A31 (2652-M5G) Freezes + Docking Station Fan Problems

[poweruser]

hello everybody,

i'm new to the forum and the a31 (2652-m5g with 1,8ghz, 2x256 hynix, a new 40gb hitachi, lan, wlan built-in and a longshine pcmcia wlan, epox usb bluetooth and the big docking station with 2 pcmcia-, a pci- and an ultra-bay slot) is my first ibm notebook (i used apple, siemens ... before).

xp installation (with sp2 integrated) worked perfectly. i left the driver installation to the "software installer" who sucessfully installed all device driver and productivity software applications. but during the download and installation-procedure of the drivers + when i grabbed the notebook and carried or slightly twisted it, the a31 freezed. no bluescreen, no automatic shutdown, no error message/code. it just locked the mouse/trackpoint and freezed the display.

after a few "install till it freezes"-attempts all drivers wherer installed and the utilities had been configured, but the a31 still frozed frequently.

i changed the memory, the hdd and used it without battery (old battery with capacity for 45min.). still a few freezes. checked temperatures under ubuntu 6.10 with "cat /proc/acpi/ibm....". mhhh.... 50°C idle. i downloaded the hw-maintenance manual, removed the cooling unit, the dust in the cooling unit and applied new termal paste. now only 35°C idle. but that [censored] thing still freezes.
checked the bios (1.8) and embedded controller (1.01) version, updated them to 1.13 (bios) and 1.05 (embedded controller) and reinstalled xp pro with sp2 integrated and the drivers.

now i've 50% less freezes. could anybody explain that. it freezes when it's been carrying around (indicating a problem with conductivity or s.t. else) but freezes less times when the bios is updated .... very strange !?!

my second question is whether anybody changed the fan in the docking 2 module. mine is too loud to use the docking station in an working environment.

regards

martin