Nightly Troubleshooting Information

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patfla
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Re: Nightly Troubleshooting Information

Post by patfla »

A new phenomenon: my machine would simply power down suddenly and immediately. No crash; no crash dump.

This would happen once or twice a day and was totally bewildering. Finally I considered that there might be a connection between the shutdowns and the hardware (gpu) acceleration in my Nightlies. I turned off the hardware acceleration; it's several days later; and there have been no further shutdowns.

The machine is an Ideapad Y550P with a Nvidia GeForce GT 240M.
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Zlip792
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Re: Nightly Troubleshooting Information

Post by Zlip792 »

Which drivers are you using? try nvidia forceware 275.33 WHQL certified.
patfla
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Re: Nightly Troubleshooting Information

Post by patfla »

I tried 275.33, then 280.2.6 but still the machine would do an instantaneous power off at random.

Finally thought to backup to the oldest driver kit I have: 258.96. It survived overnight without powering off so I think it's the video driver and I should take this to the Nvidia boards. Not that I expect any satisfaction however. The laptop (ideapad y550p and gpu, GeForce 240M) are now at least a year-and-a-half old and so, in effect, no longer supported. The industry wants me to buy a new machine which I may go ahead and do.
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dnast
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Re: Nightly Troubleshooting Information

Post by dnast »

Could just be a dust problem or a dead fan.
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mikedl
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Re: Nightly Troubleshooting Information

Post by mikedl »

dnast wrote:Could just be a dust problem or a dead fan.

More than likely, on a laptop, a dirty heat-sink. Been there, done that.

However, if patfla has the opportunity to get a new laptop, I'd go for it (taking a laptop apart and cleaning the heat-sink is not fun).
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patfla
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Re: Nightly Troubleshooting Information

Post by patfla »

I open up the bottom of my laptop periodically (say every 3 months) to clean out the fan with a can of compressed air. The fan is working and clean.

And as for overhearing generally this is an ideapad y550p with a core i7 and has thermal throttling.

Even with an older and I'd hoped stable version of the nvidia driver (GeForce 240M) the machine still occasionally suddenly powers down. Have never seen anything like it.

I continue to live with it (no ill effects so far) but the more I eliminate other variables the more I'm driven to the conclusion that something in the hardware is slowly failing.

I suppose I could completely reinstall the OS and I've done that a number of times but it's a tedious process.
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mikedl
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Re: Nightly Troubleshooting Information

Post by mikedl »

patfla wrote:I open up the bottom of my laptop periodically (say every 3 months) to clean out the fan with a can of compressed air. The fan is working and clean.

On my Toshiba, patfla, I cannot simply remove the bottom of the laptop. I have to dismantle it from the top. The entails removing the keyboard and being careful with the volume control knob and the Wi-Fi switch when I remove the outside cover as well as removing the battery and the HD. In addition, I have to disconnect the keyboard ribbon connections, the webcam plug, the speaker plug (all very small) among other various and sundry tiny connections as well as other ribbon connections.

I found the end of my heat sink (the fins) to be caked with dust. No way to simply "air" it out. As I said, not fun.
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malliz
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Re: Nightly Troubleshooting Information

Post by malliz »

When was the last time this thread was on topic? Come on guys please
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mikedl
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Re: Nightly Troubleshooting Information

Post by mikedl »

malliz wrote:When was the last time this thread was on topic? Come on guys please

Hey, we're just talking about Nightly trouble shooting and why patfla ran into this issue:
patfla wrote:A new phenomenon: my machine would simply power down suddenly and immediately. No crash; no crash dump.

This would happen once or twice a day and was totally bewildering. Finally I considered that there might be a connection between the shutdowns and the hardware (gpu) acceleration in my Nightlies. I turned off the hardware acceleration; it's several days later; and there have been no further shutdowns.

The machine is an Ideapad Y550P with a Nvidia GeForce GT 240M.
"It may be that there are true demonstrations; but this is not certain. Thus, this proves nothing else but that it is not certain that all is uncertain, to the glory of skepticism." Pascal's Pensées
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Re: Nightly Troubleshooting Information

Post by LIMPET235 »

Image
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mikedl
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Re: Nightly Troubleshooting Information

Post by mikedl »

LIMPET235 wrote:Image

:D

Thanks for keeping this on-topic. ;)
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patfla
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Re: Nightly Troubleshooting Information

Post by patfla »

Back to nightlies. I'm on the nightly branch or whatever and it just upgraded me from v. 8 to v. 9 (whee, this is fast).

My felt experience is that v. 7 worked best for me.

In principle I should be able to find 7 here:

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/

But it's not quickly clear just where?
Last edited by patfla on August 20th, 2011, 6:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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couldabeen
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Re: Nightly Troubleshooting Information

Post by couldabeen »

patfla wrote:Back to nightlies. I'm on the nightly branch or whatever and it just upgrade me from v. 8 to v. 9 (whee, this is fast).

My felt experience is that v. 7 worked best for me.

In principle I should be able to find 7 here:

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/

But it's not quickly clear just where?

I assume you meant 7.0a2.
The last version is here, http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/7.0b1-candidates/build1/win32/ Choose your language.

EDIT TO CORRECT THE LINK TO A VERSION 7 THAT WON'T UPDATE TO A V 8. Thanks James!
Last edited by couldabeen on August 20th, 2011, 9:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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James
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Re: Nightly Troubleshooting Information

Post by James »

7.0a2 was on Aurora channel (8.0 is now on Aurora) and the 7.0b1 is on the Beta channel. Installing the 7.0a2 from above link will get you to 8.0a2 if you ever do any updates.
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couldabeen
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Re: Nightly Troubleshooting Information

Post by couldabeen »

uh, yeah, I had my head in a bad place when I posted that! :oops: Thanks for the correction.
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