single beep, freeze problem - & success WD2500BEVE upgra

[vcuoco]

Hi There,

this is two different issues. The beep/ freeze thing happened before and after the hard drive upgrade. Notes on that below.

Problem: Randomly, with an hourglass on my mouse, my T43 will give a single beep and freeze, however the hard drive light continues to blink. I've sat and watched as several minutes pass, but the clock in the systray stays the same.

I re-built this system on day one with Windows XP Pro, SP2, all drivers from the IBM site, (bios ver 1.29, embedded controller version is 1.06, latest chipset drivers) I didnt install any the optional garbage software, just the drivers. Also up to date on all MS updates.

I almost think it's the CPU because it seems to happen when i'm really really multitasking. It happens more when windows is just starting, but then it just happened tonight when everything was loaded.

It's not the hard drive. I just upgraded it. The beep is what is so strange to me.

SUCCESS: I put the WD2500BEVE in today (got it from newegg) and it's working really well. No problems. Careful not to let windows format it up into 125GB partitions. I spacing out and ended up with that, but no big deal . i can still access it. I had the latest BIOS installed (see above) prior to installing the drive and it seems fine. I get the beep but it's a small price to pay for 250GBs

Anyone have any ideas on the freeze?

thanks!
Victoria

[richk]

CPU would not be my guess, only because they almost never fail. Make sure there is no message in the event viewer, but, assuming there isn't, I would run a memory test and let it run all night.

[vcuoco]

will do. i'll let you know. I thought the "beep" proceeding the freeze would mean something specific. thanks.

[richk]

The beep could mean that something (software) was aware there was a problem. THat is why I suggested the event viewer. Also, if the OS senses a problem (like bad read from memory on paging operation), it tries to produce a crash dump. That is why I suggested memory test.

[vcuoco]

hi,

i know i saw a link to the memory test you recommend on this site, now i cant find it. could you let me know? also, im on here looking for a fix for the video driver. i just have the driver installed (not the whole package) and when my monitor comes back on from just a "turn off monitor" i get nothing. i have the ati mobility radeon x300 and have the ATI 8.383.1.1000 6/21/2007. any ideas?? im going to go search. thanks.

[richk]

If you still have the recovery partition, you can get diagnostics by pressing access ibm at startup. If not, you can download pc doctor for your machine from lenovo.

[vcuoco]

thanks rich,

i ran pcdoctor 5 twice and everything came up fine. i havent seen the problem lately. next time it happens i'll run pcdoctor again. is there some sort of logging i can enable that would pick up a freeze? thanks again.