Sony VGN-Z820D locks up intermittently

My VGN-Z820D locks up intermittently. This happens every few days and always about 5 minutes after resuming from sleep. It seems to happen whenever as program is launched. You double click and the circle starts spinning but nothing happens. The spinning circle can be moved around but that's it. CTL-ALT-DEL does nothing. You have to turn off the laptop.

I have tried keeping the task manager open when it happens but noithing happens in the manager. No cpu activity, no changing of processes, nothing.

This is windows 7 pro. I have removed almost all of the sony bloatware, step by step and nothing changes. I have the following items left
VAIO Care, COntrol Center, DVD Menu, Event Service, OOBE and Startup assistant, and origninal function settings.
There is nothing in the event logs at all, no errors or warnings.
All of the drivers are up to date.

There is never a problem during use if it doesn't fail at around 5 minutes. This pretty well rules out a hardware failure. I can go for days without this happening but then it happens again.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

 

What program did you launch that brings up this problem?

By the way, do you have an anti-virus/anti-malware software installed? If yes, this will eliminate possibilities of viruses/malware in your system.

 

Is it Internet Explorer 8 that keeps freezing ? I had this happen on my brand new Z the first few days I started using the Z so I reset IE8 and don't have any more freezing with that.

Is it VAIO Care that keeps freezing ? I had that freeze 100 percent of the time after installing VAIO Update 5. It didn't play nicely with VAIO Care. I deleted them. Tech support couldn't help and I was not reinstalling Win 7 Pro after I got it working great. Now I use TuneUp Utilities. No more freezes.

And have you run any system utility programs to see what summary of problems might be indicated, like the previously mentioned VAIO Care ?

 

Hi, I have avast installed. I use Firefox.
It doesn't really matter which program I run. Today even My Computer froze first.
I'm in the process of doing a recovery using the recovery disks. I choose the Windows and drivers option and all that damn bloatware is now being installed agian!
How do I do a clean install of windows and rivers only using the rexcovery disks?

 

I'll suggest using some RAM testing software to stress-test your RAM. Before doing so, re-sit your RAM sticks to make sure that it is being placed properly. I think it may be possible that your notebook may have faulty RAM or something.

I don't remember the exact thread name but you can probably do a search for the semi-clean install thread here at the Sony section of the forums. The semi-clean install thread do not necessarily have to be based on Windows 7 because the steps needed to do this semi-clean install is similar for Windows XP, Windows Vista, & Windows 7. Good luck.

 

Thanks for the info.
It seems that the recovery of windows and drivers is not that bad. Sony installs some useless stuff I think, but I'm pretty sure these are not causing the problem since they were removed on my previous build.
Of course ram testing is a good suggestion, however I doubt this is the issue since the crashes are always the same. But you never know.
Tonight I will run LinX (Linpack) stress testing. This software will bring any hardware to it's knees if there is the slightest bit of hardware instability.

But so far, it's stable (but it has been for days previously!)