At random times the screen will just go blank - not a blue screen or even a black screen but sort of lighted gray (sometimes you can see faint vertical lines). No error messages. The only way we can restart is to turn off the power button. Ctrl/Alt/Del does not do anything. At first we thought it might be Yahoo Messenger. We uninstalled it and it still froze up. We then uninstalled the Norton Antivirus and it still froze up. It happens when we are watching a DVD, playing solitare, browsing the internet, or just using Yahoo Messenger or a combination of things. Surely it is a software issue. We took it back to Best Buy and they scanned everything and could not find anything wrong. Of course it did not freeze up while we were there and we even sat for over 30 minutes watching a movie in hopes it would happen. Should we use the restore disk and just start over Windows new? It is Vista Home Premium. I don't feel that it is a virus of some kind.
I did face same problem on Dell laptop and here is how enrolled it out .
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?s=1a3f88d69b568b75a2eea388a0de134a&showtopic=811516&pid=591448680&st=0&#entry591448680
This is my own experiences and self trouble shooting which managed to solve the problem after 2 months having issue on my laptop. I know how extremely frustrating .
If you have used to install your OS on a driver which has a partition you may face this issue or while installing the your OS the
unexpected shutdown of laptop will corrupted the boot sector /boot portion of hard disk. and you will face freezes even before the laptop sees the hard drive.
Read more and try my solution and see if you can fix your problem at above link
Pls consider changing RAM it is not VIRUS ISSUE and check ur hard disk condition with HDDLIFE for Notebooks check the strength of hard drive , i am serious about this RAM issue pls consider changing it ur issue will most likely resolve ,
pls also try to connect monitor on vga port of the notebook and see when this problem arise what happens to the monitor display is it the same thing that will trouble shoot the LCD inverter or flex cable issue if thats the case then monitor output will remain ok and ur lcd display will go grey but i am pretty sure that is no virus issue pls check this first before RAM and then consider changing RAM or removing one chip of RAM if u have two like two of 512MB each try each one individually and see if it happens , one might be faulty
pls do rate me if u findd me helpful
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We purchased it 2/9/09 and it is not overheating. It actually happened one time right after turning it on. What kind of virus would randomly make the computer freeze? We did have Norton antivirus installed and running from day one anyway. I am aware of viruses having a certain affect on certain programs or whatever, but sometimes we can watch a movie for an hour before it freezes and other times it happens in the first 10 minutes. I am not sure if it happens when it is plugged in or not plugged in or during both times. I will try both and see if that makes a difference. I don't have a problem using the restore disks that we got when we purchased the laptop but I hope that would take care of it. Perhaps I could go back to the earliest restore point? The only thing we have downloaded is yahoo messenger.
No they did not scan with a clean computer - just the basic scanning of discs that any idiot can do. I am really frustrated with them. Would it feel hot somewhere if it were an overheating issue?
It actually happens when we are doing various things. Could be watching a movie or just playing solitare and talking on messenger. One time it happened right after we turned it on. It happens sometimes within 10 minutes and others after an hour or more. Will research the battery issue.
We have this solved. We actually created a restore point and then did a system restore back to an earlier date. After that the wireless internet would not work. We were frustrated so we changed it back to the restore point that we created earlier and it has not frozen up since. Go figure???
Thanks!
Back to a previous comment: Let's talk viruses for a moment ... I'm not saying you are infected, just possible ... there are viruses that target certain MS products, office products, media player, etc. I don't remember specific ones (I remove hunderds in my shop) so there are viruses that affect only certain programs. Next, Norton AV is good but not great, it does not remove certain classes of viruses specifically 'downloader trojans'. It does remove some and they've made progress in this area, but not all. For those it doesn't you will see (history) some of the same malware removed over and over; an indicator of a download trojan at work.
I use and only recommend AVG AV. They make both paid and free versions. The free version is only intended for non-commercial home and/or educational use only. All other users should use their licensed version. The free version uses the same engine and is updated regularly but provides no support from the company. I'm not telling you not to use Norton, just that I no longer use it nor recommend it. Contact me if you want to know more about cleaning malware ([email protected]); enough about that.
After you try running without the battery, make a list of activies and times before freezing (if it does). If it does not after a lengthy period of time with activites that usually freeze it; then perhaps your battery is the culprit. If it still freezes please make note of activities/times and activity at time of lockup.
Advise
If you have an overheating problem likely you will feel hot spots but it's not unusual for some laptops to get hot on the bottom, sometimes too hot for the lap...really.
I suggest you try to remove the battery (if your laptop runs without the battery, some do not) and run off the charger only after it's been off or at least 2 hours (time to be fully cool); then do some activity that you normally do for a time and keep up with the time used. Then do those activities that caused stoppages.
BTW, is watching a DVD the only activity that causes this freezing up. Or does it happen with other activities without watching a DVD? If it only happens while watching DVDs, then your culprit may be a DVD player going bad or scratched DVD(s). My laptop with freeze while viewing certain DVDs that have lot of usage. IT's not the PC OS that freezing but the movies player having issues.
Advise
Additionally, just because the gizmos at bestbuy scanned it, doesn't mean it doesn't have a virus. Virus infected computers can rarely be fixed in it's own environment. Did they remove the HD and scan with a clean computer? If not, you may very well have a virus (although you may not); only a proper scan can tell.
Although it still sounds like an overheating problem.
Please advise
Most likely is either (1) a viruses; (2) overheating; When it happens, how long is the laptop on / running?
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