+Zagadka Subscriber² Posted February 14, 2015 Subscriber² Share Posted February 14, 2015 I was tasked with repairing a laptop. The initial problems were lockups and frequent sudden power loss (plugged in and on battery) after ~10-20 minutes. I found that the RAM had an error, so I replaced that, and got it working normally. I also updated and fixed some other things that don't matter on this diagnostic, as well as backing up the hard drive. After that, when I was working on it, it ran for hours without any instability (as required by doing RAM and HDD checks). Satisfied, I returned the laptop... only to be told that it still loses power/reboots randomly. It is running Win7 32-bit (older model VAIO), every piece of software and driver updated and polished up, virus and malware scans completed. The user mostly just runs Chrome, which is the one thing I didn't run for long during repairs. Other than that, I have no idea what is causing those restarts, since I have not been able to observe them. Any ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Torolol Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 probably corrupt files because of previous RAM error, my guess that would be some updates files were corrupted during that time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FunkyMike Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 There are rare cases of laptops which have 2 GPUs who show this sing of behavior when one graphic card fails. Usually when the dGPU tries to kick in. Fairly rare .. maybe worth mentioning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(Account no longer active) Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 'older model VAIO' - I've lost count of how many (year 2000s) VAIOs I've sent back for repair. I'd look into what Torolol has suggested first (run chkdsk/CCleaner [to scan registry]). Then I'd perform a stress test for an hour or two (get CPU and RAM running 100%; there's quite a bit of software around for doing this; I'd recommend something Linux based). If the machine restarts due to temperature, clean out the ventilation ports with an air compressor and retest. If it still restarts, I'd probably suggest replacing the unit. A combination of Chrome/Flash will generally run the CPU at 25-50% continuously; I'd recommend installing a plugin so the user can enable/disable Flash manually (Flash is hardly needed nowadays, now that YouTube supports HTML5 (which is more efficient)). A 8000/9000 series Nvidia graphics card could also be the culprit (there were known manufacturing issues with these). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T3X4S Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 Furthermore - you cant assume the owner of the laptop isnt a complete moron - I would make sure he isnt causing this in some weird way. I once worked for a company that sold corporate laptop returns - I sold 3 ThinkPad T series to my brother's employees - a few days one of his employees claims its dead -- so I replace it. A couple of days later - he claims it happened again - we are concerned because ThinkPads dont do crap like that. We give him a 3rd and of course it died in a week. I later found out the moron was running it off some generic car electrical adapter and had it plugged into some Rube-Goldberg cigarette lighter - instantly I knew what was going on and explained to my brother his employee was an idiot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Zagadka Subscriber² Posted February 17, 2015 Author Subscriber² Share Posted February 17, 2015 Well, I know that it isn't Chrome (which was a longshot anyway) I've run chkdsk and every other diagnostic/repair I can think of. It can run indefinitely doing things like running chkdsk, but anywhere in Windows, seems to be less than 10 minutes of time before it just shuts down. EDIT Actually, it might be Chrome, which is weird. I'm able to run things in a stable state without it. I ran the laptop on Windows for an hour.. then I opened Chrome and bam, shutdown. I'm not seeing any errors on the hardware from both diagnostic scans and from system stability outside of Windows. I've also scanned Windows for everything under the moon. I'm currently going through stripping down applications (including Chrome)... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Zagadka Subscriber² Posted February 17, 2015 Author Subscriber² Share Posted February 17, 2015 So I nuked and formatted the entire system after ensuring that there were no hardware faults. The laptop stayed perfectly functional for 3 hours in the process (including all of the Windows Updates). I installed Chrome, and it returned to the random shut down. Chrome is the only software installed. I'm at a loss. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Zagadka Subscriber² Posted February 18, 2015 Author Subscriber² Share Posted February 18, 2015 Well, I was right for the wrong reason. Chrome did cause the lockups... because I am 99% sure that the problem is overheating and Chrome runs the processes. I popped open the case to check on the fan, and it is intermittent. The laptop's hardware/software won't display the temperature or fan speed, so I really don't know if I can alter things to control the fan. I've been successful keeping it up by spraying compressed air into the vents every so often. Any suggestions? I don't know much about laptop overheating. The BIOS is crap and Sony doesn't have an upgrade for it. MBM5 and HWiNFO just don't have any sensor data to work with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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