again.

I'm gonna see if this fixes it. Could be that the driver for the Intel 2200BG card has trouble with suspend/resume..

[mmmkay]

Doh! It didn't survive a resume from hibernation this morning. Crashed during resume, right as soon as it came back it was doing a screen refresh or something and then boom.

[mmmkay]

OK I have a feeling it might be the motherboard. I've tested the system with different CPU's, memory, and hard drives and I still have it crash when it's cold.

However, I can't find any fault with it after it warms up. I've run the pc doctor tests in a loop and nothing out of the ordinary. I've run the drive fitness test on both drives and nothing.

I've used Linux, and it still has the same problem. It's able to suspend/resume/hibernate perfectly when it's still "hot" but once it cools down it WILL crash.

The old CPU was the Celeron Mobile 1.8, and I just replaced it with a 2.2GHz Pentium 4-m and I still have the same problem. I tested all my memory modules with Memtest86 AND the PC doctor that is on the HPA of the original hard drive. All the same result. It will crash, whether booting up, or resuming, etc.

Any other ideas perhaps

[mmmkay]

OK This is awfully weird, but I put everything back in ready for exchange and it's working fine again.

Internal temp on the celeron is showing 22 deg now.. rising rapidly. I've just done about 5 suspend/resume operations and it's perfectly fine again.

Here's what I think what happened (at least my theory). It has something to do with the interface between the heatsink and CPU.

Originally when it started crashing, it would crash a little later after starting up, like not right away, after a suspend/resume.
I replaced the pad on the heatsink, I noticed that there was a little square sheet of metal placed on top of the CPU core, which I did not reuse.

I noticed that there was an "air bubble" pocket but I didn't think too much of it. I replaced it with arctic silver 5, and reassembled.

Still crashed.

Next I got my P4-m CPU and I cleaned off all the surfaces and reassembled with arctic silver 5.

Still crashed.

Last night finally, I took off the heatsink and I found another air bubble Put everything back in that was stock (celeron, cisco wifi etc)
And now it's resuming and suspending properly!