Tracking Down Cause of Creeping System Hang

[c_atiel]

An overheating notebook, and all do, is going to eventually fail.
Notebooks with powerful GPUs are even more likely to die of heat.
Software measurements of notebook heat are somewhat irrelevant given the
limited options for remedying problems. In a reasonably designed desktop
heat issues may be local but in the tight confines of a notebook heat
distributes more evenly through the unit and parts that ordinarily would not
be exposed to high temperatures in a desktop are exposed to big temperature
swings every time the laptop is used.
The hard drive is about the only user replaceable item in a notebook and you
report your hard drive is functioning properly.
If you have never done it open the notebook and clean out all the mung or
pay someone to do it. If you are careful the only problem is making sure you
do not knock any keys off the keyboard if you have to remove it.
Also try using a cooling device under the notebook: they are noisy but can
reduce the temperature of the notebook and extend its useful life.
I was able to resurrect a nearly five year old Dell laptop this way that
kept shutting itself off because of heat issues. Of course I do not use that
machine for heavy work but merely to power a nearly static external display.
If video games ever catch on for the Mac platform, which largely consists of
undercooled notebook parts with limited passive heat radiation, their
otherwise seldom stressed anemic video systems may start boiling over like
an Icelandic volcano.

[?]

Repo?

[pg]

"c_atiel" <fac_187@hotmail.com> wrote in
microsoft.public.windows.vista.general:

> If you have never done it open the notebook and clean out all the mung
> or pay someone to do it. If you are careful the only problem is making
> sure you do not knock any keys off the keyboard if you have to remove
> it. Also try using a cooling device under the notebook: they are noisy
> but can reduce the temperature of the notebook and extend its useful
> life. I was able to resurrect a nearly five year old Dell laptop this
> way that kept shutting itself off because of heat issues. Of course I
> do not use that machine for heavy work but merely to power a nearly
> static external display. If video games ever catch on for the Mac
> platform, which largely consists of undercooled notebook parts with
> limited passive heat radiation, their otherwise seldom stressed anemic
> video systems may start boiling over like an Icelandic volcano.

I should have added that I had fan/heat sink assembly replaced about two
months ago. The original fan had been serviced with as much of a cleaning
as possible, but it eventually was not keeping up. When I played video
stream in HD Flash, the CPU had generated considerable heat and the CPU was
getting up into the mid-80s (I take 72 deg as the max). Moreover the disk
drive was going 55+ deg, which I take as the max on that. With fan
replacement, the CPU never goes much beyond the low 60s with constant HD
Flash video stream and other CPU-intensive activities (such as when
Kaspersky is running hard). But I do think for perhaps as much as a month
the hardware was sorely tested with respect to temperature because of a
failing fan/sink assembly. I was tempted to buy a bottom cooling platform,
which appear to be nothing but levered jackstands with a couple of noisy
(useless?) fans, from what I've seen.

[steven l.]

"PG" <pg@nomailplease.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9D5C75FA45DEFUVAA@207.46.248.16:

> PROBLEM: I have been seeing at possibly random moments a "creeping"
> system lock/freeze/hang (I have seen it especially just before the clean
> install in the original installation). It might start--but not always---
> with a mouse click to bring focus to an UltraEdit document. I get a "Not
> Responding", wait for the disk drive light to stop its continuous
> illumination. And when it does stop illuminating, I still see "Not
> Responding" and know I am in trouble.
>
> I then start activating other windows, and they start showing "Not
> Responding". I know I am in real trouble when I do Ctrl+Shift+Esc to get
> the Task Manager and it never appears; I do this to try to track the
> nature of the creeping system hang...no luck. The Start menu will open on
> a click, but nothing else happens. The mouse pointer is still moving
> around, but nothing is responding to click.
>
>
> QUESTION: What could be at work here? How can I track the cause of the
> creeping hang?

Sometimes, my Vista computer hangs up for as much as a minute, and then
mysteriously restarts itself.

What is probably happening is one of the apps or one of the drivers is
querying one of the hardware devices--and waiting patiently for a
response. This often happens when that piece of hardware is used for
the first time after the machine is booted or waking up from Sleep.

Microsoft calls this behavior "normal" as far as Vista is concerned.

Try updating all your drivers, and also try to test each of your
hardware devices.

And never use hibernation. Just shut your machine off entirely.
Hibernation (sleep) has numerous problems associated with it.


-- Steven L.