Outside the box ideas...

Iano_128

Hi Guys,
1st time poster on boards so this could well be in the wrong section, so apologies if it is. Looking for some outside the box thinkers to help me out if at all possible

We have a laptop in the company I work for connected to some equipment, the equipment will run a 5 day course and during it running the laptop will record all data (6 figures per second in Excel). The laptop is sometimes crashing followed by a BSOD a couple of days in to the test, when we check the event logs it shows that the equipment crashes and seconds after causes the laptop to crash and blue screen.

We want to rule out the laptop as a cause, and want to replicate the stress being put on the laptop for the 5 days. Does anyone know of a program/application we could use to run a 5 day test on the laptop to see if it can handle 5 days & nights of non stop work?

Thanks in advance if anyone can help out at all with this!

Gone Drinking

Could be a few things here.

The data being streamed: 6 figures every second for days on end, is a lot of data to go into an excel sheet. Does it auto save? Excel could be crashing..

The equipment: the equipment could crash, causing the machine to crash. You said in the event logs the equipment crashes, following by the laptop blue screening. Is it a usb connection between the two? A serial connection would probably be a better option if possible, there's no drivers as such and it would just be streaming code..

The laptop: I doubt this is the laptop, but instead of testing it for five days, i'd try a different laptop or computer instead for the collection of data.

Iano_128

Cheers for the reply, so Excel is auto saving every few minutes (not sure of the exact time to be honest).
The equipment is crashing and then we get the following in the event log followed by the BSOD.
"Type: Warning
Time:12:02:27
Event ID: 2001

Description:
Unable to read the disk performance information from the system. Disk performance counters must be enabled for at least one physical disk or logical volume in order for these counters to appear. Disk performance counters can be enabled by using the Hardware Device Manager property pages. Status code returned is data DWORD 0."


We would like to swap out the laptop but the users of the equipment aren't keen on the idea because they believe it is the software causing the problem & the software vendor of course thinks it is the laptop so we're stuck trying to find a compromise to test if the laptop can handle the 5 days.

mordeith

I think this software allows for extended stress tests.
(I have no personal experience of it however)
http://www.aida64.com/product/aida64-extreme-edition/overview

Gone Drinking

That event will appear if you're using a service to record performance data (see here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296187).

What's the blue screen error? If the machine is auto restarting when it blue screens, there's an option to disable this, so you can see exactly what the BSOD error is.

ED E

First off, laptops arent really designed for 24/7 use like that. Some can do it, but its not really what they are for.


I'd be looking to see if its streaming all the data into memory and eventually running out of memory and crashing. This shouldnt happen, but that doesnt mean it isnt.


To stress test it I'd run prime95(free) for 24hrs straight. If it can do that you're safe that you arent over stressing the CPU. Do this on a HARD SURFACE btw.


If you could tell us what equipment you are using we might be of more use.

Iano_128

We've finally talked them in to swapping a laptop for a high performance desktop so this will rule out the equipment or the laptop thank god . Thanks very much for all your help and @ED_E thanks very much have that software downloaded, will be handy to have! Cheers for the help everyone..

Torqay

Pure number crunchers such as Prime95 or SuperPi or Y-Cruncher (the latter being more suitable for multi-core systems, both available here) will only stress the processor. IntelBurn Test will also stress Northbridge and other PC components to their absolute max — and very quickly too (Intel systems only, as the name suggests).

Last but not least, give the memory a good lash with Memtest86+, boot from CD/USB and run it over night.

CreepingDeath

Iano_128 wrote: »

the equipment will run a 5 day course and during it running the laptop will record all data (6 figures per second in Excel).

Why can't you take Excel out of the equation for the moment.
Dump the data to a simple CSV file.

Later it can easily be imported into Excel.

The Th!ng

Sounds like a heat issue with the laptop.