Vehtemas

I have an Asus 15" laptop, ASUS A53SV running Windows 7 Ultimate.

I have over 5 years of experience working and fixing laptops but I CANNOT find out why this keeps happening...

Anyways, here's the problem:

It seems to happen after about 2-3 days of the laptop being on constantly, what happens is that the computer freezes and the sound gets stuck repeating whatever note was playing when the laptop froze...

There is NO indication of anything else wrong with the PC, there is no stuttering, no lag, and no issues even when running 15 different things at once.

In order to fix this I have to do a hard reboot of the laptop.

Also, in the day before this hard freeze the laptop will often freeze for about 10-seconds and then unfreeze, if I reboot the PC it seems to 'reset' this timer of about 2-3 days...

I do the following on the laptop:

I have a data partition encrypted via True Crypt as well as the external hard drive encrypted via True Crypt. They are set to auto mount when the computer turns on, which has always worked perfectly.
I watch videos off the external hard drive that get extended to my TV via an HDMI cable.
I use SugarSync, Evernote, and Dropbox which are set to auto sync various folders to their online storage.
I play SC2, WoW from time to time, and Lineage II via a private server.
I also use Microsoft Office from time to time.
I torrent many videos/files, they are all highly upvoted and I scan each and every one prior to watching.

I have done the following trying to isolate and solve the problem:

I have scanned the OS partition numerous times prior to booting the PC, I have scanned the RAM via memtest pre-boot, I have scanned both the internal drive and external drive via Western Digital (both drives are WD). I have also performed a 10 hour stress test outside of Windows where the PC continually crunched data and ran memory/hard drive tests.

Every single test has come back working perfectly.

Future thoughts:

Reinstall the Windows partition, I don't MIND doing this but I would rather not do this if it won't solve the problem.
So far as I can tell it has to be a software problem, however, I have looked at each and every piece of software installed and there doesn't seem to be a problem... I have also double checked the PC is 100% up to date with Windows.

Anyone have any suggestions?

lunatic59

Check the windows event log (Start>type 'event viewer'). Look at what happened immediately before the last lockup.

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Vehtemas

The Event Viewer shows that an unexpected shut down happened at 11:19am, the only recorded warning before that was at 11:13am and that was a filter host program wasn't responding and got forcibly terminated.

Looking down the list of events I see a ton of warnings saying that 'The protocol host process XXX (number) did not respond and is being forcibly terminated' combined with a bunch of filter hosts...

but they apparently are happening every couple minutes (every day), so I don't think they are related to the freezing...

It also shows two errors and a critical AFTER the failure, one was a kernel-power critical that noted it had rebooted, and the two errors, one was noting it was unexpected power down, and the other was saying audit events had been dropped...

Last edited by Vehtemas; November 12th, 2011 at 01:07 PM.

zapjb

Fixing computers for over 10 years. If a computer is not mission critical 24/7 life/death. I suggest regular reboots at least once a day. And anytime right after a problem. Ime you can't expect mission critical performance out of regular hardware, software, weak infrastructure & poor or no IT support. Believe it or not before a problem (assuming not hardware & user error software) gets out of hand, majority can be healed by Windows (XP & later) through reboots at first notice of problem. Sometimes when working on a computer I'll go through a couple normal shutdown & reboot cycles. And that alone will fix the problem.

Vehtemas

Well I do know that rebooting it each day keeps it from happening because it never hits the 48 hour mark to have a chance to freeze...

I think I will just adopt this since it is a good idea to free up resources etc.

I am just use to leaving it running all the time from my past systems...

Question, I once read that some of the highest amount of stress a PC goes through is turning on and off, so minimizing rebooting keeps it going longer, now this is NOT the reason I got in the habit, but I was curious if you ever read anything backing up this theory.

Nothing I have ever read really reads one way or another.

Last edited by Vehtemas; November 12th, 2011 at 01:51 PM.

zapjb

Afaik. With personal computers the more time off the better.

Mission critical computers that are well cooled. IE air conditioned rack room etc. Best to keep them on all the time.