Laptop Keeps Freezing
Wondering why your laptop keeps freezing? If so, then read this post to find great tips to diagnose why.
Laptops are a great tool, especially if you have one for the right reasons. By that I mean if you are a person who requires portability then I am sure you are getting the most out of your laptop.
Due to the fact that laptops are portable, means they take a bigger beating and are used in many different types of environments. This can be the source of why your laptop keeps freezing.
There are several factors that need to be considered if your laptop keeps freezing. A few that come to mind are:
- Age of the laptop
- How badly had it been ‘abused’
- Overheating
- Operating System files
- Hardware drivers
- Cluttered laptop registry
Let’s take a closer look at the reasons I think are most common for causing a laptop to keep freezing.
- Overheating: If you have a laptop that is a few years old and has been through the grind, there is a good chance that it may be experience overheating problems. You need to understand that because they need to be portable, their hardware components will tend to fail quicker than a desktop computer. If your laptop is freezing after 20 to 30 minutes after turning it on, it could very well be related to overheating. Take a moment to locate the vent where the fan blow air out of your laptop and put your hand in front of it to see if there is any kind of air at all coming out. You may also find that there is a good amount of dust build up on this vent. Don’t be afraid to take some canned air and blow all of the dust out. AWESOME TROUBLESHOOTING TIP: One sure-fire way to pin point overheating as the reason your laptop keeps freezing, is to boot your computer and enter the system setup. This can be done usually by hitting F2 or delete. (This varies depending on the brand of laptop you have) Once you have entered the System Setup, just let your laptop sit there and run. If it eventually freezes up, then I will bet you have overheating issues.
- Drivers: Over the years, I have found that laptops are more picky about having drivers that are specifically made for the exact make and model you have. All of the major brands such as HP, Dell, Acer and Sony all have drivers made or designed specifically for their laptops. Not having these specific drivers installed could be a reason why your laptop keeps freezing. The driver I would be most concerned about is your video card driver. So if you have a Dell laptop, then visit their website and download the latest video driver they have for your specific model. It may sometimes be a few years old, but I recommend that you continue to use it because if there was a change that needed to be made to the driver, then they would have updated it. There is a really nice piece of software out there that I would recommend called Driver Scanner. It will work behind the scenes to make sure your computers hardware drivers are up to date. If this is something you don’t want to have to worry about, then download it and try it out.
- Windows Registry:There is no difference at all when it comes down to a desktop computer’s registry or a laptop’s registry. No matter which one you have, it doesn’t take long for the registry to start to get ‘cluttered’. So how does this happen you might ask? Well, every time you install a new application or download a cool new game, there are entries made into your laptops registry. Let’s say you download a cool game and install it. After 3 weeks of playing it, you get bored with it and decide to uninstall it. Well, even after you uninstall it more than likely there will still be several registry entries left in your computer. Over time, these tend to build up and can cause things like laptop freezes, weird errors or just slow your laptop down in general. This is where a good registry cleaner comes into play. There aren’t many out there that I truly recommend, but one that I do recommend is called Registry Booster. It is most certainly one of the most effective registry cleaners on the market, and they have the reputation to back it up as well. Download Registry Booster – Free Scan Here.
- Operating System: If you have done your troubleshooting and have found that your laptop is not overheating and the drives are up to date with the manufactures recommended drivers, then you need to consider that you may have corrupted operating system files. This could be the reason your laptop keeps freezing. One thing that I can never stress too much is when you purchase a laptop, keep everything that comes with it. By that I mean, keep all of the disks. Too many times, when a person is having problems with their laptop and they need to perform a system repair or reinstall the OS, they never have the CD’s that came with the laptop. Don’t let that person be you! If you laptop is blue-screening on you, or if it is locking up hard but not rebooting, then you most likely have an OS issue. I would recommend doing a Windows Repair on your system. Take note, you do not want to do a whole system restore because if you do this, you will lose all of your data. (That last sentence will be the topic of another whole post).
So to recap, if your laptop keeps freezing, then I would first look at overheating as being the source especially if your laptop is more than 2 years old. Next, take a look at the drivers. Make sure you have the manufacturers recommended drivers installed. If these two things check out, then you may be having some problems with the Operating System files. I would recommend doing a Windows Repair. This takes about 30 minutes to do and you will not lose any of your data or programs.
Learn more on how to prevent computer freezes.
Cheers
photo credit: Scrambled_Egg
{ 43 comments… read them below or add one }
My HP Pavillion dv6000 has recently been freezing but only when i defrag the hard drive.
… so i dont have much of a budget to work with. also I know my registry is most likely full, is there any free/cheap program that may clear it up a lil untill i can afford a better one?
Cntr_alt+del doesn’t work, but the cursor is not frozen and the only way to turn it off is to take out the battery. i just lost my job and a month later my wife did
Defragging can sometimes be overrated. From a maintenance standpoint, I would only recommend running it once a month. I am guessing that it has been years since you actually defragged your machine? If so, then a fresh install of your OS might be the only way to get things running real well again.
I’ve both a new laptop a month ago, ASUS x52je, and from time to time it freezes for 2-3 minutes depending on what i do, i can’t watch a movie, i can’t play a game, i can’t do anything because it freezing, i observed that the third light on the laptop remains still(i think the hardware it remains frozen to when te laptop freezes)because that light ussualy blinks when the laptop works, please help me, i don’t know what to do.And I’m sorry if my english sucks… i am from Romania.Regards.and please help
I am going to say that the light that is staying lit up is the hard drive light. It’s quote possible that it could be starting to fail. I would search Google for WD Diags. Download it and run a quick test on your HD to see if it might be failing.
Hi, I have an Asus eeepc 101MT laptop and its only about 4 months old. Just recently it freezes, normally when I’m playing something from my external hard drive. When it freezes it freezes the sound and it kind of loops for about 2 seconds. There is no way out of the system when this happens. Cntr_alt+del doesn’t work,the cursor is frozen and the only way to turn it off is with the power button! I think it may have something to do with the External HD, Its a world Elements 1TB and I only have about 200GB left. Everything has been updated, I have done a full comp scan including drive E: External HD, and all is clear.
Any help will be greatly appreciated… It’s all very confusing.
Regards
Ellen
Ellen: The bottom line here is does this freezing only happen when playing something from your external drive? If so, then the problem has to be something directly with that. I would try making sure you have the latest drivers installed for that external hard drive.
i have acer 4740g,a 18 month old laptop.. 3 days ago, my laptop is struck by lighting, and my LAN card adapter is broken, although all of other device is perfectly fine. so i visit acer service center and they told me that my MAINBOARD is damaged(although my LAN card is the only things that have to be changed…) and it will cost me about 300$ to get it fix T_T….
So in the end i bought a wireless router because i still can use my wireless adapter.. yesterday when I’m listen music with my WMP, suddenly my laptop is freezing… i cannot move my mouse, or press ctrl + alt + del, and i hear a “bzzzzzzz” sound from my speaker, so i shut it down by hold the power button, today when i doing the same thing, my laptop is freezing again, with the same condition…. i calculated that my laptop is freezing after 2-3 hour. although sometimes is about 4 hours +
my question is, can my laptop be repaired with out changing the MAINBOARD?? or should i bought a new computer instead of repairing my laptop…
thanks and sorry for my bad english..
If your budget permits, I would shoot for buying a new laptop/computer. You really have no idea what else that lightening strike may have hurt in your laptop, so I would deem that laptop as being very unreliable just from that standpoint.
So, just recently, as in the past day and a half, I have been having some problems with my laptop and I can’t for the hell of me figure out what it is…
It’s a 3 year old ASUS Notebook M51Va, with 3GB RAM, Vista,
32-bit operating system, Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T5750 @ 2.GHz
And, well, basically what the problem is, is that it runs fine for about 10 minutes, then it starts to lag horribly, and freeze for about 1-2 seconds every 5 or 6 seconds, this includes any games or programs that run will freeze, the mouse movement across the screen will also freeze, and if say, any music is running, it will freeze and blank for those 1-2 seconds before resuming….
Also with the sound, after a while it becomes extremely distorted with a fuzzy staticy sound added into this problem, at first I thought it was the headset, but with everthing else being affected it seems like it isn’t just that :/
Also, using a USB internet (dongel?) with Virgin Mobile, that can say that it is connected, but I try nd get on any webpages and get IE or Firefox both saying that there is no internet so end up having to refresh the page about 20 times for it to ‘connect’
Recently updated everything, I’ve tried running full computer scans, using F-Secure and am not finding anything at all. Restarting it and it is OK for about 10 minutes before everything starts up again…
Any help or reccomendations would be wonderful, thanks!
Completely understand your frustration!
I see your laptop is 3 years old. Has there ever been a clean install of Vista since you’ve had the laptop? Any computer that is 3 years old is going to be much slower and have problematic symptoms. Consider backing up your data and installing a fresh copy of Vista.
my problem is anytime i try to play games or use the webcam it freezes and then i try to click end but then it says not responding,sometimes its different depending on what program i’m using,but i mostly use google chrome and could hardly do anything on it because of this problem, what do i need to do? I have been trying to figure it out since.
From the information given, it seems that this issue is either graphics or web browser specific.
Recommendations would be:
1. Download, install, update and run a quick scan with Malwarebytes.
2. Clear your temporary internet files, or maybe even try a different browser.
3. Ensure your graphics card drivers are up to day.
Hi there!
Lately, my laptop has been driving me absolutely nuts. For no apparent reason, everything decides to not respond. I can use my computer for about 10-15 minute intervals (once I was able to use it for a whole 45 minutes without it freezing!) but then bam, “not responding”. I can’t even access my Task Manager, so the only think I can do it hold the power button until it completely shuts down. I’ve done my share of research in hopes of finding SOME bit of advice that will actually help, but so far no such luck. I’ve defragmented my hard drive, turned off most of the unnecessary programs that start-up once my computer is turned on, but still nothing. I can’t access cookies either! I thought maybe I have a virus so I went and about McAfee Antivirus 2011 and my computer seems to be virus free. I’ve had this laptop (HP) since 2008 I believe and I bought it brand new. If you could help me in ANY way, it would be so incredibly GREATLY appreciated!
Corey: I would recommend 2 things that you should try.
1. Boot your computer into safe mode with networking. (Press F8 continually at bootup). I would then download, install, update and do a quick scan with the free version of Malwarebytes. Remove anything it finds.
2. This also could be the makings of a hard drive going bad. You may want to check with Windows System Event log and look for any Disk errors.
Also, if the Operating System has never been reloaded since 2008, it may just be time to put a fresh copy on your hard drive.
also, it doesn’t happen every time obviously since i can get in sometimes. When i can’t i have to hard shut down. Wondering also if that hurts the computer. I just tried the Lenovo boot optimizer hoping this helps too. any ideas?
Cheryl: These types of problems can be terribly frustrating! Let me give you some steps as to what I would do if I were encountering this problem.
1. I would double check the hard drive. I would run a quick test of WDDiags and see if it passes. You can download it here WDDiags.
2. I would make sure all of your major hardware drivers such as video, audio, network, etc are up to date to the latest versions.
3. Since your laptop is so new, you should have technical support through IBM. I would give them a call and see if they can help you diagnose.
Please reply back with any questions!
I have a Lenovo I5 just purchased 2 months ago. started freezing up about a month ago at start up, won’t even give me the login page. Just the circle and please wait but the circle isn’t spinning it just sits there frozen. I took it in and they said hard drive was fine, they then reinstalled the OS and it was fine for about 2 weeks. Now it’s doing it again. Starts up fine in safe mode. I took everything out of my start up menu but i don’t think that’s the issue because i don’t even get the login page.
On a number of occasions over the past two weeks my toshiba laptop fails to close down
and I have to remove the battery. I have tried control, alt, del. but get no response. Can you give me any advice?
PJ: What if you remove the battery before starting up your laptop (assuming it is plugged in with an AC adapter for power) and then seeing if it will shutdown properly with no battery in. If this is the case, then you have a bad battery.
I have an hp laptop. I’m 15, got it for Christmas last year and lately, when I am doing something, and I don’t move the mouse for two seconds, it will freeze and the only way to get it unfroze is it restart everything. I have google chrome, i also use internet explorer. my laptop is also slower then ever lately.what do i do with it?
Sami: My first question would be to you is how old is your laptop? It sounds to me like there may be a shortage of memory for it. Please reply back with some specs and we can go from there.
Hi,
My Dell Inspiron 1370 is about 16 months old and just today it has been freezing up a lot.
Every time it freezes up, I force-shut it down by holding the power button and ‘start windows normally’ on start up.
Most of the times it has been freezing up have been when I was in the middle of a game of Minesweeper…
Any help?
Thanks
David: The number of things that could be causing this are just about endless, so I’ll give you a couple of ideas that you could try that might help.
1. Download, install, update and scan your computer with Malwarebytes. You can download it from Malwarebyes.org.(the free version is just fine) Remove anything it finds.
2. Make sure your laptop is getting enough ventilation. It may be freezing from overheating.
3. Go to Dell’s website and use the service tag on your laptop to make sure you have the latest drivers for your video card, audio card and network adapter.
Those are 3 good tips to get you started in the quest to narrowing down your laptop problems.
i have the same problem and i was able to fix mine after doing some research. i found out that its a battery problem for me. so some of u with pavilion and so on might want to remove the battery and run ur laptop with plugin only.
Hi, i just got my laptop for like a month and when i was recording wih my webcam it suddenly freezes and when i keep turning on t freezs but today it worked like on internet but freezes out of nowhere i think its over heating because i use it soo many times a day
Rockaya: Try elevating the back of your laptop to help provide better airflow that should keep your laptop cooler. Also, you may want to think about seeing if there is an upgrade for the Video Camera drivers.
I have a brand new computer, bought about a year ago but just recently opened and touched for the 1st time. It’s an Acer Travelmate 2480 running on Windows Vista home basic 32. My computer is running extremely slow, when I opened of course I had several required windows updates and I did each one of them, computer takes forever to start a program and randomly but usually I get a “not responding” error message on any program that I may be attempting to use, also updated all drivers. BTW: takes internet explorer at least 5 minutes to load… Not just when I’m online, Microsoft word takes it’s time too. What can I do??
Shay: There are any number of things that could be causing this. From what I can see, it looks like this laptop has a Celeron processor, so that is the first warning flag. Although Celerons are cheaper, you don’t get the same performance out of them. Also, make sure that laptop is maxed out with RAM. It looks like it only support up to 2GB of RAM(even this is very low for running Vista). The last think would recommend would be to run a check disk on the hard drive to ensure it isn’t going bad.
My laptop has recently been completely locking up after about 10-20 mins of use.. whether im using alot of programmes or just one it will still do it! sometimes i get a bsod of “kernel inpage data error” but the last few times i havent..just been unable to move the mouse/use the keyboard. maybe just a coincidence but its only been happening since i started actually using my Wi-Fi.. it is a HP Presario CQ-61 laptop. have ran all virus/malware checks etc without anything making a difference. tried updating all the drivers and as far as i know they are upto date, doubt overheating is a problem either because it never really gets too hot..only had it for just over a year. any idea what it could be?
Antony: If you have ruled out overheating, drivers and spyware/malware, then you are probably looking at some corrupt operating system files. I would look into performing a repair on your windows installation. I do not mean wiping your computer clean and starting over, but doing a Windows repair. If you need some assistance with this, just reply back with what operating system you are using.
Well, i just bought this laptop about 5 months ago and it froze. the only thing that froze was mozilla firfox but everything else is perfectly fine. it doesnt overheat. it is still frozen so i am using internet explorar. Also, i cannot exit out my Browser!!! What do you think is wrong?
Guisue: You need to download Malwarebytes to your computer and then install it, update it and run the quick scan. I would remove everything it finds. Malwarebytes is by far the best spyware/malware software available today…that’s free. Get more info on Malwarebytes by checking out this post: Computer Freezing
I bought a brand new Toshiba Satelite L775D-S7222 laptop on July 15th, and I have had no problems with it so far until last Tuesday. I clicked on Google Chrome, and before it could come up, a load buzzing noise started and the computer froze for 15 seconds before it went to the blue screen . I quickly manually shut it down. I ran the check disk utility and it was perfect. Then I ran a full Norton Security Scan, and it found nothing wrong, every single fill was clean. So I was really confused as to what caused this. Then just 3 hours ago, it happened twice on me. Now I don’t know if this is an overheating issue with the battery, the hard drive, or the portable battery might be too hot. I am really confused.
Kyle: First thing I will mention is that if you bought your laptop just in July, it should still be under warranty…not 100% sure, but it should be as most manufacturers have a 1 year warranty.
Probably the first thing I would recommend would be if your laptop boots into Windows is to do a system restore back to before it had the first blue screen. After doing that, I would download, install, update and run Malwarebytes on it…a quick scan and remove anything it finds.
its a buzzing sound like bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz wherein there is a vibration of the laptop? I check the hard drive using the LG smart care wherein in has a diagnostic of the hard drive and the result is my hard drive is functioning well, so what do think it is?
I just bought a LG A510 laptop 2 days ago and it easily gets hot, it get freezes once with a annoying sound i removed the battery and it stop, what do you think is the problem?
Dennis: I am sorry to hear that your new laptop seemed to have frozen up on you…but it is a computer and they do freeze!
Specifically for this issue, I guess we would need to know whether the sounds coming out of your laptop was a static filled sound…or whether it was a loud ‘ticking’ sound.
If it was a sounds filled with static, then it could have just been some sort of ‘glitch’ with the sound card…I would recommend just monitoring your laptop over the next few days.
If it was a loud ‘ticking’ sound, then it could quite possibly be a hard drive going bad. In this case, I’d recommend running the check disk utility to verify that the hard drive is good.
Hi. I have vista on my laptop and recently it has started to freeze unexpectedly. It doesnt matter what I am doing at the time, it just freezes and the cursor turns into the spinning circle. If I press ctrl-alt-del it takes a few minutes and eventually a message comes up which reads something like; logon process has failed to identify security options (not word for word). It is very frustrating and each time it happens I have to just hold the power button to turn off the computer.
Is there anything I can do? Would it help to wipe the computer and update to windows 7?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated
I am a bit confused as to when exactly you are getting this error. Does it happen when you try to login to your computer? Or does it happen when your desktop is loaded and you are using different programs?
I turn on my laptop (Toshiba satellite L 300) , put in my passwords, and ‘configuration updates stage 3 of 3 0% complete, do not turn off computer’ comes onto the screen. after a minute the laptop starts back up again. i dont no much about computers, i went into the settings n defaulted them but nothing changes
Shane: I am assuming you either have Vista or Windows 7 on this laptop. It looks like this is a common error, but there doesn’t seem to be one steadfast fix for it.
Without being in front of the computer, I would recommend this fix from Microsoft:
MS-KB949358
There are 2 methods you could try from this link. Have a look and be sure to reply back!
Hi. My laptop i just got was peviosly owned. I wiped it and put winds xp revision 2 on it, and it still has problems. It might be over heating but if its not what do i do?
Could you please expand on what the problems are with it? Perhaps it randomly freezes? Perhaps it just shuts down at random times?
Please provide more information regarding what the problems are and we can help you more from there.
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