Extensa 2540 FREEZE/BSOD

Lazarosgeor · May 2018

I just thought to write a quick update because maybe other people are having the same problems and they are searching for solutions. So far, the laptop has been pretty good. After installing the Windows 10 April Upgrade, Windows Update installed the old graphics driver again from 2016 without me noticing, and as a result, the laptop crashed again. This time I uninstalled the driver directly from device manager, and then I used the Show or Hide updates tool from Microsoft to hide this update from Windows Update. Then, I downloaded the latest drivers from Intel's website and I installed them. Also, Intel released new drivers for WiFi (Intel Wireless Dual-Band AC1368) and in the changelog, they said they fixed some BSOD errors caused by the old Wi-Fi driver. So I installed that one too. So far I've had no crashes, and I hope it stays this way! If anyone with this laptop is having these issues, try these driver updates and hopefully the issues are fixed. I will report back if anything new comes up.

JackE · May 2018

@Lazarosgeor Thanks for the report!!! Very informative. Jack E/NJ

vauvvauv · November 2018

Lazarosgeor said:

Unfortunately, I didn't 🙁 I did as following the first day I got it: I powered it on and finished the first boot experience, till I reached the desktop. When I got there, I checked Device Manager to see what devices this laptop has so I would know what to reinstall when I put the SSD in. After that, I shut it down, swapped the drives, and then from a usb flash drive that I had prepared earlier, I went into the windows installation. Because the SSD didn't contain any of these partitions, I had no idea at first about them. I just deleted the partition from the installation of my old laptop and then created a new one, and it automatically created 4 partitions on its own, so I assumed everything was ok. The installation finished promptly. Then I went to my old laptop, put the HDD in it and started the same procedure there. When I reached that point of the installation, I saw all of the partitions that were there from Acer, and I deleted them all in order to create a new one ... The reason I didn't check more about this is because I went to the laptop's page in Acer's site, and they provide there all the drivers so I thought that everything would be okay with just downloading them from there and installing them after the windows installation. Anyway, what I have done now and I'm testing it is, I saw online that if you update your graphics driver, some times old settings are left behind and that may be the reason for crashes etc. So I found a program called display driver uninstaller and I used it. It did as it said, uninstalled that display driver, and then I went to Intel's website and downloaded the latest version of the driver for hd graphics 620. I installed it, and it's been 4 days so far I believe and I hadn't had a crash or bsod... I can't be sure it's fixed cause it's too early, but I am hoping that it may had something to do with this, cause I can't get those partitions back now in any way ☹️ Thank you for the response!

Hi, did you still have problems?

JackE · November 2018

@vauvvauv  Did you miss @Lazarosgeor  's update on page 2 https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/569524/#Comment_569524 ? Jack E/NJ

Lazarosgeor · November 2018

vauvvauv said:

Lazarosgeor said:

Unfortunately, I didn't 🙁 I did as following the first day I got it: I powered it on and finished the first boot experience, till I reached the desktop. When I got there, I checked Device Manager to see what devices this laptop has so I would know what to reinstall when I put the SSD in. After that, I shut it down, swapped the drives, and then from a usb flash drive that I had prepared earlier, I went into the windows installation. Because the SSD didn't contain any of these partitions, I had no idea at first about them. I just deleted the partition from the installation of my old laptop and then created a new one, and it automatically created 4 partitions on its own, so I assumed everything was ok. The installation finished promptly. Then I went to my old laptop, put the HDD in it and started the same procedure there. When I reached that point of the installation, I saw all of the partitions that were there from Acer, and I deleted them all in order to create a new one ... The reason I didn't check more about this is because I went to the laptop's page in Acer's site, and they provide there all the drivers so I thought that everything would be okay with just downloading them from there and installing them after the windows installation. Anyway, what I have done now and I'm testing it is, I saw online that if you update your graphics driver, some times old settings are left behind and that may be the reason for crashes etc. So I found a program called display driver uninstaller and I used it. It did as it said, uninstalled that display driver, and then I went to Intel's website and downloaded the latest version of the driver for hd graphics 620. I installed it, and it's been 4 days so far I believe and I hadn't had a crash or bsod... I can't be sure it's fixed cause it's too early, but I am hoping that it may had something to do with this, cause I can't get those partitions back now in any way ☹️ Thank you for the response!

Hi, did you still have problems?

Hi there! So, it's been a while since I posted this, and things have changed for the better! As @JackE noticed, I had posted an update back then, but things didn't go so well after that. That prompted me to create this post: https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/547915/acer-extensa-ex2540-has-freezing-issues-and-whea-uncorrectable-error-bsod-ever-since-i-bought-it#latest on July 18th. I explained all the problems I had and when were they occurring and basically how frustrating it had become to use this laptop. I got some responses which were helpful, and they suggested to do a clean install of Windows since the one I had done wasn't really for this Acer laptop and it was just for a general Windows computer. So now I'll explain what I've done and what's the situation been like until now.

I am still running this same installation of Windows since the April 2018 update came out. In the beginning, I had issues as you can read in my previous posts, but what finally seemed to do the trick after a long time of trying things was to change the Power setting in Intel Graphics Settings to Balanced, both for battery and for plugged-in. I should mention that before doing that, I had updated to the latest version of Intel HD 620 Graphics driver provided by Acer on the laptop's website. So, things were finally working correctly and the laptop wasn't crashing, no matter if I had put it to sleep earlier or if I was playing games with it etc. In addition, the laptop received a couple of bios updates from Acer during the summer, which I am not sure what they fixed (one fixed the spectre vulnerability, I checked it after the restart with a tool and it said that this pc is fully protected from spectre and meltdown, so that's a plus!), but I guess they also fixed issues that revolved around the laptop crashing! I was on bios V1.11 before this summer and the latest bios update that was released was V1.15. I don't remember when it was released, but my laptop has never crashed once with this update. The last thing I did is that I installed the latest graphics drivers from Intel's site, because they are newer than the one Acer provides for this laptop, and also because after a whole month of the laptop doing good with the Acer drivers, one day it crashed. It was somewhere in the middle of August. Since then I've installed Intel's newer versions (which can be found here: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/96551/Intel-HD-Graphics-620) and I haven't had a crash since mid-August. I'm now running the October 2018 update (yes I updated the day it came out, and I was very lucky to not encounter any problems with it), and thankfully it's been very stable. I hope things continue to be stable and normal for this laptop, which means that it was software problems all along and not faulty hardware! I mean, for it to not crash for so long, if it does happen again, it'll probably be something software related, because a hardware problem wouldn't take 2 months to appear again! I hope my response has been helpful to you! Feel free to ask any further questions if you want! I have email notifications on, so I'll respond sooner or later! Have a nice day 😊

JackE · November 2018

Thanks again for yet another new update @Lazarosgeor ! Jack E/NJ

vauvvauv · November 2018

@vauvvauv  Did you miss @Lazarosgeor  's update on page 2 https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/569524/#Comment_569524 ? Jack E/NJ

Yeah I'm sorry, I did not see the seconda page.

Lazarosgeor · November 2018

Hi @vauvvauv, I saw a reply of yours a few minutes ago, and while I was about to respond, I can't find it anymore! Maybe you deleted it or there's something wrong with the site, but it's okay, I would like to respond regardless! About the Intel graphics driver, the one you sent in the link is indeed the one I've installed. In order to install it, you have to first uninstall the currently installed one. It won't allow it to be installed otherwise because it didn't come from windows update like the currently installed one did. But, since Acer doesn't bother to release updates frequently, we can't be stuck in this version: 23.20.16.5018 which was the version that did end up crashing on my laptop after a few weeks of using it. In order to uninstall the currently installed version you have to go to device manager > display adapters, right click Intel HD 620 Graphics > Uninstall Device and select the box that says delete the driver software for this device. After that, you'll have to restart, and when you go to check after the restart, it'll say Microsoft Basic Display Adapter (or something like that). What you have to do next is important, because windows update will try to force you to install this old driver again (the 23.20.16.5018 one). You'll have to go to this website: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3073930/how-to-temporarily-prevent-a-driver-update-from-reinstalling-in-window scroll down and click the Download the "Show or hide updates" troubleshooter package now. Once you download this, you run the program and let it scan for updates. After a little while, it'll show you all the available updates for the computer, and one of them is going to be this graphics driver. You have to select it in order to disable it and continue with the troubleshooter until the end. Now it's time to install the new graphics driver from Intel's website! You download the .exe file from that site, you run it and it's going to install normally. After it finishes it'll require you to restart, and after the restart, the job will be completed! I hope this helps!

Also about the bios version, make sure first what your current bios version is! Because I got the V1.15 version from Windows Update, I didn't have to download it from Acer's site, so you may already be on the latest version. In order to check that, search for System Information in the cortana search box and open the program called System Information. In the right panel, it'll say somewhere Baseboard Version and then it'll say in which bios version you are. It says V1.15 on mine so that's how I know that windows update installed this latest version. Hope this helps too! Ask me if you have any further questions 😊

JackE · November 2018

Thanks again @Lazarosgeor !

Jack E/NJ

vauvvauv · November 2018

Hi,
I did all you suggested but it didn't change anything, btw thank you for the information maybe it will be usefull for someone other. I do not know what to do, out of curiosity I am attaching the photo of my battery profile of the Intel panel, you have the same configurations?
P.S. I don't know why my last note was deleted.

Lazarosgeor · November 2018

vauvvauv said:

Hi,
I did all you suggested but it didn't change anything, btw thank you for the information maybe it will be usefull for someone other. I do not know what to do, out of curiosity I am attaching the photo of my battery profile of the Intel panel, you have the same configurations?

Hi there! I'm sorry to hear that nothing worked

I checked the battery profile, and I have some settings differently. As you can see in my screenshots below, both "On Battery" and "Plugged In" are set to Balanced Mode, and they don't have the extra settings. I remember I had the extra settings too on battery, but in the latest graphics updates from Intel, they were removed. However, even when I had them, I disabled all of them. So I suggest that you try it with all of them disabled, and both modes set on Balanced. From your screenshot, I saw that some of them were active, so try disabling those. Also, make sure to be updated to this version: 25.20.100.6373 It was released a couple of days ago here: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28289/Intel-Graphics-Driver-for-Windows-10?product=96551
Something I should mention here, what tends to happen is after updating a driver, the laptop might crash one time and after that it gets stable. I remember that it used to happen after updating my graphics driver after a while. So if after you update it crashes once, see if it goes normally after that. And with everything in Balanced as I show below. I hope this helps!
P.S. A new bios update was released a few days ago too, it came to me from Windows Update, V1.16, but if it didn't come to you, you can download it from here: https://www.acer.com/ac/en/ID/content/support-product/7028;-; It's good to install these bios updates too because they hopefully bring some stability with them too!

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/rw/vf8m4he1bogt.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/u0/2l3mb0fpjuwx.png

vauvvauv · November 2018

Ok Hi again XD
I updated the video driver, now I have settings like your screen and I don't know, I will update you soon if pc crashes or if nothing happens I will write you next week.
Just out of curiosity, you also show me the battery settings (normal, not from the Intel panel)? Or simply use the default mode with default settings?
I really thank you for the help you're giving me, maybe you understand what I feel every time that pc freezes.
Greetings

Lazarosgeor · November 2018

vauvvauv said:

Ok Hi again XD
I updated the video driver, now I have settings like your screen and I don't know, I will update you soon if pc crashes or if nothing happens I will write you next week.
Just out of curiosity, you also show me the battery settings (normal, not from the Intel panel)? Or simply use the default mode with default settings?
I really thank you for the help you're giving me, maybe you understand what I feel every time that pc freezes.
Greetings

Hi! Glad to hear that you updated the drivers, I hope they work fine! Definitely let me know how it goes, even if it doesn't crash, in order to know that we fixed the problem

So, first, let me show you the battery settings from the settings app:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/wb/6rjg23vgttqj.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/bo/fpkfrvlcvklj.png

Also, I've set this slider to this setting:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/e6/f9dtwzusqk8b.png

Which is the best one in my opinion, because the next one forces the CPU to be at 100% at all times, which is terrible for the battery and it could cause crashes, while the lower options limit the CPU, so they're ok if you plan to use the laptop on battery for longer time, but since I always have the charger near me I just leave it here, and the CPU can go from very low to max when needed.

One last thing that I also just remembered (things keep coming to me!) is that I use this program called Driver Booster, and it's basically the only good free program that I've found which searches the laptop for missing or old drivers and it recommends new versions of them, and it also installs them itself. For example, now that I just opened it in order to take a screenshot of it, it found a newer version of the audio driver and it's installing it:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/7i/ccn3s44w5o0a.png

The reason I recommend it is because it also installs important system drivers such as this Intel Watchdog Timer Driver and many others. You can download it from this website: https://www.iobit.com/en/driver-booster.php Just pay attention while you're installing it because it prompts you to install some other software from the same company too, but there are options to decline those offers and only install the main program which is what you'll need. I hope this helps too!

I know how bad it feels when this laptop is crashing, for a long time when I had no solution I just wanted to throw it away and buy a new one, but due to economic problems I couldn't and still can't, but thankfully after 2 years of its release, we've gotten all these driver updates that seem to be making good progress! I hope that after doing these, your laptop will stop crashing too

If not I'm here to help in any way I can!

vauvvauv · December 2018

Hi,
things seemed to be resolved the first few days then it came back as before, maybe the situation has improved slightly but nothing more. Well, what about, I guess I will never solve my problem

Lazarosgeor · December 2018

vauvvauv said:

Hi,
things seemed to be resolved the first few days then it came back as before, maybe the situation has improved slightly but nothing more. Well, what about, I guess I will never solve my problem

Hi there

Well, I would be lying if I said that everything was perfect on my end too... So, one thing that I've gotten used to doing is to always plug in the laptop before doing any graphics intensive activity. For example, no matter if the battery is at 98%, I plug the laptop in a power socket before I play a game or edit a video for example. If I'm going to use the laptop just for web browsing, watching videos or just office activities, it can do them all perfectly while relying on battery power. But doing anything that requires graphics increases the chances of the laptop crashing by a very high percent. Here's what happened a couple of days ago: I decided to play a game but I totally forgot to plug the laptop before playing the game. To nobody's surprise, about 20 to 30 minutes into the game the laptop crashed with WHEA UNCORRECTABLE ERROR blue screen. I immediately checked to see if I had it plugged in, and I noticed that I hadn't. So I just plugged it in and I opened it again and resumed my game. This time it didn't crash again and it hasn't crashed again since. So one tip I can give you is this. If you've been doing graphics intensive stuff while just on battery power, I guess that's always going to crash no matter what we do. My guess is that the batteries on these laptops can't handle the high power demands and the system ultimately crashes because of the lack of power.

Another thing that changed is that Intel changed the way the provide drivers. I checked their website the other day and I noticed this: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28148/Intel-Graphics-Windows-10-DCH-Drivers After installing this new version of the graphics driver, it now changes to a modern driver that will be updated from the windows store from now on (at least that's what I've understood!). I guess that since it's a more modern driver and it supports the windows store (a.k.a. Microsoft store), it's better for windows 10 and more compatible with it. I installed this update too and it hasn't crashed since (the previous crash happened while on the previous version of the driver but it's the battery thing to blame I believe). So anyway, you can update your driver to this version too and just try to never do graphics intensive stuff while on battery power and see how it goes! I hope this helps!

JackE · December 2018

Lazarosgeor>>>For example, no matter if the battery is at 98%, I plug the laptop in a power socket before I play a game or edit a video>>>

Great advice. Also check for a Control Panel restore point around the time the issue returned just in case a Win10update might've gotten in there when you weren't looking and messed things up again. Jack E/NJ