weird issue with a laptop and prime95

[Wipe0ut]

I have two identical laptops (compaq presario 700 and 710), one of them is giving errors on prime95, while the other is not. I think it was a hardware problem related to the laptop itself. Just for the heck of it, I swapped the hard disks between both, and the problem followed the hard disk (the problem seems to be on the copy of windows) how could a piece of software create random calculation errors on prime95 (occasional errors, none on the "good" hard drive) ... random and occasional, I mean one error per hour, and absolutely none on the other. The errors it gives are also occuring when playing a DivX from the dvd drive (BSOD, or WMP crashing.) The "good" hard drive was installed from compaq restore disks, while the "bad" one was installed from a retail windows. Both are relatively fresh installs. I installed no drivers on the good drive, I installed the video, audio, wireless nic and touchpad on the "bad" drive, along with via 4 in 1. Think I should install the lastest service pack along with a windows update run ? I am currently re-installing windows, and I'll verify with prime95 right after the installation and see if it fixes anything. If it's all good, I'll install the lastest service pack for XP, along with the windows update and the missing drivers.

Give your toughs on this.

Thanks

[Crash893]

have you tried cutting and pasteing the prime95 folders to the other loacation.

prime actually has quite a few settigns that are underthe hood so to speak

if the problem folows the 95 folder then i wouldnt worry but if it follows that hdd i would suspect hardware

unless of course you want to do the format install and bios to factory defualts on both of them

[Wipe0ut]

both installations of prime95 are default (installed, run)

if that's what you mean ...


i'm getting the install finished on the "bad" one .. took all night to copy the files lol (the files were on the far end of the disk on another partition, the head was probably moving forth and back all the time)

[RoadWarrior]

Compaqs tend to have special drivers and preboot bios initialisations on thier restore disks, a compaq restored harddisk has a secret partition with the setup program and BIOS settings. Therefore it may be that the CPU is not initialised correctly on the vanilla installed HDD.

Solution, reinstall with the restore CD.

regards,

Road Warrior

[Wipe0ut]

i reinstalled windows with minimal drivers, it worked straigh 7 hours, installed service pack 1 along with the drivers needed, 2 hours straigh, reinstalled everything, works good so far.

While I had the tools handy (torx) I opened both laptops. I swapped the keyboard (one french, one english, took the french one for myself) swapped the dvd drives (one worked better than the other) and applied some thermal paste, there was nothing to make the contact, really nothing.

Here's some pics, I don't have pics of the monitor, had no more batteries and it was late. I removed the whole cover. I couldn't take pics of the heatsink itself, same reason.

Now with thermal paste, it doesn't seem to be as hot as it was. I've read that many people are complaining they are overheating, this procedure seems to help alot. Heat is transfered from the cpu to a big aluminium square, with nothing between both. Heat is then moved to the aluminium heatsink using a badly soldered cooper tube. The fan seems O.K.


http://pages.infinit.net/thief/IMG_2986.jpg http://pages.infinit.net/thief/IMG_2987.jpg http://pages.infinit.net/thief/IMG_2988.jpg http://pages.infinit.net/thief/IMG_2989.jpg