Vista random freeze - no corresponding event?

[tejas.nadkarni]

So I've been running Vista Home Premium on my Sony VAIO SZ since Feb
9th and overall it's been running remarkably well. Haven't really had
any crashes, all the apps I've installed have worked flawlessly and
I'm actually getting better performance in apps, games in Vista than
XP (dual-booting XP so I've been able to compare).

However, I have a really strange problem in that at very random times
Vista seems to freeze and the only thing that will remedy it is to
hold down the power button to turn it off.

It's only happened a few times and is not normal occurence. For
example it was running for about 7 days straight without a reboot,
then last night I installed this week's Windows Updates and the system
restarted.

This morning I woke up around 8AM and went to check my email, I opened
the lid and it had frozen. The clock still said 2:50AM which would
mean that is when the catastrophe happened. I restarted it and it came
back up fine.

I checked the Event logs and there's nothing around that time at all.
I remember using the laptop until around 1:50AM or so so it was idling
when this happened. The other times it's happened also seem to be
either during or right after it's been idling. However, puzzlingly
like I said it'll sometimes run 7 or more days straight at a time
(including numerous hibernation resumes and standby resumes).

Any ideas what could be causing this problem? The only thing in the
logs was an "Unexpected shutdown of Windows" at 2:48AM which is sort
of a "duh!" moment.

Overall I'm loving Vista but this is frustrating because I can't
diagnose what the problem is. I have all my power setting timers
turned off (Hard drive powerdown never, hibernate never, standby
never, etc).

Oh and this has always happened while the laptop is plugged in. If
anyone knows of any culprits or things I can try please let me know.
I'm going to see how long it runs after this mornings incident.

FYI...Memory test came back fine and like I said it runs everything
beautifully 90% of the time.

 

[PC Tech Solutions]

It can be a number of things. But some good advice is, when you are done
with the computer for the day, turn it off! Don't just clost the lid put it
in standby/hibernation and walk away.

PC Tech Solutions
http://pctech-solutions.com

 

[Mobilehavoc]

That's not really a valid answer...I'll see the next time this happens
and continue the troubleshooting. Was just wondering if anyone else
who had these problems found a solution or stopgap.

 

[Nick Goetz]

Problems after comming out of standby/hibernation are not uncommon.

That "is" a valid answer and not a bad workaround/solution.

Nick Goetz

 

[Mobilehavoc]

No it's not because this doesn't happen coming out of standby or
hibernation. The laptop will be running for hours without issue and
then all of a sudden just freeze up completely. It actually goes in
and out of hibernation/sleep perfectly fine without a single issue.

What's irritating about this is that there's no way to troubleshoot
since it seems random and there are no events in the event log around
the time of the freeze that would help me figure out the problem.

 

[Guest]

I also have been having the same random freezes on my Sony VAIO VGN-BX640P.
It appears to only happen when the laptop is plugged in. Everything worked
perfectly when I was running XP Media Edition before my Vista upgrade.
Anyone have a solution? Is Microsoft aware of what's causing the problem? Are
they working on a software patch?

 

[Phil]

I also have been having the same random freezes on my Sony VAIO VGN-BX640P.

Yep, I sometimes get freezes while my Epson R300 is printing and I'm doing
something else.

 

[Guest]

Update to my freeze issue:

Called Sony tech support after MS tech support refused to help me.

Sony has no clue what the problem is. The best that they could give me is
that I might have to uninstall Vista & reinstall it after rolling back to XP
MCE. But there's no guarantee that that will work. Also, they wanted to
know if I could reproduce the freeze in Safe Mode w/Networking. I couldn't!
Is there anyone who CAN reproduce this freeze in Safe Mode w/Networking?

Correction to my earlier post: the freeze also happens regardless if i'm
using battery power or AC wall outlet. Looks like the only real solution may
be to permanently roll back to XP MCE. Did anyone else try anything that has
or hasn't worked?

 

[Massimo Belgrano]

I have same problem with vgn-bx397xp
Crash if i use internal lan (yukon gigabit)

distortion ha scritto:

 

[Guest]

I have same problem with vgn-bx397xp
Crash if i use internal lan (yukon gigabit)

distortion ha scritto:

 

[Guest]

So I've been running Vista Home Premium on my Sony VAIO SZ since Feb
9th and overall it's been running remarkably well. Haven't really had
any crashes, all the apps I've installed have worked flawlessly and
I'm actually getting better performance in apps, games in Vista than
XP (dual-booting XP so I've been able to compare).

However, I have a really strange problem in that at very random times
Vista seems to freeze and the only thing that will remedy it is to
hold down the power button to turn it off.

It's only happened a few times and is not normal occurence. For
example it was running for about 7 days straight without a reboot,
then last night I installed this week's Windows Updates and the system
restarted.

This morning I woke up around 8AM and went to check my email, I opened
the lid and it had frozen. The clock still said 2:50AM which would
mean that is when the catastrophe happened. I restarted it and it came
back up fine.

I checked the Event logs and there's nothing around that time at all.
I remember using the laptop until around 1:50AM or so so it was idling
when this happened. The other times it's happened also seem to be
either during or right after it's been idling. However, puzzlingly
like I said it'll sometimes run 7 or more days straight at a time
(including numerous hibernation resumes and standby resumes).

Any ideas what could be causing this problem? The only thing in the
logs was an "Unexpected shutdown of Windows" at 2:48AM which is sort
of a "duh!" moment.

Overall I'm loving Vista but this is frustrating because I can't
diagnose what the problem is. I have all my power setting timers
turned off (Hard drive powerdown never, hibernate never, standby
never, etc).

Oh and this has always happened while the laptop is plugged in. If
anyone knows of any culprits or things I can try please let me know.
I'm going to see how long it runs after this mornings incident.

FYI...Memory test came back fine and like I said it runs everything
beautifully 90% of the time.

 

[Guest]

You are not alone. I have been seeing the same symptom. The system will
simply lock up without notice. This seems to happen every 3-5 days. The
machine is on 7x24, used in a business setting, and cannot be shut off. It
doesn't hibernate or anything.

My suspicion in my case is that it could be video related (Nvidia 7600GS). I
had hoped that the latest drivers would fix it, but not the case. I've loaded
the Microsoft DebugDiag tool to see if it can log anything the next time it
fails.

This has been a persistent annoyance since I installed (clean) the OS. If I
isolate the cause/solution, you can bet I'll post it.

Phil

 

[Guest]

I've also updated my video drivers with no luck. (ATI x1600 Radeon).

I suggest that everyone who has a problem contact Sony and lodge a
complaint. Maybe if they get enough complaints they'll seriously address
this issue.

 

[Guest]

I was interested to read your post, I have a 3month old Acer Aspire5100
laptop, was working tiptop. Until I recieved & installed my Vista upgrade.
The first few days ok, enjoying the new Vista, then the nightmare began,
everyday now for no apparent reason it randomly freezes. This has happened
after less than 5 minutes like it did today, or after an hour, no way back.
Switching off, this sometimes has not been possible either as the power
button didnt respond for over an hour yesterday!

These random freezes occur more & more often now, have spoken to Acer they
dont no the possible cause, it looks like it all points to Vista, especially
since I came here oh dear many people same problem, what & when are Microsoft
Vista going to realise this is a serious issue, highly frustrating, let alone
the hours now spent time wasting, I wonder what the hourly rate is for
personal dead time....

Where to go from here? please?

 

[Guest]

This appears to be a product independent problem. I am running a desktop
machine with an Intel board and an Asus (Nvidia 7600) video card. It appears
that there's something going on somewhere inside Vista that may be related to
hardware but not to any one vendor. I'm not hoping my machine will crash, but
I am hoping that if it does, the debug tool I have running will be able to
capture what was going on at the time.

In general, I've also found Vista to be a marginal performer. I have 2.5GHz
P4 and 1.5GB of memory. Quicktime is almost unusable for video. I thought
this stuff was supposed to work better.

The only good news is that I'm a consultant and can warn my clients to put
any upgrades off for a while until MS finishes debugging the software (with
our help, I guess).

Phil

 

[Mobilehavoc]

Update to my freeze issue:

Called Sony tech support after MS tech support refused to help me.

Sony has no clue what the problem is. The best that they could give me is
that I might have to uninstall Vista & reinstall it after rolling back to XP
MCE. But there's no guarantee that that will work. Also, they wanted to
know if I could reproduce the freeze in Safe Mode w/Networking. I couldn't!
Is there anyone who CAN reproduce this freeze in Safe Mode w/Networking?

Correction to my earlier post: the freeze also happens regardless if i'm
using battery power or AC wall outlet. Looks like the only real solution may
be to permanently roll back to XP MCE. Did anyone else try anything that has
or hasn't worked?

Sorry didn't come back to post but I discovered the solution to the
problem for me personally was a bad driver for HD protection. I
reinstalled the Vista HDD protection driver from Sony's website and
all is well. I noticed everytime it froze it would be at a moment when
the hard drive would be accessed and while frozen the HD light would
never even flash once.

i.e. A few times it froze when I typed something into the search box
in Google toolbar - I realized what it was doing is trying to match
what I was typing to my history and due to the bad HDD protection
driver not being able to.

For those having this issue, try disabling any type of HDD shock
protection to see if that helps....I can run Vista for weeks at a time
now with no issues.

 

[Guest]

So I've been running Vista Home Premium on my Sony VAIO SZ since Feb
9th and overall it's been running remarkably well. Haven't really had
any crashes, all the apps I've installed have worked flawlessly and
I'm actually getting better performance in apps, games in Vista than
XP (dual-booting XP so I've been able to compare).

However, I have a really strange problem in that at very random times
Vista seems to freeze and the only thing that will remedy it is to
hold down the power button to turn it off.

It's only happened a few times and is not normal occurence. For
example it was running for about 7 days straight without a reboot,
then last night I installed this week's Windows Updates and the system
restarted.

This morning I woke up around 8AM and went to check my email, I opened
the lid and it had frozen. The clock still said 2:50AM which would
mean that is when the catastrophe happened. I restarted it and it came
back up fine.

I checked the Event logs and there's nothing around that time at all.
I remember using the laptop until around 1:50AM or so so it was idling
when this happened. The other times it's happened also seem to be
either during or right after it's been idling. However, puzzlingly
like I said it'll sometimes run 7 or more days straight at a time
(including numerous hibernation resumes and standby resumes).

Any ideas what could be causing this problem? The only thing in the
logs was an "Unexpected shutdown of Windows" at 2:48AM which is sort
of a "duh!" moment.

Overall I'm loving Vista but this is frustrating because I can't
diagnose what the problem is. I have all my power setting timers
turned off (Hard drive powerdown never, hibernate never, standby
never, etc).

Oh and this has always happened while the laptop is plugged in. If
anyone knows of any culprits or things I can try please let me know.
I'm going to see how long it runs after this mornings incident.

FYI...Memory test came back fine and like I said it runs everything
beautifully 90% of the time.

 

[Guest]

Hi All I recently purchased a Gateway notebook with Vista Home and after a
few hours of taking it out of the box it would just freeze for no reason
whatsoever! It is so annoying as the only way to remedy the situation is to
hld the power button down for 4 seconds and re-boot.

After days of this, I spoke to Gateway who were next to useless and they
told me to do a complete destructive recovery which I did........ a day goes
by and yes you guessed it...it froze again ..same problem.

I ended up re formatting and re installing Vista OS. It now works
perfectly....providing its running on Mains power.. as soon as the power is
removed...it will freeze after around 10 minutes! Still at least on mains I
can use with no problems.

sir wilcox

 

[huwyngr]

Hi All I recently purchased a Gateway notebook with Vista Home and after a 
few hours of taking it out of the box it would just freeze for no reason 
whatsoever! It is so annoying as the only way to remedy the situation is to 
hld the power button down for 4 seconds and re-boot.
[ .... ]
I ended up re formatting and re installing Vista OS.

Something like that happens on a new machine and I'd send it back without
delay.

 

[Malke]

Same problem

I have a Sony Vaio VGN-FW31J

In addition when it freezes, it occasionaly shuts down (displays some
file name but I never had the chance to write it down) and when it
restarts I get a "OPERATING SYSTEM NOT FOUND ERROR". Then I reboot the
hard way...

It happens randomly, although I think it has to do with a USB internet
connection I am plugging in occasionally.

It is very unlikely that a USB Internet connection would produce an
"operating system not found" error. That error either means your hard drive
is failing or there is a problem with your motherboard. The random nature
of the problem also points to hardware failure, rather than software.

You can try and troubleshoot this yourself:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Tshoot

or if this is a laptop under warranty, just call Sony tech support.

Malke