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Fixing a friend's laptop

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Stoanhart

Member
Joined
Dec 16, 2001
Location
VIctoria, BC, Canada
Hi guys,

A friend of mine has a ginormous DTR notebook. It has a 130nm Athlon64 3400+ CPU in it.

A while back, it started randomly freezing, and one day wouldn't turn on at all. So she sent it in to a shop. No one had ever heared of her brand before, since she bought it in Australia, so she had to ship it across Canada. When it got there, they told her the RAM had come loose, and didn't charge her anything except for shipping.

She got it back, it worked for a day or so, and started doing it again. I turned it on, and it got halfway through a post, registered 2 MB of ram and froze. I rebooted it, and this time it started just fine and worked. Later it froze up again and wouldn't start.

The shop had said there were no "void warranty" stickers, so I opened it up myself. The RAM seemed perfectly seated, but I removed it and put it back in. The computer started, so I decided to run some tests.

I put on Memtest86+. It locked after 31 seconds. No reds, but a solid lock. Also, at this point the fan came on (screamer) and it was just blasting hot air out of the back, so whatever infinite loop it was stuck in was sure working the CPU out well.

I thought maybe it was a heat issue, so I restarted the laptop, and put on CPU Burn. It froze after not long as well. The weird part was, I had my finger on the heat pipes as I ran CPU burn. It got hotter and hotter, but the fan just didn't kick in, and finally it froze. I also managed to burn myself, it was that hot!

The problem seems clear, it is overheating. So I went and got a house fan, pointed it at the open back of the laptop, and ran CPU burn again. It ran for hours just fine, and the CPU fan DID come on. I have no idea why it didn't the first time through. Even with the CPU fan and the house fan, that heatpipes were hot enough to be uncomfortable to touch! 3400+'s DO NOT belong in laptops damnit!

Now that the heat problem was temporarily solved, I ran Memtest again. It worked fine and I went out for a while. I just got back now, 2.5 hours later, and it is still running just fine, on its 11'th loop. I thought I had figured it out. CPU is overheating, may have even been damaged. Then I though, better test to see if maybe loose RAM did have something to do with it.

So I started wiggling the RAM a bit. Not much, barely even applying pressure. Maybe half a millimeter in each direction, as much as the socket would allow without stressing it. It was fine at first, so I stopped. A few seconds later, I got about 20 red entries in Memtest. I wiggled it some more, managed to coax a few more red errors, then it hard locked.

So basically I am stuck.

One the one hand it seems like its overheating, since it feels like putting your hands near a spaceheater behind the exhaust fan. And it can burn me. Also, CPU burn locked, but with additional cooling ran just fine.

On the other hand, jiggling the ram slightly caused RAM errors and hard locks, and the computer locks even when there is no CPU stress, like POST or something.

I don't really know what the culprit is. Any ideas?
 
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i would suggest shaking the laptop instead of jigglin the ram to produce the jiggle effect without compromising with static electricity. but the poor harddrive wouldnt like me much :( in any case that stinks id ask for an entire replacement if i could get it. let them deal with it and sell it refurbished if they can fix it


otherwise find a way to keep the thing cool. is the heatsink properly seated? maybe it could use some AS5. and consider changing the fan.

and make sure the ram isnt jigglin. it seems mostly an overheating problem to me. since in order to run properly in any test the processor had to be activly cooled by your house fan.
 
Well, that is a bit of a problem.

She is on exchange here, so the store is in Australia. Also, it is a no name laptop. A barebone kit, assembled at the shop. I don't even know if they were supposed to put something as fast as a 3400+ in here. I mean there is nothing stopping you from putting an FX-57 or an X2-4800+ in there, but you would be stupid to do so...

Anyways, before mailing this thing down under, I would like to try to get this working.

I was thinking of the AS5 thing, and will probably do it. It's just that after moving the ram and having it lock, I'm not 100% sure the problem is heat anymore, so I decided to ask before going through the effort of putton on AS5.

Aren't A64's only supposed to get to like 65C? Because the heatpipe sure felt hotter than that! Of course, just because the heatpipe is that hot, doesn't mean the CPU is. I wish laptop BIOS's were the same as desktop. Then I could check temps and underclock it to a sane, laptopish level :rolleyes:
 
Well, we put some new RAM in this laptop. It is more reliable now. It turns on every time, and I haven't had it hang on me yet. However, it definately also has a heat issue.

I was running MemTest86. After one hour of running (fan is screaming on full the entire time), the laptop simply shut off. It didn't crach, it just shut off. I figured it was thermal protection and booted into windows.

I instaled CPUz, Prime95, and SpeedFan. Writing this post, the CPU is at a comfy 41c and the fan is off. CPUz shows this to be a 130nm, 2.2 Ghz, 1.5v Desktop Clawhammer CPU.

When I run Prime95 with the laptop propped up and the back casing removed, it runs at 71c. This chip's max rated temerature is 70c!!! I can only imagine how hot it gets with the casing on, and it sitting on someone's lap or even worse, bed.

I don't know what moron decided to put his chip in here. It is a barebone clevo laptop, so some computer shop picked the components. I can just immagine some moron ordering the fastest possible CPUs so he can advertise that he has the fastest laptops :rolleyes:

Anyways, I am going to remove the HSF and put on some AS5. Any other suggestions? Is there any way to tell the cool and quiet feature to stop at a certain multiplier? RIght now it is at 800Mhz (200x4). Maybe if I could set the limit at an 8x multiplier, it could run at a more reasonable 1.6Ghz.

Anyways, thanks for any input.
 
Its a socket 754, mabey try a moblie A64 Claw(note a ture moblie is only around 60 watts I think) Also contact clevo and see if you can throw a turion in there. They are cheap and 1.6GHZ 1 meg cache should be plenty for her. Also do you know what chipset its using?
 
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