Laptop is freezing... plz help

[Jagoff]

My lady friend brought over her laptop so I could take a look at it

It's a Toshiba w/Windows XP Home and SP1 which I just intsalled. I guess recently at her work, she installed PCAnywhere and couldn't get it to work. She gave it to some guy there and when she got it back, it was all foofed up. Freezes randomly as I just found out trying to post from it. It's a total lock up. No task manager, mouse, or anything. It's pretty new, Intel 1.6 GHz, 512MB, 25GB HD, DVD-ROM.

You guys have any ideas? She mentioned something about an RF driver? I'm thinking its got to be a hardware problem or driver conflict by the way it locks up.

I got the go ahead to format if necessary, but Id really rather not.

I noticed there are 4-5 things on each IRQ 5 and IRQ11. That seems like a lot to me, but I know Windows XP is and not sure about laptops. Also, there are no system restore points. So that is out of the question.

 

[amdskip]

With todays computers IRQ conflicts don't happen very often at all. Only time I've seen one is on a cheapo celery made by HP. Reformating seems like tbe best solution here as someone else screwed with the laptop and you have no clue as to what they did to it.

 

[Jagoff]

Well Id like to try uninstalling this driver. Problem is, I dont know what an RF is or if any hardware was installed for it. I don't know what the driver is called.

That's what I told her though. It's like a needle in a hay stack. I have no idea what this guy did.

 

[RoseBear]

Okay, first of all, if the version of pcAnywhere on this machine is older than 10.5, get rid of it. Uninstall it, immediately, and do not reinstall it. If pcAnywhere is the bad actor here, you probably can't get the system to boot normally; try booting to VGA mode if you can't get into safe mode.

You can also try rolling back this RF driver. What device does it drive? If you know what device driver is actung up, go to Device Manager. Highlight the device in question, double-click on it to bring up the Device Properties screen, and click on the Driver tab. There should be a Driver Rollback button. Try it; it may help.

You might consider run a Repair Restore on the machine, since the system is bluescreening.

Good luck!

 

[corkyg]

1. Uninstall PC Anywhere.
2. Use System Restore and go back to the last good date before the ill-fated installation was attempted.

Ooops! I just noticed - no System Restore points? Darn! Did someone turn it off? It should have a good one the day you installed SP1.

The next best thing is a Restore CD or partition from Toshiba. You may have to use it.

 

[Jagoff]

Alright good info, but PCAnywhere IS version 10.5.

SP1 was installed yesterday and is the only restore point. System was locking up before yesterday. They did run system restore before, but it didn't work. I guess they uninstalled it afterwards.

Also, the system doesn't have a BSOD. Everything boots up fine as well. It just locks up completely and I have to hold down the power button to shut down.

Device in question? I'm not sure what it is. I uninstalled everything under network adapters and PCMCIA cards. Everything got reinstalled on reboot but 2 things.

There is 2 PCMCIA adapters and they are the exact same thing

PCMCIA Adapters -
Texas Instruments PCI-1420 CardBus Controller
Texas Instruments PCI-1420 CardBus Controller

...and there are 3 defualt monitors under Monitors in the Device Manager. I know these are not causing the problem, but its odd. I unistalled them all, and they all got reinstalled. 3 Default Monitors and 2 Texas Instruments PCI-1420 CardBus Controller.

 

[bacillus]

There is 2 PCMCIA adapters and they are the exact same thing

same with my dell which also has 4 default monitors!
I would suggest you just start afresh & do a reinstall.

 

[alkemyst]

Try a repair/refresh install over the existing for minimal work required...if it doesn't work you only lost an hour of time and saved many more.