WEIRD R52 Problem

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MikeR · #1 Post by **MikeR** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 1:01 am

Hey People,

Hopefully I can get some insight in here. I actually work for IBM, but I've yet to get any useful information from anyone at work or anyone on tech support for Lenovo...

The model I have is an R52-1847 purchased in late October of 2006. It has been great for all that time UNTIL today, here's what happened:

Before work today, I went online to check my personal email and all that stuff. Working fine and then as I was about to leave, it froze. Although out of the ordinary, computers do freeze from time to time, so I forced a reboot on it. When it came back up, it was acting weird...

First of all, my USB mouse wasn't recognized...when I moved my trackpoint, my computer would freeze for a few seconds, then come back...then freeze again...over and over and over again, every other (or every other other) second. Kind of weird huh? So i switched users to a backup profile I never use in which almost nothing loads up. Same thing, even though only 2% of my CPU was being used (according to task man).

I decided to do a system restore to two days ago and when it finished, it appeared to have worked, so I decided to go into work thinking I fixed the problem. When I came home from work, it appeared to still be good UNTIL I hooked in a USB-MP3 player(like a flash drive)..it would recognize it but say I couldn't access it or format it, or copy an mp3 to it. I then hooked in my external USB hard drive and everything started to go back to what it was before and stalling..VERY weird. The first time, it recognized it and then all of a sudden said there was an error and un mounted it. Tried it again, same thing. The THIRD time, my computer completely went crap again like it was before with the stalling.

I decided I had enough so I did a system restore to 30 days ago. In the beginning of the restore, my USB mouse got unrecognized again. But I noticed something VERY strange. I accidentally tilted my computer to the right and it un-stalled it! but then would stall up again if i didn't hold it in a similar position..

System restore finished and I was trying to be optimistic so I took a nap. Funny enough I literally had a dream about my mouse/computer freezing up. Funny story, but anyway....comes back up, still stalling, but unstalling for a little while when laptop is tilted.! I turned off the Active Protection and still nothing!

I powered down and checked my hard drive, and it wasn't loose or anything. I then went into my BIOS set up to see if it would stall there. In the beginning it didn't and then yes, it started to stall..so I'm pretty sure it's hardware.

Maybe it was my external hard drive for some reason? Nope, hooked it into another computer, recognized right away with no problems.

Has anyone heard of anything even REMOTELY close to this? I've never heard of anything like this before, but then again I'm a software guy. Could it be a weird motherboard problem?

Thanks for any help!
-Mike

#2 Post by **Harryc** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 6:41 am

I'd start by running PC-Doctor diagnostics on it. It does sound like something is loose on the system board though.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 58693.html

MikeR · #3 Post by **MikeR** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 9:59 am

Harryc wrote:I'd start by running PC-Doctor diagnostics on it. It does sound like something is loose on the system board though.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 58693.html

Thanks...in case something is loose on the board, would you recommend opening up the back of the laptop, or is it more of "this part is failing electrically?"

#4 Post by **Harryc** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 10:16 am

Loose as in cold solder joint, particularly if it is sensitive to movement.

MikeR · #5 Post by **MikeR** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 10:47 am

Harryc wrote:Loose as in cold solder joint, particularly if it is sensitive to movement.

Hmm, I see..so what would you suggest I do?

#6 Post by **Harryc** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 11:03 am

Run Pc-Doctor

MikeR · #7 Post by **MikeR** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 11:56 am

Harryc wrote:Run Pc-Doctor

Alright, I went to the site, extracted everything to four diskettes as the instructions said to do, and booted up my computer with that. As you know, the USB had been failing and my diskette drive is a USB drive. Well, upon booting the computer with diskette #1 in, it said basically "non system disk. replace and hit any key to continue." I kept it in and hit a key, in which it bypassed it and loaded up windows instead.

In windows, it recognized the USB drive, but upon opening it up in My Computer, showed there was absolutely nothing on the diskette, in which there should be

#8 Post by **Harryc** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 12:24 pm

There is also PC-Doctor for windows ...
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 52871.html
If you can't run diagnostics, and it fails in BIOS, my best guess is that it's a system board problem. I'd pull everything out of the machine possible, hard drive, mPCI WiFi card, bluetooth modem if you have it, disconnect all external devices and power it up and go into BIOS. If it still freezes try one stick of RAM or replacing RAM. Still fails replace the system board.

WEIRD R52 Problem

WEIRD R52 Problem

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