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XP Freeze on Welcome w/ Flickering bars

Discussion in 'Windows XP' started by rabrowne, 2009/06/09.

  1. 2009/06/09
    rabrowne

    rabrowne Inactive Thread Starter

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    Hey!

    I've got a really irritating problem with my ASUS Z35F laptop, whereby on occassions (seems to be intermittent but will happen several times consequectively when it does) the computer freezes on the welcome screen of Win XP Pro SP3.

    When it freezes, the screen gets all messed up, and has these flickering bars all over the screen.

    I've been trying to pinpoint the problem, but can't discover the source of the problem. When it loads okay, I don't have any issues with the laptop and it continues to run perfectly until I decide to shut it down. However when it freezes I can't do anything, just press and hold the power button and try again.

    My initial thoughts are that it's either XP having issues loading a driver, and then freezing because of it (can't find any error logs, but could be looking in the completely wrong place), or it's a hardware issue - although I'm not convinced as it's an intermittent problem and otherwise I have no issues with it.

    I need some quick advice/hints/thoughts anything that could help me resolve this problem. It's quite an urgent problem and I need to resolve it quickly.

    What are your thoughts on it? Anyone had any similar issues? How did you resolve the problem?

    I've put a photo online of the screen so you can see the issue I'm talking about: link

    Many thanks in advance,
    Rich
     
    rabrowne,
    #1
  2. 2009/06/09
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff

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    Welcome to WindowsBBS :)

    Looks very much like a graphics problem - corrupted driver or possibly a hard drive problem.

    Does the laptop behave normally in Safe Mode?

    If it does I would look to re-installing/updating the graphics drivers for a start.

    Another area you could check out is memory - remove and reseat the RAM.
     
    PeteC,
    #2


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  4. 2009/06/10
    rabrowne

    rabrowne Inactive Thread Starter

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    Hey Pete!

    Thanks for you quick response.

    Right I uninstalled the graphics driver and it appeared that the problem was resolved - no more 'crashes'. However the screen was using the default Windows graphics controller so didn't look too good. So I reinstalled the driver afresh. That seemed to work, but then after an hour or two, it crashed :(

    I've already reseated the RAM, but that doesn't seem to help.

    I've run a check disk, and I didn't get any messages whilst it was running so I don't know if it had issues somewhere.

    Can you think of anything else that I could try?

    Thanks again.
     
    rabrowne,
    #3
  5. 2009/06/10
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff

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    Bit of a puzzle - apparently the laptop is running OK on the Windows default VGA driver - not a display you can live with :), but crashes/freezes after ~2 hours with the custom driver. This really does not suggest a driver problem to me, rather a problem on the motherboard, maybe the graphics chip, maybe ....??

    Check out Event Viewer for any errors - flagged in red - coinciding with the time of a crash - double click on an event to open and, if appropriate on the icon below the up/down arrows to copy to clipboard and paste here.

    As you say that the computer runs for a couple of hours now before freezing/crashing I wonder if the problem is heat related - are all the cooling slots clear? - do you hear the fan spin up ?

    Are you seeing BSOD's or does the laptop simply freeze?

    I would be inclined to look at the temps/fan speed - download SIW and look at Hardware > Sensors. I doubt that the temp of the graphics chip will be shown, but it might be.

    While in SIW determine the make of the hard drive ... Hardware > Storage Devices and run the drive manufacturer's disk diagnostics - if it is a Toshiba they have no such software .....

    Disk Diagnostic Software ....

    ExcelStore

    Hitachi/IBM

    Samsung

    Seagate, Maxtor, Quantum

    Western Digital
     
    PeteC,
    #4
  6. 2009/06/10
    rabrowne

    rabrowne Inactive Thread Starter

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    Thanks again.

    Have done as you said and all looked fine. I'm going to get some compressed air and give the fan and slots a blast. The fan doesn't however seem to be doing an awful lot, but it is running.

    There's no BSODs, it just freezes. :confused:

    Looking at the temps and fan speed - they all look normal.

    There's no error's being logged in the event viewer - haven't had the issue for a couple of hours and there's nothing for the previous freezes. This is half the problem, it's an intermittent problem and I don't know what it is that is the trigger, cause that would help answer the problem :mad:

    Oh well! As I say things haven't frozen for a wee while now, but that's not to say that they won't get worse.

    I'll try the harddrive diagnostics and see what that drums up.

    Thanks again and if you have any other ideas, fire them to me :D
     
    rabrowne,
    #5

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