Ok, so I know you all have been waiting with bated breath for an update on my
issue so here it is: Looks like my freezing problem is gone!
TL;DR: Pretty sure a cracked USB/audio board was causing short-circuits that
were leading to my random freezes!
More details:
So on the very front left side of the laptop is a small board that has the
mic/headphone jack and 3 USB 3.0 ports on it. Now I've got two wireless mice I
use, one at my desk, and a smaller one for when I'm on the road, which both
have dongles that I plugged in there...
I didn't start using the desktop mouse until a few weeks after I got the laptop
and it had a bigger dongle that stuck out more than the other, smaller mouse.
So I'm pretty sure that as I was pulling the laptop out of my laptop bag I've
had for like 15 years the bigger dongle got caught on the fabric of the sleeve
and I probably yanked it out w/o thinking, leading to the broken board...
**Now the reason I didn't notice any problems at the time was b/c the USB ports
still worked-but I probably cracked the board a bit at that point and I'm
pretty sure that over time the crack got bigger...but again the USB ports were
still working so I was blissfully ignorant-and in fact the headphone jack was
still working too!
Then a couple months later (and AFTER I'd emailed you guys-so I still had no
idea there was a potential HW issue!) the headphone jack stopped working which
is when I started looking more closely at it and realized that the headphone
port was moving in quite a bit when I tried to plug headphones in-but even then
I thought the ports were just loose and needed to be tightened down-still not
knowing there was a break in the board or anything-I never even imagined that
being the case (since I thought it was all one motherboard...!) and the USB
ports were still fine...
Now fast-forward to 9/1 when I broke the left hinge of the laptop screen by
grabbing it in the wrong place and trying to close it-with not too much force
btw-(apparently a known issue with models this thin, which is the only negative
I see with it as my WEI is a 9.2 with this monster which is pretty
amazeballs!). Fortunately MSI has a repair center not too far from me here in
LA in the City of Industry 30 mins away (btw, I highly recommended buying a
machine with a local repair center!). I called and they said I could come in
and that they could probably fix it the same day-which would be amazeballs as
opposed to the 1 week turnaround time it would otherwise take to mail it in-on
top of being w/o my primary (and only) machine that I use for work and
everything else!
So I drove right over posthaste and they fixed the screen in a few hours
(dropped it off at 1pm, got lunch, chilled and got a massage, and then picked
it up at 5pm!). Stellar service, A+++, highly recommended btw! That's when I
found out that the board was cracked and that it should be replaced-but they
didn’t have one in stock so they'd have to order it and have me come back to
replace it. But I was happy to do so since I now knew where they were and I
wanted to see if my freezes would continue or not as I'd explained it to them
but they didn’t have any ideas-and they ran a complete system check which
didn't notice any problems btw!
Since I was suspicious that it was maybe a hardware issue causing my problems I
took very careful notice to see if I had any freezes after they replaced the
screen-and I noticed not a one! Which was making me initially think that maybe
something got fixed when they replaced the screen...like a cable that had been
pinched or mis-seated, etc.
**BUT now that I think about it more, I'm certain that it was because that they
noticed that the board had a space behind it-which is what allowed it to crack
in the first place as I yanked on it-and the freezes probably happened when the
board moved or flexed and cause some sort of short-circuit to the system...and
so they put a nice foam piece in that space behind the board so it wouldn’t
shift/move back anymore! It was nice and firm after that-and again while the
headphone jack didn’t work the USB ports continued to function just fine!
Now I went back exactly 4 weeks later on 9/29 to replace the board and again,
it's been over just another month and still not a single freeze! As I
mentioned already, I was going to initially say that maybe some cable or
something was pinched in the config from the factory-but that doesn't make
sense as the laptop had no freezes for the first 2 months (3/15 to 5/11) and
then they just started happening out of seemingly nowhere...which now tracks
more with me likely cracking the board and then random short-circuits causing
the freezes right?!
Thoughts? Make sense to everyone? Or any other alternative explanations?
Figure it's a good lesson to know the details so as to remind ourselves to
always check layer 1, i.e. the hardware first when random stuff like that just
starts happening...
BINO
P.S. Just installed the Creators Update today and so far so good (it kept
prompting me for the past two weeks and I kept putting it off but I finally
gave in).
-----Original Message-----
From: Hardware [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
lopaka polena
Sent: Thursday, July 6, 2017 1:25 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [H] Help! Bino MSI Win10 Pro laptop random lockup issues
I've had a couple older laptops with heat issues (the P4 HP comes to mind) and
the monitoring software (I use speedfan and cpu-z too) didn't always show much
issue. Normally I have 2 ways I'd check if it was heat related. I have a couple
mini fans made for laptops that have adjustable clamps to hold them over the
small fan exhaust ports and a thin retractable usb plug to power them. On my
old P4, if I ran that extra blower fan all the issues I normally had went away.
The other would be to use one of those thin metal laptop stands that have a
couple movable fans so you can adjust them for where the intake grates are on
the laptop.
lopaka
On Thu, Jul 6, 2017 at 12:52 PM, Bino Gopal <[email protected]> wrote:
> So I see I don't have the Creator's Update as I'm still on the
> Anniversary Update at:
>
> Version 1607 build 14393.1358
>
> Hmm, maybe I should try and get another OEM power brick and start
> using it and see if the problems go away...
>
>
> Heat-wise what would you use to monitor lopaka? I've got SpeedFan
> 4.52 installed and it's not seeming as informative as I remember-just
> with my laptop sitting on my desk, with my house at an ambient 72F, it's
> showing:
>
> GPU: 0C
> Temp: 1C
> HD0: 35C
> HD1: 47C (going up)
> Temp1: 57C (not sure what that is)
> Temp2: 28C
> Temp3: 30C
> Core 0: 38C
> Core 1: 39C
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hardware [mailto:[email protected]] On
> Behalf Of lopaka polena
> Sent: Thursday, July 6, 2017 12:40 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [H] Help! Bino MSI Win10 Pro laptop random lockup issues
>
> My gut thought would always be power (whether the brick or something
> internal) or heat with a laptop, then windows update issue because
> there have been a few I've seen recently associated with the win 10
> creators update
>
> lopaka
>
> On Thu, Jul 6, 2017 at 12:12 PM, Steve Tomporowski
> <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> > What I was thinking was that the power adapter is going bad, and
> > just like a flaky power supply in a desktop, causes weird things to happen.
> >
> >
> > On 7/6/2017 3:06 PM, Bino Gopal wrote:
> >
> >> I was wondering if it was Win10...and note I had it from 3/15/17 to
> >> 5/11/17 with no issues...and it didn't lockup again until 6/4/17
> >> and it's been occurring with more frequency...
> >>
> >> But I haven't been prompted for the Creators Update which I heard
> >> was very bad...unless of course it fixed my problem for me...this
> >> is so random and unpredictable, it's very frustrating!
> >>
> >> And note in my case it's definitely a hard, complete lockup and
> >> holding the power button until it reboots is the only way to recover...
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Hardware [mailto:[email protected]] On
> >> Behalf Of Winterlight
> >> Sent: Thursday, July 6, 2017 11:56 AM
> >> To: [email protected]
> >> Subject: Re: [H] Help! Bino MSI Win10 Pro laptop random lockup
> >> issues
> >>
> >>
> >> I have had similar experiences with my Lenovo quadcore laptop.
> >> Sometimes it goes to sleep even though I have set it up not to go
> >> to sleep when plugged in. I have to hold the power button to wake
> >> bring it back to usability . I think you have a Win 10 issue.... I
> >> have a lot of issues with Win 10 that I am waiting for fixes to show
> >> up.....
> or not.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> At 12:49 PM 7/6/2017, you wrote:
> >>
> >>> Doubt it's heat-while it has a 1060 in it I wasn't using it for
> >>> gaming
> >>> *any* of those times, and there were plenty of times I was running
> >>> Mad Max at 1080p, and a couple times at 4k even and I could hear
> >>> the fans spin up and it def get hot, but it never had problems
> >>> then...in fact, when I had the two issues in quick succession on
> >>> 6/22 it was in my lap on a tray and I had a fan blowing on it and
> >>> I thought it was b/c I got it too cold or something like that
> actually...!
> >>>
> >>> Power...it's been plugged into the same third party power block
> >>> that Xoticpc sold me with the laptop (thing is massive) and it was
> >>> on my desk the other times...I just leave it plugged in and on so
> >>> it stays fully charged...are you thinking surges? It's plugged into a
> >>> strip...
> >>>
> >>> Any other ideas anyone? :P
> >>> BINO
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: Hardware [mailto:[email protected]]
> >>> On Behalf Of Joe User
> >>> Sent: Thursday, July 6, 2017 4:45 AM
> >>> To: [email protected]
> >>> Subject: Re: [H] Help! Bino MSI Win10 Pro laptop random lockup
> >>> issues
> >>>
> >>> Heat or Power?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On 7/5/2017 7:39 PM, Bino Gopal wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Hey guys, really hoping someone has the trick to solve this here...
> >>>>
> >>>> Got a new latest and greatest MSI gaming laptop (GS73VR 7RF) with
> >>>>
> >>> Win10 Pro a couple months ago from XoticPC who did a couple
> >>> customizations for me-received 3/15/17. I thought last month that
> >>> it started locking up on me-no response except if I hold the power
> >>> button down and shut it off and then power it up.
> >>>
> >>>> It started happening more frequently a couple weeks ago when it
> >>>>
> >>> did this 4x in the same week! I contacted XoticPC, who said to
> >>> just restore the OS-but I haven't really installed that much and
> >>> would rather figure out the problem (if I can) before I reinstall
> >>> and run into it again.
> >>>
> >>> Interestingly after the second lockup on 6/22 which happened only
> >>>>
> >>> 3 mins after the first one that day, the second one on 6/26
> >>> happened only 6 seconds after boot if I'm reading these timestamps
> >>> right...though I didn't notice until the next day, which is when I
> >>> rebooted.
> >>>
> >>>> Anyway, any ideas? Anyone seen this before? Any help or
> >>>>
> >>> suggestions much appreciated!
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>> BINO
> >>>
> >>
> >
> >
>
