At A Loss 13

[tekbytes]

I really tried to avoid this i really did, but here is the situation

being a tech i come across all sorts of strange issues but this one has me stumped and its on my personal machine which makes me even more mad

windows 7 pro SP1
4 gb ram
2.0 duo core AMD Turion X2
320gb sata primary, 600gb sata secondary
machine is an HP DV7 laptop

i first wanted to go with overheating, the system is just real slow, it freezes and the whole screen locks up completely, if i rake my hands over the keyboard it will "beep" once and then the thing will come back to life, i have tested the memory (all slots) over a 5 hour period using dimsoft as well as memtest86, all dimms came back after 5 full passes and they all showed healthy, no errors writing or reading memory,

moving onto the hard drive i decided to try an extreme and i pulled the drive and replaced the drive with a new drive with a fresh copy of windows 7, no difference, so i cloned the hard drive completely then reformatted and reloaded the original drive, no change, as a last effort i backed up and reformatted the original drive and reloaded 7, it worked OK for a couple days but then the problems come creeping back, im usually at around 95% cpu load and memory usually has like 9 mb free, so this machine is choking itself, on a lark i checked both hard drives but since i put a brand new primary drive in i know it cant be the drive,

so not hard drive and not memory, not operating system since i wiped it out

browsing is painfully slow and when i click a tab it takes two minutes before i see the tab show up, sometimes if i switch between applications the audio on my pc stutters and the machine freezes, i have skype, i use it to edit videos, i use it to browse, i edit audio, it has outlook, but all the applications are constantly "not responding" i sometimes have to crash them or wait 5 minutes, its like the cpu is dragging down, im running coretemp but its running at about 137F and thats with its cooling pad on,

so not memory, not overheating, not hard drive, not operating system

i run superantispyware, as well as the updated avast pro, and i also have afew other spyware removal including cc cleaner, everything is updated and comes back negative, i wanted to throw it out but i figured id give it one more go here, also i ran hjt and nothing abnormal, im missing something somewhere

any thoughts fellow techs?

Jay

 

[technome]

replaced the drive with a new drive with a fresh copy of windows 7, no difference"
Does that mean you installed with the most basic driver setup, all native, no resident programs, and it still failed? If you added any other 3rd party drivers/residents I would be looking at those.

Also have you disconnected all external devices CD and floppy etc for testing?

Check your heatsinks, look for bulging/leaking caps.

........................................
Chernobyl disaster..a must see pictorial

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/default.htm

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
Popular Mechanics, 1949

 

[tekbytes]

replaced the drive with a new drive with a fresh copy of windows 7, no difference"
Does that mean you installed with the most basic driver setup, all native, no resident programs, and it still failed? If you added any other 3rd party drivers/residents I would be looking at those.


it does mean it was a basic install yes,


Also have you disconnected all external devices CD and floppy etc for testing?

no EXTERNAL devices plugged in

Check your heatsinks, look for bulging/leaking caps.

this is a LAPTOP lol, the mobo doesnt exhibit that kind of setup (ummm i mentioned that in the original post .)

 

[technome]

"disconnected all external devices CD and floppy etc for testing?"
Laptop, pull out the internal devices. Other then this, since it was a basic setup, one vote for recycling


........................................
Chernobyl disaster..a must see pictorial

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/default.htm

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
Popular Mechanics, 1949

 

[goombawaho]

Any built-in diagnostics you can run? Or one you can download and burn from the manufacturer?
If not, why don't you remove both hard drives and then boot from the Ultimate Boot CD and run some of the CPU tests/video tests and see if it will cooperate for a few hours.
"Video Memory Stress Test" + there are multiple CPU tests

Toward the bottom where it says "mirror sites"
Link

Did you install the CHIPSET drivers from the manufacturer support site?
After that, assuming everything passes, try to update the BIOS, reset to defaults and try booting.


I thought our little wild time had just begun.

 

[spamjim]

Another vote for a live CD to see how an alternate system behaves.

If your DV7 has 2 different video adapters (basic Intel for low power mode and a Radeon for gaming/HD video, aka "switchable graphics"), check your BIOS to force the use of the better adapter (turning off switchable graphics). There is also HP software that lets you determine which app uses which video adapter. If you used a vanilla install of Win7, you may not have this HP switchable graphics software installed yet.

Your screen locking may be due to the machine struggling with the video switching between these video adapters.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&docname=c02731962

 

[DSummZZZ]

...95% cpu load and memory usually has like 9 mb free...

Have you check your virtual memory configuration?
Can you narrow down which processes are causing the 95% cpu load?


-Dave Summers-

Even more Fox stuff at:

http://www.davesummers.net/foxprolinks.htm

 

[tekbytes]

only the ATI Radeon 3200 is showing in device manager, i thought we might be onto something there

good idea though

chipset is manufacture i do believe

live cd is something i have not tried, but i have run stress tests on this and was never able to duplicate the issue, i could try to run a livecd and see where that takes us ,this is a phantom to say the least

i love the " vote for recycling" comments, let me tell you i have that vote to, waiting ten minutes for vlc to launch a file, or waiting for the pc to unfreeze after a fit is never fun or productive, plus that beep well its not really a "beep" not like the bios beeps its more of a mooop then a meep (i know that made know since) and its always one, and they are coming more frequently

ill look at the links, i wonder if i can run a livecd off of usb, dont have any dvds kicking around lol

 

[tekbytes]

here is a brief image of the usage load, right now skype is running at idle, 3 tabs open in chrome, outlook just launched, and thats really it, im well over 50% cpu usage for that amount of programs, seems a bit hoggish to me!

 

[goombawaho]

chipset is manufacture i do believe

I don't know what this means. You need to go to the laptop manufacturer's web site and then the specific support area for your model and get the chipset drivers if any are listed under "downloads".


I thought our little wild time had just begun.

 

[tekbytes]

if your referring to this page, which is indeed my model, no such driver or category is listed

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...en&cc=us&dlc=en&sw_lang=&product=3860630#N225

 

[linney]

Have you tried setting the Bios to Safe Defaults?

A computer that is running Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7 stops responding randomly

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2265716/en-us

Any clues from these older freezing articles?


xp freeze troubleshooting

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=935320

Windows random hang

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1423743

PC Freezing - Hard to explain (see details)
thread779-1398265

Windows hangs or freezes

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2681286

 

[spamjim]

only the ATI Radeon 3200 is showing in device manager, i thought we might be onto something there

Why are you trusting what a borked system is telling you? You should check the original specs for the machine. If your system has switchable graphics but does not have the proper drivers and BIOS setting, it might only show 1 device.

 

[tekbytes]

Have you check your virtual memory configuration?
Can you narrow down which processes are causing the 95% cpu load?"

virtual memory config is screenshot below

I am not trusting a "borked system" you told me to look at that article and i did, it showed how to tell if two display adapters were in play, only one is in play, moving on

Linney: ill have a look at those articles,

as for the question about what is driving the load it varies, sometimes skype is seen using 90% cpu, sometimes sparkocam (virtual webcam) is seen as using 90%, sometimes outlook is caught using 90%, they all use the same two cores, but they are no longer using it efficently

i have not looked around in the bios, while i am awaiting another reply i might poke in it, tbh tho its not very detailed

 

[tekbytes]

oh one more thing original specs say no to the double adapters, it only has one!

 

[DSummZZZ]

Some last resort thoughts from me:
I would suggest removing the "Automatically manage ...' for your virtual memory and bumping up the size to at least the 'recommended' setting.
Also, since there doesn't appear to be an issue with the hard drive, ram, malware ..., it is quite possible you have a bad CPU. Or maybe the CPU isn't seated properly. That's not unheard of. Chips can work themselves loose just from the heat/cool cycle, not to mention a laptop being wiggled or bounced around.
At our work, we had a guy who was using a painfully slow laptop and come to find out, setting it on one of those laptop cooler things help immensely.


-Dave Summers-

Even more Fox stuff at:

http://www.davesummers.net/foxprolinks.htm

 

[guitarzan]

I've been following this thread sporadically over the last few days, so maybe I missed something but:

In the Task Manager pic you attached, it shows CPU spiking here and there and being a bit busy, but not a constant 50% usage. What's at 50% is your memory usage, so have you looked at the process tab to see which processes are the hogs?

And have you tried a clean boot? For example, run MSCONFIG, go to services, check "hide all Microsoft services" and disable all (or all truly non-essential) services, ditto in the Startup tab, reboot and see if the problem persists.

 

[tekbytes]

ok will reset vm size
as for disabling all ms services it makes the computer pretty much useless whenever i do that
i had my suspicions that if it wasnt malware or virus it could be a lingering service or driver errror
nothing in the logs that i can see when the pc freezes, it works fine as long as i dont have more then 3 programs open at once
i think its just tired

 

[tekbytes]

Alas, (sigh) no solution lots of good ideas though, i remember a day when this forum was filled with real tech pros and we worked together to solve issues, i think like many things tek tips outlived its usefulness, or people got lazy, probably both, thanks everyone for the suggestions you did offer, i will just leave this thread open and unresolved to add to the clutter this site has in that department, maybe someone will come along one day who remembers the good ol days lol

till then this issue is UNRESOLVED

 

[goombawaho]

Better press the "unresolved" button on the thread so that it goes to the real professionals in the basement.

Did you ever think that not having your hands on the actual machine and not having watched everything you have tried is akin to having one hand tied behind your back in terms of troubleshooting? I don't think the quality of troubleshooting has declined on here. This is just a PITA situation without an easy answer. I come across two or three of these a year. At some point, you just say dump the equipment.

Or you could take it to a "professional", whatever that may be and see how fast they want to replace the motherboard with your hard earned money.

I certainly don't appreciate you coming on here and looking for (free) help and then dissing everyone like we're a bunch of hacks.

I thought our little wild time had just begun.