[SOLVED] Packard Bell Laptop suddenly halts and reboots to black screen

[wefixit]

Hi guys, I have a clients laptop for a couple of days now and I'm still strugling with this thing..

The laptop came with win7 installed I can see the sticker on it, although it has been formatted by someone else and installed win7 again before it got in my hands.

The problem with this laptop is this: when it boots, its perfectly normal if you let it sit idle. When you try to push its graphics card (i think, because I have tried stressing cpu, ram, disks as you will read below), what will happen is the screen will turn black. The backlight is still on because if the room is a bit dark you can see it, its just the lcd is black. Then you think that the laptop froze, halted whatever, but the hdd led is still blinking. If you wait long enough you realize that the laptop is rebooting because after a while I hear the windows logon sound. This whole time the screen is black! After the reboot i tried using the keyboard to "blindly" navigate to shutdown which again worked! the laptop shutted down properly!!! Then if you turn it on again, the screen works until you encounter the same issue again in windows...

After everything I've tried (which I will document below) I think its a drivers issue but I have installed all drivers from Packard Bell's website with no luck. For the Graphics card I even tried the latest drivers from ati.

Laptop

• Model: LJ61
• Motherboard/Chipset: ATI
• 4gigs Ram
• Graphics card: ATI mobility radeon HD4xxx series

What I have tried so far

• All the official GPU drivers I could find, even the generic ones from windows
• stressed cpu/ram through miniXP live booted from usb
• reformatted and installed windows XP which WORKED fine but I couldn't find ANY drivers for it even on atis website... and Packard Bell has only for win7/vista
• Ubuntu live usb and WORKED fine even with playing games and watching HD videos on youtube
• Reformatted and installed a known working copy of my win7 official image.
• Scanned the disk for boot-sector viruses with bootable tools
• Changed BIOS setting of hdd from AHCI to IDE
• Tried a second screen and when this "error" happens the 2nd screen shows -no signal-

I have thought of trying Win8 and see what happens.
I have thought of updating the BIOS with the tool that PB has on their site but what error happens during the flash?

What do you think? What else should I try?

 

[NYJimbo]

I don't see any mention of checking temps when idle and then as you stress the graphics.

 

[wefixit]

I don't see any mention of checking temps when idle and then as you stress the graphics.

You are right, I didn't primarily for two reasons.

First, when there is overheating the laptop just shuts down with no warning etc. This one doesnt shut down, it reboots but with the lcd not working! (only backlight is on). Maybe I'm wrong about this but in my experience and things I've seen I haven't seen this behaviour in an overheating laptop. But please do let me know if there is something you (or anyone else) have seen due to overheating besides just shutting down.

Second, when I stressed test it, I didn't see any signs of the laptop getting warm or the fan screaming trying to push all that heat out. The fan appeared to be working properly and pulling out hot air but the laptop stayed warm throughout the whole test. I stopped the test myself after around 15 mins since I was certain that heat is not an issue. Thats why I didn't even recorded the temperature readout.

Thanks for your reply if you have any suggestions or want to point out something that I might missed let me know

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Silly question, but have you put it on a cooling pad with fans and then retry the stress test? For laptops I work on, I have a cooling pad I picked up for like 5 bucks at a discount store, even has the nice usb plug connected to fans. If you don't, maybe grab a couple then you can push the machine harder. Is it possible there's something wrong with the fan or does it seem to run properly?

 

[HFultzjr]

I don't see any mention of checking temps when idle and then as you stress the graphics.

^^^^^^^^^

This. Symptoms shouting out........heat related issues need checked.

 

[NYJimbo]

Thanks for your reply if you have any suggestions or want to point out something that I might missed let me know

If you do diags this way you are always going to have unanswered questions and end up wasting your time trying to solve a problem.

Install themal checking software, record the idle and other temps as you stress it. If you can find a program that shows the GPU temps, go for it.

 

[wefixit]

Ok guys thanx a lot for your recommendations and advice!

As many people recommend I will try stressing this thing AND recording its temperatures...

I use RealTemp with Prime95 and Furmark which records temps of gpu during stressing.

If you have any other software recommendations with which you had better luck I would like to hear them.

At this point I'm going to call the client and tell him that I have to investigate further for heat related issues and if he agrees then I'll test it tomorrow and let you people know my results!

Thanks again everyone who responded this community rocks!

 

[Boston Pro Comp Serv LLC]

I like OpenHardwareMonitor.org, the laptop won't always shut down from overheating esp if it's the GPU that overheats.

 

[Moltuae]

I'd lay bets on it being a hardware issue, more specifically bad solder joints on the GPU. I've had numerous laptops with a similar problem.

If you can access the GPU without stripping it down too much, try putting some pressure on it to clamp it to the board. Alternatively, if the GPU is mounted on the underside of the board, try turning the laptop upside down to let gravity hold it against the board. Sometimes just a tiny increase in pressure is enough.

I had an old iMac recently with the same issue. The boards in those are vertical of course. Worked fine laid on it's back ... which made it somewhat difficult to use.

If it is a bad GPU joint, it's going to need a reflow to fix it.

 

[wefixit]

I like OpenHardwareMonitor.org, the laptop won't always shut down from overheating esp if it's the GPU that overheats.

will check it out looks nice

Stress test showed around 73C max gpu temperature so I guess its within limits.

Since I have ruled out pretty much everything else it must be a gpu solder problem as some people also noted. It will probably need a reflow which is something I advice against and don't do for clients.

I think its time for this laptop to go home...