Laptop Freezing Up

[Wardawg1001]

I've had this laptop for about a year and a half, running under Vista Home Premium then upgraded to Windows 7 Pro late last year (November I think). It has run like a charm the entire time, but a little over a week ago it started having these strange lock ups.

What happens is if I leave it alone for a period of time, when I come back to it everything seems to still be running but its actually frozen. The mouse will move, I can click on some things in the taskbar but all of the actual programs have stopped operating, and bringing up the start menu then freezes it in place until I reboot the computer. Beyond having to reboot the computer and deal with the unexpected shutdown checks, there have been no error messages, no other crashes, no BSOD's, no problems running any programs or slow downs in the normal operations of the computer.

It will also never freeze up while I am using the computer. I've used the computer for several hours at a time with no issue, only to come back 10 minutes later and have everything be locked up. I've also restarted and come back 10 minutes after the clean reboot to have it locked up. I've also had it sit alone for hours with no activity and be working fine when I came back.

I'm not great with troubleshooting pc issues, but I initially assumed it was a corrupt program or maybe virus/malware. I have run my antivirus multiple times to no avail, along with ad-aware and malwarebytes. They picked up a couple minor things but removed them with no issue and the problem went on. I went in and shut down unnecessary services and turned off all my startup programs but again the issue didn't get better.

I probably should have looked for help earlier, but I didn't, and now it will no longer boot up at all. I can get to the BIOS or diagnostics console that come up before Windows, but once it gets past the loading screen that comes up right before the log on screen, it stays at a black screen where I can move my mouse around but nothing else will happen until I reboot (during normal boot up or safe mode boot up).

Any suggestions based on my description of the problem as to what may be the cause of it? Is there any way to restore it to working condition without losing the files on the computer? What can I do at this point to get it working again, with or without losing the files?

 

[Matan Eldan]

Have you tried format?
Usually I don't recommend to format the Hard Drive, but it seems that there's no other option right now.

I have several guesses though, that might be relevant to your issue:

- Scan your memory with MEMTEST. Leave the scan for at least one day of loops, if you want to be positive that the memory's / memory's slots are not the culprit.

- Maybe your HD is dying. Diagnose your HD with the diagnostic software provided by your HD manufacturer
(You'll be able to download that software from the official manufacturer website)

Guess #2 sound's more relevant.

 

[Devilpapaya]

How long is your computer set to wait before going into hibernate/sleep/standby? I've heard of similar problems being caused by the video driver while windows tries to go into or return from sleep/hibernate.

Edit: this top part was much more relevant before I actually read the entire post, go me.

Beyond that I agree with Eldan, start running some hardware diagnostics and try to rule out as much as possible; though I am thinking this sounds much more of a software/system file corruption case than hardware)

Also here's a few commands that you can run at the command prompt that might help us further diagnose the issue. You can run these through the repair console (hit f8 on start up, should be first option). I'm unclear from your post if you can get to this... if you can't the repair console is also available through the vista/7 DVD. Boot to CD and say repair computer rather than install now.

sfc/scannow The system file check will verify/try-to-fix a number of key system files, not always very successful.

chkdsk c: /b Checkdisk works pretty well for preliminary HDD diagnosis and corrupt data recovery.

If you can determine its not hardware then you may be looking at a fresh reinstall, really not as painful as some people would have you believe (I'd have done it over an upgrade imho, upgrades can cause a lot of registry issues that aren't fun to deal with). If you bought a strictly upgrade version of 7, you can either do a reinstall then upgrade again; but I'd just look up the hack (one registry key change and 2 cmd commands) and go straight to 7.

(back up of files can also be done from the repair console, just look up how to copy files through command line).