Win XP help, random freezes (+ tweeking tips)

[bloodline]

15" display and it's about: 32cm  by 28cm and about 3cm high.

It weighs about 4Kg (though I'm sure it's more, and its carry bag is about a Kilo too)... I really am weak :-P

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mikeymike wrote:
How did you even get a retail desktop P4 CPU into a laptop?

It came like that... I know it's not a mobile verison because I can check the CPU_ID.

It also has a rather nice 64Meg Mobile Radion 9000, wich is a massive leap over the old TNT2 in my desktop. Anyway... I'll stop before I go even more off topic... hmmm, I actually have it sat next to me in the office, but my Boss wasn't really very keen on me using it at work :-( I tried to tell him I was sorting out a problem but I had to conceed that it had nothing to do with my work :lol:

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mikeymike wrote:
The power requirements for a desktop P4 3GHz would drain your battery in no time though...

Well, the CPU info prorgam I used said that my CPU was running at 83Watts. My battery is a 6Ah 20Volt Li-ION, which works out to be 120Watts... etc...

I've not run it on the battery yet so I don't know.

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mikeymike wrote:

Well, the CPU info prorgam I used said that my CPU was running at 83Watts. My battery is a 6Ah 20Volt Li-ION, which works out to be 120Watts... etc...

Ok, so back to this problem - does the mouse pointer stutter when the machine is idle?  If not, I think we've found the problem :-)

Nope, the mouse pointer (and more annoyingly the audio) stutters most often during Hard disk access... But sometines it can just happen randomly, four or five stutters in a row for no apparent reason.

Since this does not happen on My DVD drive, (UDMA4), I might try and set my HD to UDMA4 and see if the problem is cured.

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Glaucus wrote:
Hmmm...  Most curious. Did you mention the make/model of your laptop? I would like to just look up the official specs on a web site.

Also, perhaps go into msinfo32 and select File->Export, and then post the resulting file so we can have a good look at your system. Edit it out anything you don't want us to see.  :-)

  - Mike

I'm not sure there is anything that I don't want you to see on my Laptop as It's a dedicated music workstation, nothing exciting on there ;-)

Mikey: 7200!!! you mst be joking... after spending a grand on a laptop I can't aford a super duper HD like that :lol: Saddly mine is only 4600 :boohoo:

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mikeymike wrote:

Mikey: 7200!!! you mst be joking... after spending a grand on a laptop I can't aford a super duper HD like that  Saddly mine is only 4600

Your machine as a 'dedicated music workstation' is confusing me greatly.  Computers used for audio work nowadays typically have very fast CPUs and high-performance disks.  Then you say it's a laptop and it's using a disk speed typical of the average laptop?  It must have cost a mint to get a retail P4 3GHz grafted into it, then you can't afford a decent disk for it?

Well, it's For live work. Where a Desktop machine would be impossible to use.

It runs great, but this random problem is very frustrating.
And the problem is very random, all evening it's been behaving itself, not a stutter. then about 15min ago it did one again! :-x

My synth work doesn't require much disk access so I didn't think a slow drive would be any problem. And Logics Disk monitor shows very little Disk activity.
 

I tried puttting the Drive into PIO mode, but that was terible!

Next thing to try is Safe Mode, and then Linux.

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mikeymike wrote:

I tried puttting the Drive into PIO mode, but that was terible!

Of course it would be :-)

Next thing to try is Safe Mode, and then Linux.

I would do a clean install of 2k/XP first, see if that makes any difference.  I assume updating all drivers made no difference?

Yup latest drivers installed did not help. Anyway, I disabled the swapfile and the problem seems to have been reduced a great deal. I'm fairly confident to say you are right about my crappy hard drive :-( I guess I'll have to start saving up for a new one.

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mikeymike wrote:
an IDE disk running properly in DMA or better combined with the right IDE drivers will not cause the problems bloodline is experiencing.

It seems to be a common problem with WinXP, from what I see on the internet.

anyway, I found this site: Tweeking XP

It seems to give good advice for getting XP to work better for Audio work.

It sugest to turn off write caching for better performance, I find this counter intuitive. Why?

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I though some of that info sounded dodgy.

BTW Having watched Channel4 last night I have reason to believe that your avitar might not be a picture of you :-D

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Ok everyone, remember I was having random freezing problems... where the machine would just sort of freez for about a second and then carry on...

Problem solved... I typed in the Laptop chasis number into google and went through every result it returned (something like 900 results :-() And found a CD ISO image of a BIOS update... I burned it to CD, and boot the machine with it. Hey presto... problem solved.

The Moral of the story, it you have any problems... update the BIOS :-D

-Edit- The laptop also runs faster and cooler than ever before... it's actually like owning a brand new machine :-o

-Edit2- If you have a laptop based on the N251S6 then head to http://www.notebookservice.dk/indhold/n251s6.html and download the ISO image of the latest BIOS at the bottom of the page (version 1.13).