dell 1745 freezing when left alone for a few minutes

hello,

I have a Dell Studio 1745 which I bought on the basis of good advice in this forum. I'd just like to know whether anyone else has experienced their dell studio to freeze when left alone for a while, or when waking up from hibernation. It happens pretty frequently, although not all the time, and sometimes the cursor still moves, sometimes the whole becomes 'stuck' and I have to pull the power cord and reboot.

I'm not sure, is this doing any damage? On one occasion it seemed like something had been damaged in the bios boot up stage as it behaved very erratically, but it seems to have recovered from that now. I've attempted to use the dell support center util to update drivers, but this at some point stopped loading, and reports 'content for this page not available'.


thank you very much,
Tom

London.
my specs are windows 7, 4GIG RAM, 64 bit, intel core duo 2.2ghz, windows home premium, etc.

 

Freezing is only caused by a couple of things or a combination:

- Failing hardware

- Malware/viruses

- Overheating

- Corrupt software

Doing a non-ACPI shutdown can possibly corrupt your OS, corrupt data. Doing so is not advised.

 

hi,

I have anti-virus software and runs checks regularly, but I'll search for a anti-malware and see if that helps. Unfortunately, I can't see any other option but to pull the power and I agree, it seems like it might risk corrupting the OS (which is what appeared to be happening the other day when it almost wouldn't boot up).

thanks for your thoughts/time
Tom

 

I have a very similar problem with my Studio 15 since I got it. It is not really bad and only happens if I am running off battery and I leave the laptop idling. Whan I come back after some time the laptop is not responsive and on some occassions the cursor responds but I cannot click on anything. I then try pressing a few buttons and toggle screen between open applications but usually nothing happens. If I wait for 2-3 minutes the laptop wakes up and most of the buttons I have pressed cycle through as if they were in the buffer. It is quite strange but am not able to figure out why it happens. I had posted this a few months back here but no one had this issuw. I do not think this is same as permanant freeze some here have experience as it unfreexes if I wait a few minutes.

Since it has never happend when I am plugged in I thought it is perhaps some setting in Power options that makes the HDD go into hibernation on battery if it idles too long and there is a lag when awakes. Although, I am not able to find anything to fix it, my HDD is set to max performance. Perhaps it is in the firmware of the HDD?

If you happen to find why it happens please update.

 

does pressing ctr alt delete do anything?

 

Not in my case( I have tried ctl-alt-del), none of the buttons respond and you cannot click on the open windows etc. Although when the laptop wakes up it seems what ever button you have pressed are cycled through as if it was in the buffer and all of a sudden they got released.

 

Not in my case( I have tried ctl-alt-del),

Hi - me neither.

Yes, I'll certainly post if I get to the bottom of it. I've run a malware scan (EMSISoft antimalware) as advised, and actually, it does seem to have improved slightly - the machine generally seems immediately responsive after being left for a few hours. That said, once or two there's still a 'hang' for perhaps 10-15 seconds, then, exactly as you say, any commands - right clicking etc - seem to cycle on the screen, as if they've all been stored up (I've got Avira anti-virus here running too btw). Unlike yours though, this is all happening while plugged in. Your suggestion that its something to do with the power settings for turning off particular components seems feasible.

Yes, and ctrl alt delete does nothing, whether the machine is 'delaying' or 'freezing' completely.

 

Not convinced you have a hardware problem to be honest. I would consider grabbing a good Rootkit scanner like GMER. It's free and it can reveal things that many other scanners cannot. If you run scans and your favorite scanner finds next to nothing or very few items but clearly you can see something is still going on, it's time to run a Rootkit scanner. I would do it just to rule it out entirely. Better to know what isn't the issue so you can focus on what is. Just my thoughts.

 

Hi, Vanti

thanks for the suggestion. I grabbed GMER and gave it a go, but nothing found. I just wonder if it's something to do with how the hardware reacts to the power settings. I'll try a few changes to the settings over the next few days, see what it does.

Tom

 

hi,

just to let you know, turning off 'standby' in the power settings seems to have fixed this, although I'll wait a few more days to be sure. It was set to 15 minutes - I guess it was malfunctioning, and not fully going into standby mode, or recovering from that process.
hope that helps anyone.

Tom

 

How do you do that? I do not see standby option. How do you get to it?

Only sleep, hibernate and shutdown options for me

 

You're right, I must have been looking at sleep, not standby. (here: control panel, then power options, change plan settings. Then, 'put the computer to sleep' - I put this to 'never' for both battery and plugged in).

Tom

 

Hi Tom,
Any more freezes? I got one more time, had to hard shutdown. During the freeze the fan was still running but no response from any buttons.

Do not want to remove sleep option but if that solves the issue for you I may give it a try too.

 

hi,

I'm sorry I didn't manage to get back to you earlier. I thought i'd fixed it but it turns out, no it still shows the same behaviour. Like yours, the fan seems to fire up when it freezes (guessing in response to getting stuck in a cycle of never-ending CPU activity?). If I get any more clues or a genuine solution, I'll post.

Tom

 

Well I also had a couple of freezes today but this time it was with power hooked up. I also noticed that all the freezes are when i am using internet explorer and loading a webisite. usually the bar that shows website loading freezes. This has happened everytime. Maybe there is a connection. I had read that with some routers the internet connection may get overloaded or something to that effect that can freeze the laptop. I recently got a WNR3400 and have seen a number of freezes since then. Before that almost none. Not sure if that is the cause or has something to contribute I will see if there is a newer driver for the AGN6200 wireless card.

 

Hmm. Sounds a little different to mine then. I've had with various thing running in the background, but normally firefox rather than IE. I got no idea, basically.

 

I have the exact symptoms as yours but also the symptoms I just described as well. Although the different issue is mainly when trying to surf and load a website using IE8