Solved Sony Vaio VPCF13LOE - Win7 x64 freezes randomly

[freribeiro]

After 2 weeks, on a daily basis, trying to solve the problem that i will describe here, i'm asking for your help to find a solution.



I have a Sony Vaio VPCF13LOE, with Windows 7 x64 professional instaled. Windows "freezes" randomly. Sometimes i work with my laptop all day long and nothing happens, sometimes it freezes each fifteen minutes or so.


I reinstalled win7 , recently, so the computer doesn't have much software to cause conflicts, but the drivers.





Mesures (unsuccessfull) already taken:


1. Hard Drive diagnostic test (ok result)


2. Ram diagnostic test (ok result)


3. In Safe Mode the computer performs normally, not freezing, so that tells me its not a hardware problem.


4. After instalation he froze. I rebooted the laptop and went to the device manager, and noticed 3 drivers for wireless.

- The driver for Atheros (i installed after i profiled the hardware);
- The native/generic driver of Win7 for for the wireless board.
- The Win7 driver for virtual wifi (dont know what that is.

Thinking in a driver conflict, i uninstalled the native/generic driver of Win7 for for the wireless board and the Win7 driver for virtual wifi. I rebooted the laptop and after 10 minutes it froze again. Before freezing i noticed that the native/generic driver of Win7 for for the wireless board was successfully uninstalled, but the Win7 driver for virtual wifi, was there again, this time with the #1 - like this: Win7 driver for virtual wifi #1. I rebooted the computer, unistalled the Win7 driver for virtual wifi #1, and rebooted again. I went back to the Device manager and saw Win7 driver for virtual wifi #2.

After a while the computer froze again.


5. Not being a hardware problem, i bought a new disk and new memory ram chips. Still Freezes.

6. It's not an overheating issue also.



Conclusion: It seems to me that there might be a incompatibility issue between some Win7 service and the laptop or a drivers conflict.
If it's a Win7 service thing, I cannot identify on the Event Log what service is creating the freezes. Is there some way to see what services are loaded in normal boot and what are loaded in Safe Mode?




I appretiate any suggestions, answers and solutions anyone might give.

Thanks in Advance

 

[MistUnleashed]

Hi freribeiro,

Sounds like a malfunctioning graphics card, but we'll explore other possibilities.

Please can you go to: Start > Type: Event Viewer > Windows Logs > System - Then scroll down to the 'event time' when the freeze occured then screenshot the events before and after it.

Thanks

MistUnleashed

 

[freribeiro]

Hello and thank you for the answer.

Yesterday i formated the computer again and reinstalled Windows.

I installed every single driver provided by Sony and all went well, until i installed the grafic driver, then the freezind syndrome returned...

Before this last format, i installed the driver directly from the nvidia site, and the freezing occured. Now the driver installed, after this formatting, was the one provided by vaio...in both cases it still freezes.

So, i've identified the problem, but dont know how to solve it.

Is there a tool to check if the graphic card is physically functional, with no damage? Thats one of my fears - that the hardware is somehow damaged.


Thanks in advance for any answer given to this new develop.

 

[MistUnleashed]

Hello and thank you for the answer.

Yesterday i formated the computer again and reinstalled Windows.

I installed every single driver provided by Sony and all went well, until i installed the grafic driver, then the freezind syndrome returned...

Before this last format, i installed the driver directly from the nvidia site, and the freezing occured. Now the driver installed, after this formatting, was the one provided by vaio...in both cases it still freezes.

So, i've identified the problem, but dont know how to solve it.

Is there a tool to check if the graphic card is physically functional, with no damage? Thats one of my fears - that the hardware is somehow damaged.


Thanks in advance for any answer given to this new develop.

It is common for freezing issues to be related to the graphics card.

Are you 100% sure your Graphics Card is an Nvidia, Are you sure its not ATI/AMD?

I will post back with a graphics card testing tool.

Good Luck

 

[MistUnleashed]

Follow these instructions Carefully : http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/160729-nvidia-amd-video-card-test-occt.html

If your Graphics Card goes above 80C-85C STOP the test.

Report back what happens.

Good Luck.

 

[freribeiro]

Ok, i will. I'll let you know. One question MistUnleashed, if i do the test in normal mode, the computer might freeze (since that is the problem).

Can i do it in safe mode? Or in normal mode with generic windows drivers, or the program wont recognize it and it has to be in normal mode with drivers?

 

[MistUnleashed]

Ok, i will. I'll let you know. One question MistUnleashed, if i do the test in normal mode, the computer might freeze (since that is the problem).

Can i do it in safe mode? Or in normal mode with generic windows drivers, or the program wont recognize it and it has to be in normal mode with drivers?

You have to do it in the 'normal' mode - this is a stress test for your GPU so we can see if its a hardware of software problem.

 

[freribeiro]

I did the test and everything worked great!, no freezing for now.

I instaled a secondary driver (in Vaio Website), and when installing i excluded the instalation of hd sound defenition, because i already instaled the realtek drivers...i didn't do that the first time, i installed everything...maybe the conflict was between the hd sound driver from realtek driver and the hd sounddriver from nvidia?

Like to hear your thoughts on that, and i'll take this opportunity to thank you alot for your patience.

 

[MistUnleashed]

I did the test and everything worked great!, no freezing for now.

I instaled a secondary driver (in Vaio Website), and when installing i excluded the instalation of hd sound defenition, because i already instaled the realtek drivers...i didn't do that the first time, i installed everything...maybe the conflict was between the hd sound driver from realtek driver and the hd sounddriver from nvidia?

Like to hear your thoughts on that, and i'll take this opportunity to thank you alot for your patience.

It very well could've been the problem, has the freezing stopped?

 

[freribeiro]

yes, the freezing has stopped.

 

[MistUnleashed]

yes, the freezing has stopped.

Great to hear!

Please mark this thread as 'solved' from the top-right of your first post. Re-Open this thread if the problem comes back.

Thanks,

MistUnleashed

 

[freribeiro]

Hi again...after realizing the stability of the drivers and the system, i ran the occ program and it turned out fine, its not an hardware problem. So i stupidly decided to enable the windows update, in order to update my system. I searched through the updates to specifically find some that could interfere with drivers from the graphic card.

Since i Found none i proceeded with the upgrades. At the middle of it, windows froze, again.

I cold rebooted windows and it froze again.

Realizing that i've made a mistake i reinstalled windows and did the exact procedures from before - when it stopped freezing...but this time it didnt worked again...it started freezing again.

So...i now know that its not an hardware issue, its drivers.

Possible solutions are:


1. Install windows, update windows with windows update and THEN install the drivers, after all updates.

2. Install windows 8.

3. See the logs and try to find the errors before freezing (done that and cannot find anything)

4. Deactivate windows service by service until the problem gets solved.

5. Shoot myself in the head.


So MistUnleashed i turn to you again to discuss options.

Hope you can help me.

 

[MistUnleashed]

Please follow the instructions here: http://www.sevenforums.com/bsod-help-support/96879-blue-screen-death-bsod-posting-instructions.html

Post up the zip file when the collector has finished.

Thanks,

MistUnleashed

 

[freribeiro]

MistUnleashe here is the zip. Thanks so much for giving it a look.