fixed: AIDA64 makes ThinkPad crash

[nfsking2]

AIDA64 (ver. 2.20.1839 beta) will make the system freeze after running for about 10 minutes (no stability test, no performance test). No BSOD, just freeze, the only thing I can do is to press and hold the power button to do a forced shutdown.

This problem happen on EVERY Lenovo ThinkPad X201, X201i, X201T and T410 (probably even more models) under Windows 7 64bit, no mater what kind of hardwares are inside.

BTW, the old version Everest has the same issue.

[Fiery]

Does it lock up while it is measuring some sensor values? In other words, do you have such features like the OSD Panel, Logitech LCD, Vista Sidebar, Logging, Alerting, SensorPanel, or External Applications activated?

[nfsking2]

Does it lock up while it is measuring some sensor values? In other words, do you have such features like the OSD Panel, Logitech LCD, Vista Sidebar, Logging, Alerting, SensorPanel, or External Applications activated?

No, no any external applications.

I'm using Logitech LCD and sidebar on my desktop computer, there is no such issue.

And I'm not the only person encounter this problem. As I mentioned above, ALL the ThinkPad X201i, X201, T410 users encountered this issue.

[Fiery]

No, no any external applications.

I'm using Logitech LCD and sidebar on my desktop computer, there is no such issue.

And I'm not the only person encounter this problem. As I mentioned above, ALL the ThinkPad X201i, X201, T410 users encountered this issue.

Thanks for the info. It's quite odd that noone else (out of those users you mentioned) reported this issue to us. And stating that all of them face this issue is even more odd...

Just to clarify: if you start AIDA64 on such notebooks with its default settings (so OSD Panel not activated, Sidebar support not activated), and you just leave it sitting on the main screen, does it still lock up after a while?

[nfsking2]

Thanks for the info. It's quite odd that noone else (out of those users you mentioned) reported this issue to us. And stating that all of them face this issue is even more odd...

Just to clarify: if you start AIDA64 on such notebooks with its default settings (so OSD Panel not activated, Sidebar support not activated), and you just leave it sitting on the main screen, does it still lock up after a while?

Yes, no matter leaving it on the main screen or minimizing it to the background, the laptop will be locked up after a few minutes.

The odd thing is, the laptop won't be locked up as soon as AIDA64 start up, but after a couple minutes. Maybe it's because the AIDA64 will update some kind of sensor information after a period?

[Squall Leonhart]

these thinkpads seem to use an unusual acpi driver.

[Fiery]

Yes, no matter leaving it on the main screen or minimizing it to the background, the laptop will be locked up after a few minutes.

The odd thing is, the laptop won't be locked up as soon as AIDA64 start up, but after a couple minutes. Maybe it's because the AIDA64 will update some kind of sensor information after a period?

If you use AIDA64 with default settings, and you don't navigate away from the default main screen, then no sensor readings should be updated or polled at all. Please try to revert AIDA64 back to default settings by deleting (or renaming) the AIDA64.INI file in AIDA64 installation folder. If it doesn't lock up after that, then it may have been a sensor-related feature enabled, that was polling sensors in the background. Maybe, as Squall Leonhart suggested, the AIDA64 ThinkPad EC sensor support module mixes up something in the mentioned ThinkPad models.

[PhillyFrank]

I've read this thread with great interest as I have a Lenovo ThinkPad T500 that just went out of warranty after 3 years and am looking for a utility to monitor temperatures of various components.

While looking at a free utility I noticed that the FAQ addressed the issue of "unexpected actions as shutdowns and standbys" by saying newer versions of the ThinkPad Power Manager Program and/or Power Manager Driver don't "team up" very well with the utility. A workaround is given at this page (it's the first question in the FAQs section near the bottom)...

http://www.staff.uni-marburg.de/~schmitzr/donate.html

I don't know if that has anything to do with the issue in this thread, but thought it was worth mentioning after reading Squall Leonhart's comment. I ended up looking at other utilities to avoid such issues, which led to my interest in the AIDA64 Extreme Edition.

What's the verdict on AIDA64 Extreme Edition & ThinkPads? Am I more likely than not to expect such issues running it on a T500?

Regards,

Frank

PS: I use ThinkPad Power Manager v1.99j and Power Mgmt Driver v1.64.00.00

[Fiery]

What I can tell you is that apart from this topic, we never got any bug reports about ThinkPad and AIDA64 incompatibility or stability issues. When we tested ThinkPads in the past, we haven't found any issues. Truth be told, we didn't try to run ThinkPad Power Manager and AIDA64 together to try and see if there's a collision between them. Our current test hardware collection doesn't include any ThinkPads, but in case multiple users can confirm here (in this topic) that there's a definitive issue about one or more ThinkPad models while running AIDA64, then we can arrange to get an affected notebook part, and try reproducing the bug and then fixing it.

[PhillyFrank]

Thanks. Based on your reply I started using the trial version. I can't say I've had stability issues as there hasn't been any crashes or such. But after trying out the logging feature I found lots of the following warning events in System Event Viewer....

Event Type: Warning

Event Source: ACPIEC

Event Category: None

Event ID: 3

Date: 4/14/2012

Time: 12:53:52 AM

User: N/A

Computer: FRANKS_LAPTOP

Description:

\Device\ACPIEC: The embedded controller (EC) hardware returned data when none was requested. This may indicate that the BIOS is incorectly trying to access the EC without syncronizing with the OS. The data is being ignored.

If I recall correctly, I used whatever the default logging items were, with the log frequency at 5 seconds. Below is a screenshot of some of the events, there were more than 500 of them logged over the 6 minutes I was trying the feature. You can see groups of about 8 or 9 occurring with the same time stamp, then recurring about every 5 seconds. I've never experienced this particular warning until now, so I stopped using the program for the time being.

Is there an easy way I can configure AIDA64 Extreme Edition so it won't generate these warnings?

[Fiery]

AIDA64 uses direct EC (Embedded Controller) register read calls in its kernel driver to measure various system temperatures on ThinkPads. Those warnings in the Event Log indicate Windows catches the low-level EC calls of AIDA64 and find them a bit "odd". It's only a warning, you don't need to worry about it.

[PhillyFrank]

Thanks again Fiery. This morning I deleted several of the default log items and replaced them with the items I'm most interested in. After 1-1/2 hours of logging I had only 44 of the warnings appear in System Event Viewer. That's certainly more tolerable than 500 in 6 minutes. But this time I did get one red-X error event.....

Event Type: Error

Event Source: ACPIEC

Event Category: None

Event ID: 1

Date: 4/14/2012

Time: 11:49:39 AM

User: N/A

Computer: FRANKS_LAPTOP

Description:

\Device\ACPIEC: The embedded controller (EC) hardware didn't respond within the timeout period. This may indicate an error in the EC hardware or firmware, or possibly a poorly designed BIOS which accesses the EC in an unsafe manner. The EC driver will retry the failed transaction if possible.

Clicking the link in the event produced this additional info from MS......

Explanation

The embedded controller (EC) hardware did not respond within the time limit. The EC driver will retry the failed transaction. If the EC continues to fail, the operating system might stop responding, or "hang."

Possible causes include:

-An error in the EC hardware or firmware.

-A poorly designed basic input output system (BIOS) that accesses the EC incorrectly.

As mentioned earlier, I've never had any ACPIEC events until I started running AIDA64. So I don't see how the possible causes mentioned above could be responsible for the error. My concern now is that AIDA64 could be accessing the EC in an "unsafe manner" and cause my system to stop responding or hang. What do you think?

[Fiery]

We definitely need to diagnose this issue to possibly come up with an indirect EC access method that Windows doesn't treat unsafe. Please let me know what ThinkPad model do you have, so we could get a similar one for test runs.

[PhillyFrank]

Thanks once again Fiery. Below is the ThinkPad info, please let me know if you need more.

Model: T500 (2081CTO)

Processor: Intel Core2 Duo CPU T9400 @ 2.53GHz

Memory: 3.00 GB

Video Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650

Operating System: Windows XP Pro (32-bit) SP3

I did purchase AIDA64 Extreme Edition given that the event Warnings seemed benign and harmless. Then the first Error appeared, and I received one more since then.

I suppose my best course of action is to play it safe and suspend use of AIDA64 for the time being. My only question now is how I will keep abreast of this situation. Should I check this thread from time to time or should I submit a Support Ticket so I can be notified via email? I'm a patient guy but if you could give me a time frame it would be helpful, just so I have some idea of what to expect.

Regards,

Frank

[Fiery]

I'll drop a message into this topic once an enhanced ThinkPad EC handling in AIDA64 is available. I'm afraid I can't provide you with a timeframe at this time, since it will heavily depend on the time it takes us to get a fitting ThinkPad, and then the time it takes to configure it and reproduce the issue. And then more time until we can come up with some sort of solution We'll do our best though.

Until then, you shouldn't worry too much about the EC collision. As long as your computer runs stable, such Windows Event Log warnings are just warnings

[PhillyFrank]

Thanks, I'll use it sparingly since I haven't had any crashes yet. In the meantime I'll check this thread from time to time.

I hope you don't have a problem reproducing the issue. Out of the box AIDA64 should produce the warning events fairly quickly, within a minute or so. I use the OSD and logging and can't say if they'd be produced when those features aren't being used. The Error events, however, are few and far between, and may take an hour or more before one is logged.

My most recent 60 minute session went like this....

-After 1 minute 31 warning events had been logged

-After 21 minutes 4 more warnings were logged

-50 minutes after starting an error event was logged

I closed the program after 60 minutes, the error was the last logged event.

[Fiery]

Thank you for the tests. I assume you are using AIDA64 v2.30?

[PhillyFrank]

Yes v2.30.1900.0

FWIW I thought you might like to know this.....

My BIOS settings indicate the Embedded Controller Version is v1.06. While there is a more recent BIOS version update available from Lenovo, the EC version remains unchanged. So my ThinkPad is using the most recent EC version.

[djmorgan]

I would like to chip in here in order to assist with information, I too have a Lenovo T410i Thinkpad and up until the second last version I believed that AIDA64 was not reading the cpu cycles correctly! (see hardware section) I was shouted down and told that it was the program forcing the cpu into turbo, well surprise that no longer happens! and AIDA64 behaves like it should, so maybe previous versions were reading or affecting some portions of the system wrongly.

[Fiery]

We've fine-tuned the Embedded Controller register readout in the latest beta version of AIDA64 Extreme Edition available at:

http://www.aida64.co...17z8kpq0xdhvzip

After upgrading to this new version, make sure to restart Windows to finalize the upgrade.

Let me know how it works. There's a chance you'd still get occasional warnings in the Event Log, but it should be much less frequent than before, typically one per hour or even more rare.

Everyone else reading this: please note that this issue only affects Windows XP systems. ThinkPads with Windows Vista or Windows 7 are not affected by this issue at all, fortunately.

[PhillyFrank]

Thank you for such a quick response. Unfortunately the results are much worse.

After running AIDA64 and logging for only 5 minutes, Event Viewer logged almost 400 of the same events as before. 10 of them Errors, the rest Warnings.

I've attached a screenshot of the AIDA64_LOG_2012-04-18_03-17-05_log.csv log file, mainly so you can see the items I'm logging in case it makes a difference. But also because I have a question about spikes I've been seeing in some values. Please be aware that these spikes were present before, they are NOT something new in this beta version.

Notice the spiked values under CPU temp (144), GPU temp (144) and CPU fan speed (40863). In the OSD they appear for appx 4-5 seconds then the value returns to normal. Note that while the CPU temp spikes, the Core temps remain unchanged.

My concern is that I don't know whether AIDA64 normally reports such erroneous values, or if my CPU is actually spiking to 144 degrees, or if I'm getting these spikes just because AIDA64 is running on a T500 ThinkPad.

Is it normal to see such spikes? Could you please explain?

One final question. I'm logging CPU2 % simply because AIDA64 reports values for it, but I have only 1 dual core CPU. What is CPU2?

Regards,

Frank

[Fiery]

Thank you for the test. 144 Celsius is an incorrect value that is read only because AIDA64 EC register readout collides with the ThinkPad Power Manager application or some other application that also accesses the EC simultaneously with AIDA64. At 144 Celsius your CPU would fry and would never work again

We'll work more on the EC access method, we'll try to synchronize it with Lenovo's own software to avoid collisions. But, if you can somehow temporarily close or disable those Lenovo power management software, you could see the warnings and errors become the rate I've mentioned above (1 per hour).

CPU2 means the 2nd logical processor, which in your case is the 2nd core of your CPU.

[PhillyFrank]

Given the CPU's TJMax of 105, I kind of figured it would have been fried by now if the values were correct. But I had to ask :-)

Unless you say differently, I'll assume the same is happening with GPU temp and CPU fan speed.

I don't really want to uninstall the Lenovo Pwr Mrg application & driver because I recently changed its CPU Speed setting from Performance Mode to Adaptive Mode and am running about 20 degrees cooler because of it. That's what got me into monitoring temps in the first place and I'm afraid that uninstalling it would open a new can of worms. However, there is an update available for the Pwr Mgr application (but not for the driver). I'll perform the update sometime today. Would you like me to try the beta again, or should I reinstall the original AIDA64 program and try that first?

Regards,

Frank

[Fiery]

Updating the Power Manager application will not help in this case, but it's of course good to have the latest version installed. Please stay with the latest AIDA64 beta. We're already working on a special method for AIDA64 ThinkPad EC module to eliminate the direct EC calls, and so eliminate the collisions with the ThinkPad Power Manager application. Please give us a couple of days to finish up and properly test the new AIDA64.

As for the temperature and fan speed spikes, they are all due to collisions between AIDA64 and the ThinkPad Power Manager application. Just ignore any unusually high or low values.

Thanks,

Fiery

[PhillyFrank]

OK, thanks Fiery. I'll check back in a couple of days.