Lockups with a 3 month old laptop - Advice sought!

Virgin-Rez · 14-11-2007, 22:27

Folks,

Thought I'd sound you guys out for some advice regarding problems with my nearly new Amilo Pro V3515. Pentium T2080 Dual Core, 80Gb drive, S3 graphics (Yuck!) 1Gb RAM.

The laptop is an insurance replacement for the old one which my one year old daughter threw a glass of coke over. Had it about 3 months now. As an insurance job, is this covered by any warranty? Just wondering out loud...

It came with Vista HB pre-installed. Shame it wasn't Vista HP but there you go... I can update later if I really need the aero interface and media centre. Some of my programs don't work with Vista so I installed XP pro as a dual boot and added another 1Gb mem stick to bring the total to 2Gb with 256Mb robbed by the crap graphics chipset.

Anyway, onto the problems...

Recently the computer has been locking up if left untouched for about 20 minutes. Tried diagnosing but couldn't trace it down to anything specific other than no activity so I decided to try resetting the system back to factory defaults. I know there is a recovery partition on the disk, about 2Gb worth but how do you access it? I used the supplied recovery DVD but that's just a Vista HB installation disc. I ended up formatting C and re-installing Vista from scratch with no XP dual boot.

Now, with a clean Vista install and latest Windows Updates applied (No other software installed) I'm getting further, but different lockups.

In my attempts to recover the data over my wireless network (backed up to my desktop PC) I find that copying a large folder of data across the network will cause the system to lockup. However downloading a similarly large file from the internet is not causing a lockup!

When I try to copy data over the WLAN the wireless link seems to get dropped occasionally with the message "the semaphore timeout period expired"... this despite the fact that the laptop and the WRT54GS router (Latest Firmware) are sat no more than 2M apart and with line of sight to boot! The laptop's Atheros chipset has also been through a couple of versions of the driver and no joy there either.

Any thoughts or suggestions gratefully received!

Thanks in advance!

Rez

southwell · 15-11-2007, 07:02

You should be able to adjust how much ram the graphics card takes up in the bios.

Sounds like a hardware problem, try taking your new ram out and trying that first of all. What memory did you add on to it?

Virgin-Rez · 15-11-2007, 07:57

Thanks for the reply!

I am in the process of trial and error diagnostics.

The system had 1Gb DDRII 533Mhz memory. I bought two more and have rotated them all in and out in different pairings and as singles and I still get the lockups.

I've re-formatted the hard drive again and re-installed Vista (which thankfully is a relatively quick and painless affair compared to XP!

) but only allowed the system to download and install the high priority windows updates. There are currently three optional updates available one of which is a set of drivers for the WLAN. I've deliberately not downloaded these and am getting no lockups so far....

Rez

southwell · 15-11-2007, 08:16

Vista seems touchy on Wlan cards. I had to get 3rd party drivers to get mine working correctly.
I would never download chipset drivers from the microsoft site, only from the manufacturers sites, this tends to stop too many conflictions.

royaltiger · 15-11-2007, 08:39

your warranty starts from day one of original purchase, as you have formatted and reinstalled, your warranty would be void anyway, sounds like a wireless lan issue, i would reinstall vista and download using cable leaving wireless switched off for the moment let it install all updates and see how it runs, then swith on wireless and let vista detect drivers for it via cable again , and see if that runs or problems start again at least you are narrowing down the problem

Virgin-Rez · 15-11-2007, 09:13

Ahh but that's the thing you see, it wasn't a purchase but an insurance replacement, so who is the warranty with? I have no idea who the insurance company bought the laptop from...

As for a system re-install voiding the warranty... you sure?

Given how often folks have to re-install the OS these days I'd be surprised if that would void the warranty!

Rez

southwell · 15-11-2007, 09:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by royaltiger

your warranty starts from day one of original purchase, as you have formatted and reinstalled, your warranty would be void anyway.

Umm, no it wouldn't. You can install whatever OS you want, but if it goes in for repair then they will just install the original OS if they had to.

---------- Post added at 10:14 ---------- Previous post was at 10:13 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by Virgin-Rez

Ahh but that's the thing you see, it wasn't a purchase but an insurance replacement, so who is the warranty with? I have no idea who the insurance company bought the laptop from...

As for a system re-install voiding the warranty... you sure?

Given how often folks have to re-install the OS these days I'd be surprised if that would void the warranty!

Rez

The warrenty is with Fujitsu, you have a 1 year warrenty from the date of purchase. Some laptops have 2 years though.

Virgin-Rez · 15-11-2007, 10:04

Well, it would appear from all the wireless traffic I've had going on around me today that the problem was indeed the WLAN drivers as supplied by Micro$oft!

I'll be sure to hide that update and go on to add further updates one by one until the system's back to where it was 2 days ago.

Thanks again for all your help folks and if anything else develops I'll be sure to report it back her.

Cheers!

Rez

dragon · 15-11-2007, 11:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by royaltiger

your warranty starts from day one of original purchase, as you have formatted and reinstalled, your warranty would be void anyway, sounds like a wireless lan issue, i would reinstall vista and download using cable leaving wireless switched off for the moment let it install all updates and see how it runs, then swith on wireless and let vista detect drivers for it via cable again , and see if that runs or problems start again at least you are narrowing down the problem

Thats just rubbish the warranty is for hardware issues not software.

You can put whatever you like on your pc.

royaltiger · 15-11-2007, 13:02

It might be rubbish, so if i buy a new laptop delete everything on it, then cant get it to work your telling me the company i bought it from will fix it, under warranty i would be very surprised , not without being charged, why would you buy a pc with an operating system on then change it , again if there was a problem i cannot see how your warranty covers that, your better off not having an operating system on then installing what you want

Virgin-Rez · 15-11-2007, 13:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by royaltiger

It might be rubbish, so if i buy a new laptop delete everything on it, then cant get it to work your telling me the company i bought it from will fix it, under warranty i would be very surprised , not without being charged, why would you buy a pc with an operating system on then change it , again if there was a problem i cannot see how your warranty covers that, your better off not having an operating system on then installing what you want

Hang on, that's not a warranty issue that's just the user being inept!

IMHO a warranty issue is dealing with faulty hardware, not the software that runs on it.

Rez

dragon · 15-11-2007, 13:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Virgin-Rez

Hang on, that's not a warranty issue that's just the user being inept!

IMHO a warranty issue is dealing with faulty hardware, not the software that runs on it.

Rez

Isn't that basically what I said

and yes if you bought a new laptop, deleted everything on it, And you had a problem with it thats down to a hardware issue then yes I'd expect the company to fix the faulty hardware.

royaltiger · 15-11-2007, 13:37

Surely the software installation comes as part of the warranty package, i may be wrong, if you are sold a laptop or pc that is new and you change the operating system and the pc does not work correctly, what i am saying is i cannot believe the company that sold you the product will fix this for free under a warranty, again i may be wrong

dragon · 15-11-2007, 13:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by royaltiger

Surely the software installation comes as part of the warranty package, i may be wrong, if you are sold a laptop or pc that is new and you change the operating system and the pc does not work correctly, what i am saying is i cannot believe the company that sold you the product will fix this for free under a warranty, again i may be wrong

If it's a hardware defect then yes they should fix it.

for example If i change from vista to xp on a new laptop and 3 months down the line the charger/power adaptor dies, id fully expect them to replace the faulty charger/power adaptor.

if its simply not working because the software you installed is not compatable with the hardware then no they wont fix it.

So if i'd installed Xp on a machine that shipped with vista and the wireless wouldn't work because I needed an xp driver I wouldn't expect them to provide me with a driver, Id fully expect to have to go find it myself.

royaltiger · 15-11-2007, 15:28

My point about warranty being void, i could not see a company fixing a computer if the software preinstalled has been deleted or changed, as this could be a reason there is a hardware failure, which more likely would be a driver conflict, that does not mean i dont agree the company should fix the problem, i just think you make it harder to get it repaired under a warranty if you are changing operating systems as this was not what was originally bought and sold as a working pc.