Inspiron 4000 I4000 freezes, locks up solid, system clock stops

My Inspiron 4000 periodically locks up. These lockups can last anywhere from a few seconds to half an hour. During the lockups, everything on the I4000 stays as it was, frozen. If the screen is on it stays on. Likewise the fan and the hard drive light stay on or off, unchanged during the lockup. Moving the mouse and CTRL-ALT-DEL fail to make any difference. The only thing I see changing is the charging light blinks every 7 seconds. Some days I don't see any lockups, other days it's happens so much I can't get any useful work done. I have had the system for a couple of years, but this is a recent development -- within the last month or so.

Here is strangest thing -- the system time-of-day clock actually stops updating during these lockups. I can tell how long I've been locked up by how slow the time-of-day clock becomes.

I have updated the BIOS to the latest version, updated the video drivers, reseated the hard drive, memory, and modem. I do not see any CPU usage spikes before or after the lockups. The only power saving feature I have enabled is turning off the monitor after 20 minutes. I have driver version 6.13.10.5004 for the ATI Mobility M3.

On a tip that CPU temperature might be a problem, I installed I8KFANGUI, which hasn't made a difference, except to make the laptop run cooler. I have the fan kick in slow at 45C, fast at 55C.

Any idea what's wrong?

Responses(5)

spiked_martini

948 Posts

0

August 24th, 2004 17:00

Lockups are more likely to be software than hardware (which usually tends to restarts rather than lockups)... what OS are you running? Try running the task manager to see what processes are using your system resources, and run ad-aware and spybot to check for spyware. You might want to consider a full backup, complete wipe of your hard drive, re-partition, re-format, and re-install, since it often ends up being faster than tracking down the cause of an issue like this.

mdbates

8 Posts

0

August 24th, 2004 18:00

I am running Windows XP Home. I have all the critical updates, but I have not downloaded or installed SP2.

Just to be clear -- the lockups are not permanent. The system unfreezes by itself after a varying period of time. I have even seen it lock up while the Dell boot screen is displayed, which makes me think that the problem is not with software, at least not with application software.

Also, keystrokes and mouse motions are NOT buffered while the lockup is in progress, which is different from a system that is simply bogged down. Anything typed is lost.

I have monitored task manager when the lockups are occuring and have not seen any application using an inordinate amount of the CPU. I have also run CPU-intensive programs (such as a Perl script doing number crunching) without any lockups whatsoever.

If there is any software cause, I'm suspicious that it may involve interrupt handling -- the CPU is getting an interrupt which isn't being cleared by the interrupt handler so it fires again, never permitting the CPU to do anything else.

johnallg

7.3K Posts

0

August 25th, 2004 03:00

To prove it is hardware and not software, boot to the BIOS and see if it locks up in there. Alt+P pages through so you can verify it is still running. You could also boot to the blue Dell Drivers and Utilities cd and see if anything fails.

mdbates

8 Posts

0

September 24th, 2004 19:00

It just froze up on page 1 of 7 of Dell Inspiron 4000 Setup for over a minute. It's back now, but the BIOS clock still seems to have kept time.

mdbates

8 Posts

0

September 24th, 2004 19:00

The machine once froze up going into BIOS setup. It also froze up when I was running the Linux Bootable Business Card (LNX-BBC) -- a bootable CD. I was able to boot, and to play Boggle, but I saw the countdown clock stop and the keyboard stop responding.

I'm beginning to think I should go back to an earlier rev of the BIOS.

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Inspiron 4000 I4000 freezes, locks up solid, system clock stops