I'm having a really frustrating issue with my laptop where it just keeps freezing out of the blue. It's an Intel Whitebook QC7 with 32GB of RAM, a 9th Gen i7 processor, and an Nvidia 2070 GPU. I've been using Linux for some time, but then the freezing started. I initially tried troubleshooting on Windows, updated the BIOS and Thunderbolt firmware, which fixed some other issues, but the random freezes persisted. I even replaced Windows on my second drive with Ubuntu to see if the SSD was the culprit, but the freezing continued there too. I consulted with Ubuntu devs, and they couldn't find any errors after the freezes. I ran Memtest64 and found several errors, so I replaced the RAM, but the freezing still happens. Now, I'm at a loss, wondering if I should try reinstalling Windows to see if the freezes happen there as well. I'm kind of worried it could be a hardware problem but I can't pinpoint what's wrong. Any ideas?
2 Answers
It sounds like a classic case of hardware issues, especially with hard freezes like yours and no crash logs. Usually, it points to the motherboard or GPU. Since your CPU doesn't have integrated graphics, you can't test without the Nvidia GPU. If Windows used to freeze too, you might need to look into replacing the motherboard. But if Windows works fine, then it may be a driver issue with your GPU in Ubuntu, since Nvidia drivers are often a headache on Linux.
I had a similar experience, and it turned out to be a faulty RAM stick that caused the freezing. But since you replaced yours and even ran Memtest without any issues, it sounds like that’s not your problem. It could be just a coincidence of getting bad RAM again, or something else might be off. Keep investigating the hardware side of things!
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