Laptop crashes when I move it or/and put any pressure on it?


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Hi,

 

I have a problem with Samsung R580. It besically crashes randomly when it's touched, moved or even when I just type or use touchpad. It's not temp related, it happens anytime and anywhere: during booting, during loadin screen, during doing something in Windows, it just depends on touching. If I leave it be, it'll be 100% fine all the time, I can use for example BT mouse and keyboard and it'll never crash. By crash I mean display turns black but info LEDs are still up and touchpad LEDs blow out after a few seconds. Sometimes before LCD goes black, I can see crashed display for a very short moment with RGB colored bars etc. I disassembled the laptop once and tried to find anything, I cleaned it and turned on without top mobo cover and tried to touch cables, still no idea what causes the problem. I'm pretty sure that it's not LCD issue because I can move it freely and it's fine. I also moved LCD cable a lot and nothing happened. It's rather something on motherboard (under keyboard/touchpad). Any ideas what's wrong here? Log says Kernel Power ID:41 but I believe it's just unexpected power loss? When LCD goes black, the only thing I can do is to hold Power button and laptop turns off. And then I can turn it on again like nothing happened. I tried removing battery, nothing changes. I even tried leaving the laptop with movie on fullscreen and it never ever crashed because I didn't touch it...

 

Help guys :(

Greetings.

Based on what you've done, I agree that it doesn't sound like either a loose physical cable, or anything to do with the display. It could be a cracked connection somewhere. The Kernel Power entry is probably from your having to shut it down manually when it is frozen.

 

Try taking it apart and separating the hardware components as well as you can on an insulating surface, and powering the thing up, testing which components can be jostled or bumped gently without freezing.

It sounds like you may have a bad connection somewhere as zhangm said. Have you tried poking the RAM modules to see if that triggers the crash? If not I would suspect a bad solder joint in the power supply plug. That's fairly easy to fix if you know how to solder or have a friend that does.

I had this same issue with my old aspier 6920 and each time i just touched or lightly scrolled on the trackpad it would shut off, it was my physical touch that was shorting out the laptop,

 as it turned out my inverter was on its way out so i replaced it and everything was back to normal. as your laptop is old i would check it over fully and check for any dry joints on the solder and also check your capacitors for any that are burst across the top, if you find any make sure you replace them with the same value. 

If it is a problem with LCD, connecting an external monitor would/could rule that out.  External monitor should still work.  If it is LCD, you should be able to pickup a new LCD for 50 bucks or so online if you are not strapped enough to buy a new system.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-NP-R580-Laptop-Screen-Replacement/dp/B008C4UMRW

 

And how hard do you have to touch it for it to crash?  Does just tying cause it to do so?

  • 2 weeks later...

Did you use the laptop whilst unscrewed?

 

How did it act?

 

Was it grounded?

 

If you mean if it was grounded in the socket then no because I don't have sockets with groundings and I don't think I have PE wire at all since I live in the old block. But it also happens if I use only the battery.

Whilst unscrewed it was maybe a bit better but still I could make it crash. This might be random because the crashes are hella random, it may be caused by slight pressure, the other time I can nearly break the casing and it stays OK. It's just so hard to detect what's the problem because of that fortunity.

 

Based on what you've done, I agree that it doesn't sound like either a loose physical cable, or anything to do with the display. It could be a cracked connection somewhere. The Kernel Power entry is probably from your having to shut it down manually when it is frozen.

 

Try taking it apart and separating the hardware components as well as you can on an insulating surface, and powering the thing up, testing which components can be jostled or bumped gently without freezing.

 

Yeah I believe so but how can I DIY without special hardware detect the cause? I'm just trying to unscrew it once more and seperate the components. I'll get back to you.

 

It sounds like you may have a bad connection somewhere as zhangm said. Have you tried poking the RAM modules to see if that triggers the crash? If not I would suspect a bad solder joint in the power supply plug. That's fairly easy to fix if you know how to solder or have a friend that does.

 

I'll try RAM but as far as I remember I tried removing 1 out of 2 sticks and then swapping them and it didn't make any difference. About power supply plug. If it's broken then using only battery supply would also cause a crash or just when using AC adapter?

 

most likely it's a USB connector/cable. if they're bad and short they will cause a shutdown. and I've seen other and gad a laptop myself where if I pressed on the armrest it would die.

 

Good one, I'll try. Haven't thought about it. I'll try to put some pressure overe there.

 

I had this same issue with my old aspier 6920 and each time i just touched or lightly scrolled on the trackpad it would shut off, it was my physical touch that was shorting out the laptop,

 as it turned out my inverter was on its way out so i replaced it and everything was back to normal. as your laptop is old i would check it over fully and check for any dry joints on the solder and also check your capacitors for any that are burst across the top, if you find any make sure you replace them with the same value. 

 

You sir mean LCD inverter, right? Sory, I'm not native.

 

If it is a problem with LCD, connecting an external monitor would/could rule that out.  External monitor should still work.  If it is LCD, you should be able to pickup a new LCD for 50 bucks or so online if you are not strapped enough to buy a new system.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-NP-R580-Laptop-Screen-Replacement/dp/B008C4UMRW

 

And how hard do you have to touch it for it to crash?  Does just tying cause it to do so?

 

External LCD acts the same as laptop LCD. If laptop LCD crashes, external one also crashes and says "No signal" but it recognizes when a cable is plugged, it changes from "unplugged" to "no signal" when I plug it in.

 

http://imgur.com/VxQdy5l

 

No idea what's wrong with this, I'm rapping all the connected parts and it's fine and working... BTW, I didn't connect DVD, touchpad, battery, wlan antenna.

 

EDIT/ It seems to crash when I move plugged power supply cable. But the crashes also happend only on battery so I don't know if this is it.

 

Another funny thing: when I move LCD cable it also crashes but the LCD (weird colours) and also external crashes with it. BUT when I disconnected internal LCD completly and used only external one, the only way to crash the computer is to move power supply cable. So this seems like 2 way problem? Both AC adapter cable OR power slot is broken AND LCD cable is faulty? Seriously?

 

I just switched to external only + only battery and moving ONLY power slot still crashes the computer so it's not AC adapter itself. Now we have either power slot or LCD cable or frankly both are faulty. BTW I disconnected any hardware including keyboard, HDD, there's only mobo + internal/external display + battery / AC.

I can't edit anymore so a lilttle video I just wanted to upload. I cleaned power supply port (that I called jack on the video, sory I was thinking about guitar effect I'm building right now) and I can't force it to crash right now! So I'll assembly the whole thing and try forcing to crash then.

 

https://vid.me/WInx

 

Thanks once more, I'll post some final results later. Sory but uploading site rotated the video.

So as soon as I install motherboard to the bottom case, it becomes not fully stable again.

 

1) moving AC cable / power port can't force crashing anymore

2) moving LCD cable can't crash laptop either or I'm lucky but I tried hard

3) disconnecting internal lcd and using only external doesn't help so I believe it's not inverter and any LCD related thing

4) only putting pressure pretty hard or and bending mobo/laptop corners seems to crash the laptop sometimes but it's not easy to do if I wanna force it but sometimes it crashes when I barely touch it.

5) I'm doing all test only with display + AC/battery + USB/Power button module which I need to turn on the laptop but I also tried moving and putting pressure to this part and it's not it. Tried HDD on/off, no difference, still randomness.

Ehh I wanna fix this but I don't know what's broken.... it's become annoying really.

 

Fastest way to crash is to shake bottom case pretty hard

 

6) top cover doesn't seem to do anything. Same with on and off and I tried connecting/disconnecting all devices included in top cover: speakers, touchpad, bluetooth, keyboard. None of these make any difference

7) pressure to RAM doesn't change anything also

 

So I besically have bottom case + motherboard + USB/Power button module + external LCD and that is minimal set that also crashes.

So as soon as I install motherboard to the bottom case, it becomes not fully stable again.

 

...

So I besically have bottom case + motherboard + USB/Power button module + external LCD and that is minimal set that also crashes.

Based on what you've seen, I think the most likely causes include a grounding/insulation issue, or one or more bad connections on the motherboard. If your chassis is made of plastic, then that basically rules out the former. If you notice that the crashes are triggered by flexing of the board, then connections are the most likely cause. Unfortunately, there's no economical way to repair this type of issue unless you know which solder joint(s) are faulty - a replacement motherboard easily costs a good fraction of the total machine's value, so you'd be better off buying a new laptop.

Use remote desktop to remote into it from another computer and then put pressure on it. If it ends the RDP session, it is most likely the computer locking up. If not, it is a display connector. If the computer is truly crashing/locking, it could be a bad solder joint somewhere, or the motherboard being touched to ground somewhere inside. I had this issue on an old MSI laptop where metal happened to be touching the backside of the motherboard because a sharp solder connection wore through a thin laminate protector. 

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