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Self aware or really flaky laptop?!

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LAN_403

Conundrum

Tue Mar 01 2016, 04:19AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

Hi all.
This right out of the "X-Files" but I am convinced that this x520 laptop is becoming self aware.

My earlier problems with the Acer Aspire netbooks included the infamous black screen of death.
Problems started about 2.7 years ago, it developed an intermittent fault suggesting bad RAM which was later resolved by replacing the two 2GB PC3-8500s with 2GB 10600s although this did fix Itunes there were still some glitches.
I also had to change out the 500GB hard disk a few months later because it developed the dreaded "disk read error has occurred" bug yet when later zeroed and put in a Linux machine it worked perfectly.
Laptop also occasionally did the "windows explorer has stopped working" thing when plugging in a USB device.

Seemed fine though had to use another machine coincidentally an Acer Extensa 5730e with DDR2 but the same CPU (ie T7300) to clone the drive to a new 1TB because it just would not clone any other way.
Had a few problems restoring with Samsung Recovery Solution 4 but that resolved.

Ran into problems about two months ago with intermittent glitches during video playback which I determined was bad heatsink paste, replaced with finest Akasa and seemed to work fine.
Also changed out the top casing as it had accumulated damage from an earlier DVD-BRD upgrade.
Interestingly it would not work with either known good 4GB 10600s module at all, no bootup.

About a week ago the drive suddenly gave up with no warning, had all the symptoms of a head crash yet when I tried it in my caddy all seemed fine though there was massive OS corruption.
I've since replaced it with a cloned-on-Sony-Vaio 120GB and that seems to work, used the original key but with
the Samsung drivers on an external 64GB SD card and windows 7 x64 image.

Just now it was peacefully sitting there plugged in but turned off and TURNED ITSELF ON!!! hard drive light was blinking away in usual boot-up pattern but nothing on the screen then it just shut back down again.

This is worthy of note, there is no way that it can do this because the switch is a hardware button and I adjusted it to have a reliable click.

I've documented a very similar effect on my Acer Extensa 5220 which had similar symptoms but manifested differently.
In this case the memory didn't work unless clocked using spdtool down to 333 MHz and the USBs do not work on a restart but they do when you manually uninstall/reinstall while in Windows.
This one also has a near identical Core 2 Duo T7300, 2GB DDR2 and a 250GB hard disk.

Its also interesting to note that I've had two coincidental pendrive failures on it and one failed SD card, all were used in this machine at one point during their working lives.
Symptoms: unable to format, lost data. Note that two of the three after extensive zero filling on an old machine pre DDR2 did eventually recover.

Reading up about a certain guy's experiences with "BadBIOS" got me thinking.

Is it possible this thing is trying to become self aware, because if so I need to know about it.

-Andre

#include "riseofthemachines.h"

Carbon_Rod

Wed Mar 02 2016, 08:04AM

Registered Member #65 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:43AM
Location:
Posts: 1155

Computrace is on most laptops.
It is enabled by some manufacturers, and as a side-affect to refurbished unit resellers.
It can re-infect even if cloned or hard-drive is moved to another active pc.
It has been known to get re-purposed by some virus.
It has known to be compromised over a network while "disabled".

One can't really remove it once the asset tag it tripped once.
Open your Bios settings to disable wake-on-lan activity, and check if your asset tag is live.

Intel also has a remote administrative interface next to their CPU, and no one really knows how it interacts with the integrated network hardware.

This forum usually prohibits discussions about lame forensics matters.

hen918

Wed Mar 02 2016, 06:10PM

Registered Member #11591 Joined: Wed Mar 20 2013, 08:20PM
Location: UK
Posts: 556

I think you should get a new laptop...
"Never attribute to AI what can be adequately attributed to malfunction" (Hanlon's Razor for the 21st century:)

Conundrum

Thu Mar 03 2016, 05:23AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

It did it again not 1 hour ago.
This time the mains was unplugged due to storms in the area (good thing too, Island FM got lightninged) and it did the turn on, flicker lights and turn off drill. No power fading light as have seen this before when the battery was just low.
EDIT: Pretty sure the culprit is one of two things, the EDID chip in the LCD panel as have had another screen fail randomly requiring this part to be changed or it is a bad BIOS chip or 45DB11 network EPROM.
These laptops had the misfortune to use a bad batch of chips also used on the AOA110,130,150 and also some desktops which suffered so many failures in the field they ended up being used on keyring picture frames!

EDit 18/07/16
Extensa broke down this morning, it was showing SCD error press 1 to continue then failed on a reboot after a BIOS reset.
Going to try externally reprogramming the chip to see if this is the problem.
It previously "nuked" two different pendrives both using the same 5707 series Phison chip
and the symptoms were one went write protect and the other stopped showing up entirely.

EDIT 24/07/16
Attempted crisis recovery,nada.
This could possibly be something on the motherboard as CPU/RAM was swapped out to see if an older chip worked.
The setting I changed was the HT-Link speed which evidently caused it to fail, different CPU had no effect!
Old CPU works fine in S1G2 board and can access XP install perfectly.

exhibit A:

Conundrum

Fri Mar 17 2017, 06:39AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

I have since documented other machines failing after using parts from this laptop. My previously working XP machine (Gigabyte RS485M-M) mysteriously broke during a routine restart when I changed a BIOS setting, but the fault seems to have affected USB power as well. Coincidence?
Strange thing is it came on once, shut it down again to see why the HDD wasn't working and.. nothing. No beep, no sign of CPU activity.

Also lost my netbook a day ago, *exact same* symptoms. I'd previously swapped out the 2GB RAM for a 1GB which worked but it failed completely with black screen similar to AOA150, its BIOS is a Winbond 25Q168V 2MB

The 1TB Samsung HDD was showing slow sectors on a wipe > 50ms even in DOS so pretty sure something was hiding in the firmware. In hindsight could it have been preloaded with malware at the factory or in transit by a third party?
I still have the PCB somewhere as the HDD did crash on me (again!) on this machine wiping out the Windows 7 install during a routine update and could not access data at all so pretty sure it had a head failure also tried in RS485M-M but nothing recoverable either.

Lesson learned, don't reuse a drive if its even a tiny bit flaky.
Coincidentally the chip which stores the firmware is distantly related to the Winbond chips so there's a small chance something got in during a restart on the x520.

Took the x520 apart to see why USB was being strange, board got cleaned and any corrosion on the chips cleaned off.
Seems to work now so it might have been a tin whisker, thermal drift in a slowly corroding clock crystal or some other problem?
I did notice 16KB of bad sectors on the HDD but as the drive is fully backed up this shouldn't be a problem.

EDIT 22/08/17
Had x520 laptop crash on startup, was trying to get into the BIOS as had DVD drive issues.
Corruption on the bottom of the screen so maybe memory issue?
Interestingly when I tried to get a picture of it, my phone locked solid with a black bar down the RH side (S3 Neo)

I've sent a lot of the hardware off to (deleted_third_party) at SG-1 for analysis but they haven't got back to me as yet.

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