Acer 6930G - a host of problems?

So I'm running Vista, and in the last couple of months I've run into quite a few problems. I was hoping someone here could get to the root of all these problems and point me in the direction of fixing everything up.

Problems I have found on Vista:

• Vista vary rarely shuts down of its own accord nowadays. I usually have to do a hard shut down.
• After a few hours of usage, Vista sometimes can't kill processes: it can free all the threads, but will leave one running.
• After a few hours of usage, sometimes Vista cannot open programs, eg Firefox, Notepad++
• Occasionally, a minute or two after vista starts up, it will freeze for ~10 minutes
• Occasionally, after loading after being in standby, everything becomes unresponsive and I have to hard shut down.
• Right clicking on the recycle bin will cause windows explorer to stop responding and restart, but after this right clicking on recycle bin is fine
• After getting the consent menu, disk defrag will not open.

However, it seems as if problems aren't limited to the Windows OS.

• Occasionally, the laptop will get stuck at the Acer Splash screen
• Sometimes when Windows is booting (on the Microsoft Corporation screen), it will not get past this screen.

I also have a Ubuntu on a dual boot, but I rarely use it, and so I can't say if I have problems similar to the Vista problems on Ubuntu.

Can anyone make any sense out of these symptoms? Anything is much appreciated.

 

Is very easy. format the hdd and put the w7. all the problems will be solve

 

Even the Acer splash screen thing? This seems to be a problem outside of the OS, because at this point it hasn't loaded any OS yet.

 

Except for stuck-at-boot problem everything else is most likely software related.
You should consider fresh install of Vista again or of Win 7 if you have it.

Other possible solutions include: making sure the system is up to date and clean in terms of viruses/spyware and making sure that all drivers are up to date and all devices are properly installed. That said with so many problems it seems easier to just reinstall rather than try to solve all of them one by one.

 

I forgot to mention I have a bit of a dodgy power cable that sometimes fails to charge unless it's in exactly the right position. Could this have maybe had some role in whatever the underlying problem is?

 

It's unlikely that power cable has anything to do with your problems.

 

Mk, thanks. I'm a bit reluctant to reinstall Windows if there's a deeper, hardware problem (splash screen?) that might mess everything up again.

 

Most of these issues are almost definitely Windows ones so even if it keeps getting stuck at boot screen one in a while the rest would be solved.

If you want to investigate some more two things to check are- HDD- SMART status and Windows CHKDSK and RAM (memtest 4,0)

 

Great, I'll do these now. Thanks ever so much.