Acer Aspire 5738ZG random freeze

I have an unusual problem that I've never seen or heard about before. My Acer Aspire 5738ZG freezes randomly while the sound goes on distorded and repetetive like a broken record. It stays that way for about 1-2 minutes, then it's all back to normal. This can happen 6 times in an hour, or one time in three hours, no matter what I'm working with, what movie I'm watching or what game I play. Mostly when playing movies with VLC though.

These freezes have increased over the last few weeks. I should say that my laptop has been sent to tech (three times), and they found nothing wrong (as the freezes are so random, how could they?), and now the warranty has run out. It's only a year old so I'm hoping that you guys might have some ideas on what this is. Oh, and it seems that the freezes occur less frequent after a reboot...

Here's some specs:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo T4500 2.3 GHz
Core #0 temp: min 67 C, max 74 C
Core #1 temp: min 66 C, max 74 C

GPU: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650
GPU temp #1: 67 C
GPU temp #2: 69 C

RAM: 4Gb DDR3
Memtest86: no errors

HDD: Hitachi HTS545032B9A
HDD temp: 50 C
HDD health: no errors
ScanDisc: no errors

I've got the latest drivers and I just flashed my BIOS with the one from Acer's driver page. No error messages in Windows log. Did a recovery - no luck.

I'm afraid this turns out to be a mobo problem unless someone out there can work their magic

 

I think it maybe a latency problem ... download a latency checker like DPC and see if there are any spikes

 

I downloaded the DPC and there were a lot of spikes, but I couldn't isolate the misbehaving driver. I'm going to re-format the laptop and install new drivers one by one to see if I can find the culprit. Thanks!

 

glad that I could help ... btw. it may not be just a driver it maybe a faulty bluetooth or wireless adapter if the drivers are fine ... so try to fully disable the misc. devices to find which one is causing the spikes

EDIT: I forgot to mention that your HDD temp is pretty high if that is the idle temp ... try to elevate the laptop or use a cooler

 

Ok so I went through all the drivers and after reading the .dmp file after a BSOD I found that athrs.sys for my wireless card was the cause. But, I've tried all the available drivers out there, even did a recovery without updating anything, and the laptop still locks up. It does work like a charm for a few hours after reboot, then when I've used it for a some time, it starts freezing again.

Sad thing is, it's getting worse, sometimes it freezes every minute.
I'm leaning towards a hardware problem, guess I have to discard an otherwise perfectly fine laptop and buy a new one

 

Actually the laptop in my Sig was a replacement for my 5738G after a similar problem like urs which Acer couldn't figure out ... try to contact the nearest service center