Repairing an old Laptop

[Tomcat]

I just found my crappy old acer laptop, 1.5GHz Celeron M processor 1gig DDR2 Ram. From what I remember of this laptop was it kept freezing randomly. To get it working again all power needed to be cut then it would reboot but then would freeze again in a slightly shorter time.
Is this due to heat? I ask this as there seems to be no thermal paste in the chip at all. Or is it bad memory?

[z_killemall]

I used to have that problem in an ond desktop PIII about 5 years ago, it was the memory. It makes sense, the fact that it freezes randomly can be caused by bad data transfer of a damaged memory (the processor isn't able to read OS's data stored on RAM, so it will freeze as soon as the OS tries to do it)
Try to change the RAM for a working one of the same model :)

[marshallh]

It could be overheating or bad memory. Try swapping out memory with some spares if you have them. That's the most likely situation.

Another possibility is a malfunctioning power supply (voltage regulators inside the laptop). Look for bulging/leaking electrolytic capacitors.

[Tomcat]

Hmm don't have any spare ram at the moment will see what the cost is for a new stick. No damaged caps.

[Festerfly]

Crappy? OLD? Thats a much better spec then the unit i have! lol

[Micjohvan]

Thats not that bad of a laptop lol.

Before you goto the trouble of removing and switching ram have you already trying to format and reinstall Windows? Never underestimate how gay windows can be when givin the chance...

[Tomcat]

It also happens in Linux as well, got a new stick of ram. All good so far esp as its in as many bit as possible and still running. Will bung Ubuntu on in a bit.

[Tomcat]

arse it crashed on ubuntu with the new ram

[3do]

what actually happens when ubuntu crashes and how far does it get?

[yuckymucky]

Have you ran Memtest86 on it to see if you even have a memory problem? Run this first: http://www.memtest.org/#downiso and let it run for a while and see what it comes up with.

Did you pull the heatsink off your processor to check for thermal paste?? If so you should just go ahead and clean the old paste off and reapply as you don't have a good layer now.

[kendrick]

This is a Celeron M? Does that support the Speedstep clock adjustment based on power usage settings? My experience with my own Quanta PIII-750 is that it didn't run XP reliably with Speedstep enabled. I had to disable the feature and underclock it to the minimum speed available, which in my case was 500 Mhz. Hasn't crashed since, although now I'm not getting all the cycles I might otherwise. I imagine that your chip might underclock all the way to 933 or less.

[Tomcat]

When ever it crashes it just freezes cant turn it off, it can be ubuntu or windoz. I checked the heat sink and pipes there is no paste what so ever, next job is to go get some.
yeh its a celeron M, no idea if speed step is running.

[Jamtex]

I had a NEC Versa laptop that did the same thing, I found out that the CPU which was placed close to the ram slot would get hot and warped the board. So once it got hot the machine would freeze, turn off and it would reboot for a short while, found that pushing down on the left hand side of the machine would get it to run for a longer time.

NEC had the cheek to try and charge me £350 for a new motherboard when I sent it back for repair. Decided to scrap it, sell the parts and get a new machine, an HP which worked perfectly until I dropped it...

[Tomcat]

Well just run memtest and its looks ok, its passed after 37 min.

[Tomcat]

Hmm seems it will happily run memtest. To run out other factors I used a Usb disk, took out the WiFi card. Still freezes up.
Other then reapplying the paste is there anything else? As I prob wont be able to get any till I go home at the end of the month.

what actually happens when ubuntu crashes and how far does it get?

It was formating the disk when it locked up.

[Tomcat]

odd it just installed Ubuntu with a usb drive

[opethfan]

Does a fan come on periodically? It might be overheating.
Try changing the slots the RAM is installed in. I had a XP install keep BSoDing on me as soon as I started. Change the RAM from slot 1 to 2 and it worked like a dream. Also make sure everythings connected firmly and that none of the drives are fucked over sideways.

[Tomcat]

Very strange, I left ubuntu on all night and its not locked up. the only difference is im using a USB drive with an external power supply.

Dare I say its the hard disk or possibly the heat from it?

[Jamtex]

My Versa laptop would run Linux booted from CD and Memtest fine regardless of how long I left them (it ran Memtest for 3 days straight). As soon as I started to crank up the CPU usage (ie run Windows) then the machine die but it was a heat issue and not a RAM or a CPU issue.

[Festerfly]

could be HDD.. a friends laptop seemed to keep crashing at various stages (no specific length of time) and eventually wouldent get past the bios boot without quitting.. new HDD solved all!