my laptop freezes at random

journal

Dec 062005

Here in the Big Apple (aka New York City), until Friday for business. Might meetup with a few friends and/or make a few new ones. Text message me to say hello or possibly meetup. Tomorrow afternoon, a meeting with Tim Keller, who does know about my web page about him; I’ll let you know if anything comes out from it.

On a (yet another) tech note, I’m experiencing a memory attrition problem. I got a Dell Inspiron 600m in January 2004 for my 2nd job, and started having this problem in November 2005, after my Dallas trip — with random lock up — the laptop would freeze up cold, requiring a complete hardware shutdown. And, not only random freeze up, I have also experienced random blue screen errors, several different kinds, and also sometimes the laptop would not power up at all. No distinguished reproducible pattern. Unfortunately, I’m out of warranty. Repair would cost anywhere from $199 to $499.

The resolution for me seemed to be similar to the other person who mentioned it — if I only use DIMM B slot for memory (I’ve upgraded to 1GB), then things seems to run smoothly. But when I place a memory chip in DIMM A (1st slot), be it 128MB, 256MB, or 1GB, then it will freeze up at random, usually within 30 minutes, sometimes as quick as 1 minute. So, this laptop does have half its brain tied behind its back.

Then on the Dell community forum somewhere, I read this:

Basically, all notebook computers are inherently problematic – Consumer Reports’ readers say that about 40% of all notebooks require a major repair during their useful lifetimes. Get a 3-year warranty minimum on it – on site if you can’t afford to be without it for a week or so during a repair – no matter what notebook you buy.

Lesson: get an extended warranty for laptops (if you can afford it).