Laptop Freezes

My laptop freezes from time to time, randomly. Maybe one or two times a day, for about 5min-10min. Youtube will keep on playing the audio..mouse is moving fine... Just not able to load new websites. Skype becomes Not Responding. RAM problem, HD problem

 

i was getting that as well. turned out to be one bad sector on my hard drive. wouldnt think one bad sector would cause this but after putting a new WD scorpio black in everything was fine.

HD tune didnt show anything but Hard Disk Sentinel did.
you can get the trial version > Hard Disk Sentinel store but im not sure if it will show sector damage as i use the pro version.

hope that helps

 

So, buy a new hard drive and it fixes all?

 

it did for me but that might not be what your problem is.
its was a guess as it sounds the same but there could be other factors.

what hard drive have you got and how old is it. i found out western digital has a 5 year warranty.

there is some other links from seagate that someone sent me which was a free scan. let me check

http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/

i didnt use this in the end as i was sent a link for WD

 

I bought this laptop last aug.
where do i check what hard drive do i have?

 

SeaTools for SeaGate hard drive can be found here Downloads | Seagate

For Western Digital hard drives use Data Lifeguard Diagnostics which can be found here WD Support / Downloads / WD Scorpio & AV-25 / WD Scorpio Black

please be sure to run the Long generic test if it is a Seagate drive, and if you are running a Western Digital it should be the a long test on that as well.

With Seatools, make sure you have the DotNet4 framework installed as it is needed to run in Windows. Download: Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (Standalone Installer) - Microsoft Download Center - Download Details

to find out what brand of HDD you have, click on the Windows start orb and type "Device Manager" into the search box and hit Enter.
Once in Device Manager, click on the arrow next to "Disk drives" and it should drop down and list your hard drive(s). If it starts with ST - Seagate and WD- Western Digital. Let us know if you have anything other than what is listed.

 

my hard drive starts with ST
ok i am running sealtools long test (Fix All Long) now. i will wait for the results.
thanks!

 

strange as my hard drive doesnt show up. it just shows raid but ive only got one hard drive???

 

this is the result. this mean my HD is fine???

 

That is correct, if SeaTools indicates the drive passed then it should be fine.

Next step would be to try Memtest86. Memtest86 - Download Page
You will need to burn the ISO image to a CD, so make sure you have software that is capable of doing that.
Though I have my doubts that your RAM would be the problem because you did not mention getting any BSOD errors.

 

ermm... is there like a user friendly instruction page for memtest86?

what could it be when it is neither the HD or RAM problem?

 

If you have windows 7 you don't need memtest86, just schedule a mem test from within windows. Search for "Windows Memory Diagnostic" in your start menu search. Schedule it, run it (restart), config it when it's running.

 

okay thanks, i just ran it, and it gives me "no memory errors were detected"
what else can i do now...since that either the HD nor the memory seems to be the problem....

 

I'm surprised no one mentioned if your gpu is causing problems.
What's your gpu?
Also download hwinfo and check what temperatures you get in idle or while watching a movie.
What driver are you using?

 

It might be the HDD's intelligent parking feature that's causing the trouble. You can try disabling APM using a little problem called quietHDD. Quite a few people are having freeze problem just because of that reading head parking feature.

 

I used to have my gpu heat problem that caused my computer to shut down.
GeForce GTX 560M
right now just browsing on webpages and using instant messenger, is about 49c
when i game, it goes up to 80-95c

 

ok , i just had quietHDD running, and did "Disable HDD APM now". do i keep it like this?

 

make sure both the AC mode and DC mode's APM and AAM value are at max.

 

good?

 

The options under "Manual Settings for testing" will reset everytime you restart. I don't remember if there's the tab for auto setting the APM. What I did was schedule quiethdd.exe into startup task in task scheduler and type this into its arguments:

[/ACAPMVALUE:255] [/DCAPMVALUE:255] [/ACAAMVALUE:254] [/DCAAMVALUE:254]

This way the APM should stay disabled and AAM will be running at full speed under both AC mode and Battery mode.

Edit: If you find my way of adding it troublesome you can follow this thread here.

 

Well, he did mention that it seemed to be hanging on other applications from what I was gathering such as Skype, so I rule out the GPU on that information.

It may help to know the number of applications Sky is running on his laptop when it freezes on him. He did mention it seems to be random, but if more information can be provided such as if there is a specific application he is running every time it freezes that may also help.

Also, what anti-virus are you running Sky?

What are your system specs and when did it start doing this? Was it just something you assumed was a minor glitch in the past and has just started snowballing out of control?

As far as Memtest86 goes, download the ISO first clicking on the top link that reads "Ver 4.0a - Windows (zip) ISO image for creating bootable CD"
once that is downloaded, extract the file by Right-clicking on it and selecting "Extract All..."
After it is extracted, I would recommend downloading CDBurnerXP for burning the ISO image to a CD/DVD CDBurnerXP - CNET Download.com

Load a blank disk into your drive, and you should get a window that pops up asking what you want to use to run it or you may have to open it manually and then select Burn ISO image.

A new window will pop up with some options and blank fields. Click the top right button next to the first empty field that reads "Browse" and find the extracted ISO image for Memtest.

Next, draw your attention to the next line down, leave the left field, but the far right one with the speed needs to be dropped down and changed to the slowest possible speed allowed by your burner.

After that, make sure the boxes for finalize disc, verify data, and eject disc after burning are checked.

After the disk is burned, reboot your system and tap the F7 key a few times between the POST screen and before your OS starts, that should get you to the boot menu. Have your computer boot from the CD-ROM with the Memtest disc and let it run for about 6 hours to check for errors.

 

Not many applications, Skype and chrome and sometimes MSN.
i am using Avast. Recently just deleted Microsoft security Essential after realizing i shouldn't had both running at the same time.
I have corei7, 8gb memory
It started doing this like 2 months ago.

I might not run Memtest86 since i ran the windows memory dinostic tool, should be the same?

 

Not quite the same, the Microsoft Memory Diagnostic Tool is pretty basic, not as thorough as Memtest86 to my knowledge.

The only other suggestion I have would be to back up your data and try a complete re-installation of the OS to see if that will fix the issues.

If it still persists after the new OS install, I would suggest seeing about an RMA.

 

It didn't create any folder in my c drive

 

Okay thanks, i think ever since i posted this thread, no freeze has happened yet. I will check memtest86 out if it persists again. Thanks again!

 

Where did you place your quietHDD?

 

haha no, i don't know @.@, i just ran the .exe

 

the .ini is at where you ran the .exe from can copy the codes from the forum page I posted earlier and paste them into .ini