Abstract:

Computers freezing to work is a common problem and can cause unexpected damages if the work is important but not saved yet. This kind of problems is often caused by software failures which are hard to predict. This paper focuses on the reliability analysis of laptop computers experiencing multiple occurrences of failures in operation. The failure has been defined as the event that the computer freezes and has to be restarted unintended or by a forced re-start. The failure data was collected during three experiments running on one laptop computer continuously for a period of time under three different running environments. We fit a number of candidate distributions to the time between failures data. The results showed that the conventional Weibull distribution often used in practice is the best choice for all three data sets. However one interesting finding is that the mean time between failures decreases substantially when the computer is heavily stressed. This shows that if the computer is running on a full load, then the work should be frequently saved to avoid the damage.

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