R5-471T-534X freezes randomly, no error messages

I received my new R5-471T last Friday, and from day one I've been experiencing random freezes. I'll just be doing ... anything. Browsing in Chrome, working in Word, no pattern whatsoever .. and the system will completely stop responding. Touch screen, keyboard, nothing. But no blue screen, no error messages.

The only fix is to hold the power button and hard shut down - and on restart, it acts like nothing happened. Normally Windows will throw a start screen saying it didn't shut down normally if you hard power off a running system, and ask if you want normal boot, safe mode, etc.

Has anyone else expereienced this? Love this laptop, but wondering if I'm going to have to return it for replacement. I have run all windows updates, and upgraded the BIOS from 1.03 (what it came with) to the latest 1.05. It's especially frustrating when you're in the middle of a Word document and lose it all to a lock up. I've had it happen up to 5 times in one day so far.

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philetus

I would check the memory. You may have a bad memory dimm. Run Memtest.

http://www.memtest86.com/

or you could return the laptop for another one.

Henaway

Running MemTest86 right now. 91% on the first pass with no errors.

Henaway

Completed three passes with zero errors. I'm thinking RAM isn't the issue on this one. Thanks for the suggestion though. Any other ideas on things to check before doing a return/exchange?

Update: within 10 minutes of rebooting, system locked again. *sigh*

philetus

Check the intake and exaust ports for obstruction, shine a flashlight in. Maybe some packing material is in there and making it overheat. Maybe run coretemp for a while and see how hot it is when it freezes.

http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

You might possibly also have a glitch in Windoes. Do a factory Recovery. Type Recovery in Windows search.

Henaway

Nothing blocking the exhaust. I've been watching temperatures over the past week, wondering if it might be heat related (the fan is SO quiet on this) - but the highest I've had it spike is 49 degrees. It froze up again while I was typing this.

I sent in an RMA with Best Buy this afternoon, and I think I'm going to just take the four hour drive to the city and exchange it in person, vs. dealing with the mail system and waiting a week or two.

I really love this laptop, and the form factor. I'm not sure I could go back to a standard non-convertible after using it for a week. The speed is fabulous, the build is solid, etc ... but the random lock ups are driving me mental. LOL

I've even managed to figure out some of my initial problems with the track pad and scrolling causing unintentional zooming. Turns out as I swipe up, my fingers tend to spread ... user error, and a sensitive track pad. Smiley Happy

philetus

I drove 118 miles today to buy my wife a phone and it was wrth it. It was a nice scenic trip. They should just give you a new one.

JordanB

Henaway,

I evaluated the R5-471T for a couple months. I didn't experience the freezes. I had the latest BIOS and after I updated the BIOS, I went in to BIOS settings (F2 at boot) and loaded the defaults (F9) and then saved/exit (F10).

I did experience some crashing from the intel 520 graphics driver, but that was easily solved by updating the driver. You can go to device manager and uninstall the current graphics driver (also tick the box to delete the software). After you do that, you'll be prompted to restart your computer and Windows will automatically update the graphics driver. If you still have problems with that driver, you can go to Intel website and get a newer driver (that's what I did).

I don't know if your freezing problem is related to BIOS or graphics driver or something else.....but the suggestions that I've given you are what I did......and I didn't ever have the problem.

Microsoft's surface pro 4 had the freezing problem, and it uses the same/similar skylake hardware.....although I would only be guessing if the problem is related to BIOS or anything else.

PS------I had to go to Acer downloads to get the user manual to figure out some of the stuff about touch pad, etc

http://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/drivers

http://acer.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/29934/related/1/session/L2F2LzEvdGltZS8xNDU3NjY0MTc0L3NpZC9UU0VJTjlMbQ%3D%3D

Edit: The R5-471T is definitely a nice computer. Apparently it was a little too nice as they made me send it back. Smiley Wink

padgett

If nothing else works, just for S&G try tightening the screws on the back of the machine, particularly the center ones.

Henaway

Well, I didn't touch the screws, but I did go ahead and do a factory reset of Windows. Froze up again before I could get back in here to post a follow-up. 20 minutes tops. Going to exchange it tomorrow.

Henaway

Well, I exchanged ol' Locky McFreeze yesterday, and after several hours of cleaning out bloatware, creating my recovery media, etc, I'm happy to say no problems to report, AND an added perk.

The track pad on the replacement isn't as twitchy as the original. I can two finger scroll without constantly getting the pinch to zoom gesture going. The response is much better! It actually feels more solid too. So I'm very happy about that.

Windows updates are done ... now to start installing MY software! Thanks for the tips trying to troubleshoot Locky McFreeze ... obviously a hardware issue on that one.

padgett

Well that is one way.

PotatoBandit

Hey I literally have the same problem with my Acer Swift 5, its the most frustrating thing on the planet. Glad you could get an exchange and your problems solved

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