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Entirely random hangups

T

thevan

Member
So since about two weeks ago now, my computer (Dell SXPS1640) has been getting completely random hangups anywhere from ~.5 to ~15 seconds where the audio, mouse, etc, all freeze (causing the audio to stutter in a horribly sounding way). I thought it might have something to do with SP1 because it first started while I was downloading it via windows update and watching a show. I played around with system restore and am now fairly certain that the SP is not to blame, and that it is almost certainly a hardware problem. (I have even seen the problem in the BIOS!)

I've checked the temperatures and everything is okay on that front.

I have already swapped out the memory and the problem remains.

I thought it might be a hard drive thing, is this possible? Ncix has the 500GB Scorpio on for $55 so if this would fix it that would be quite deadly.

It's still under warranty so I can certainly ship it off to Dell, but I lack faith that they will actually repair the problem, especially on the first mail-in. Maybe if the entire motherboard/power supply/processor(?) combo was replaced?

There appears to be nothing unusual in resource monitor, spike-wise or otherwise. It stopped doing it for nearly two hours the other night but the problem returned. Right now it's fine as I am able to write this post with only the odd .5-2 second hang, but other times, it will be a 10 second hang every 2 seconds, making the computer completely unusable.

Any ideas? Please help as this is my only computer and I really can't afford a new one. If I have to send it off I will likely just be purchasing a netbook for now.
 
Thanks guys. See this is why I need to frequent these forums more often. Fucking love Anandtech. Great community.

Going to order the new HD and a netbook tonight (does anyone know of anything <$300 with HDMI? If not I will settle for VGA but HDMI would be killer. PM me?). If that doesn't fix it then I'll ship the thing off to Dell.

Cheers.
 
thevan said:
Thanks guys. See this is why I need to frequent these forums more often. Fucking love Anandtech. Great community.
Click to expand...

You're welcome! Let us know how it goes. If it's still under warranty, you might be able to convince Dell to just send you a HDD.
 
mfenn said:
You're welcome! Let us know how it goes. If it's still under warranty, you might be able to convince Dell to just send you a HDD.
Click to expand...

Hmm, I was going to try this however I have done some more troubleshooting via running Ubuntu off a flash drive and I'm still getting the problem. Ubuntu deals with it a bit nicer (looping the sound cleanly instead of loud screechyness) but it is most likely the same thing. This is even when my hard drive is unmounted and I am streaming from the net.

Any other explanation for this? If I send it in I'd like to have them replace whatever is causing this... motherboard? Processor? Mysterious problem eh? I just want them to actually fix it rather than having to send the computer in over and over again 🙁
 
I can tell you one thing, Dell depot service really sucks. If they actually send a tech out, he'll have enough parts to basically build you a new laptop though. 😀

Interesting that you still have the problem in Ubuntu. The symptoms you describe are 100&#37; consistent with a failing hard drive trying to do a bunch of retries. However, Ubuntu does give you access to some actual debugging capabilities. Check the output of dmesg and the contents of /var/log/messages for anything suspicious.
 
mfenn said:
I can tell you one thing, Dell depot service really sucks. If they actually send a tech out, he'll have enough parts to basically build you a new laptop though. 😀

Interesting that you still have the problem in Ubuntu. The symptoms you describe are 100&#37; consistent with a failing hard drive trying to do a bunch of retries. However, Ubuntu does give you access to some actual debugging capabilities. Check the output of dmesg and the contents of /var/log/messages for anything suspicious.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I really wish I had gotten the onsight like I thought I had. Did not realize that there were two tiers of completecare. Fucking lame.

So here's another piece: the freezing is sometimes frequently enough to throw off my clock, so right now it's about 10 minutes behind. Does this point to anything or is that assumed?

I'll check that out next time I'm in Ubuntu though. Thanks.
 
Last edited:
Wow, interesting. If the clock is off, that means that there is something seriously wrong at a fundamental level. I'd suspect the motherboard or CPU in that case.
 
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