ARGH!!! HELP!!!

Post by **DMB2000uk** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 5:30 pm

I think my laptop isn't stable!

The stupid thing is that everything is at stock!
Now I know most of you are going to tell me that’s because I'm running a P4 Mobile,

Truth is there's a lot of negative rep about my laptop, but it's a solid machine, with HT on it out-performs a 2.26GHz P-M (Sandra A+FP & MM! (But not SuperPi!))

But the reason that I think that it isn't working is for the last three folding units I've tried to run on my laptop it has crashed near the end. Now this could just be coincidence because I know that some WU's do actually not finish, but three in a row?

I know that it’s not an overheating issue as my CPU doesn’t break 63 Celsius (145 Fahrenheit for you yanks

), and just to prove to myself that It wasn’t temperature related I did a cheap 'Winter Cooling Mod' (i.e. leave it by an open window

(It actually lowered the temps by about 6oC!))

Are there any stability benchmarks that I can use to test my PC? I've heard a lot of people go on about prime 95, how do I set this up for testing? Or could I use SiSoft Sandra?

Could the fault be with the memory instead?

I'm kind of annoyed that I can't now use 3 PC's for folding. My other one (lol, it’s a dual core so I counted it as two) can't be on 24/7. Bye bye folding rank, bye bye folding T-Shirt!

Thanks,

Dan

PS. The config is different to my sig, its:

Model: Dell Inspiron 5150
MB: Dell i855GM/GME
CPU: P4-M @3.2GHz (Northwood)
FSB: 533Mhz
RAM: 2GB 333Mhz DDR @ 2.5-3-3-7
HDD: 60GB 4200RPM
GPU: FX5200go

Think that’s more than what you need to know

Post by **Apoptosis** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 11:50 pm

Try running MemTest86+ if you'd like to check for memory errors.

We'll see if we can figure it out.

Kerii · Post by **Kerii** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 11:57 pm

63*C might not be a huge deal for your CPU, but I would imagine your memory modules would be sweating bullets.

Before I added a fan to blow over my hard drives and memory modules, the HDs sat right above them at around 50*C and caused all sorts of read/write errors.

After the fan, they site at a more reasonable temperature of around 40*C.

But yeah, take Apop's advice and check the memory for problems. Large percentage of hardware problems stem from those evil little things.

NAiLs · Post by **NAiLs** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 3:49 am

63* is nothing. I'm running at 61* under load from WoW and my machine works just fine. I do get stuttering here and there, but that's the video card/drivers.

kenc51 · Post by **kenc51** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 5:08 am

I've heard WOW is a BIG memory hog.......that couls be a cause of stuttering, as data gets swapped from ram to the hdd.......?

NAiLs · Post by **NAiLs** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 10:07 pm

kenc51 wrote:I've heard WOW is a BIG memory hog.......that couls be a cause of stuttering, as data gets swapped from ram to the hdd.......?

Oh yeah it is. I have 2GB of my laptop and wow... I think the task manager said it was using 800MB+ one time...

Post by **DMB2000uk** » Thu Dec 22, 2005 5:55 pm

OK, so i totally don't get my laptop!

I checked the stability of Prime95 on it yesterday, it crashed after the first 17 min! So i thought there must me something up with the RAM, so i takes 1GB out of DIMM slot B.

Tried to run Prime95 with 1GB, but it tells me I've run out of virtual memory, as I had my page file disabled, so i re-enable it.

Prime95 runs fine for 4hours. After this I'd found the nessacary ISO and burnt it to a disk to run memtest86+.

Thinking the other memory module I took out is faulty, i swap the !GB sticks over. I let it run for half an hour then decide if DIMM slot B is faulty i wont know, so I put the other memory module back in DIMM B.

Memtest runs fine for 10hrs 53min overnight! Prime95 runs fine for 9hr 35min!

So all I've actually done is swap round my memory module and the laptop has fixed itself!

Cheers for your help anyway!

Dan

PS. Im wondering if the disabled page file had anything to do with it, so im re-testing prime95 with 2GB and no page file, as i type this. I'll let you knwo if it crashes! (Its got through 40min ok now!)