Laptop keeps freezing

[PrimaryP]

My laptop has been locking up randomly for a while now, but over the last month it has gotten considerably worse. It locks up while gaming, streaming videos, just browsing the web, if i just let it sit there it will lock up eventually. I figured it was the HDD going out, so i replaced it. It was fine for a few days then starts locking up again. I ran 8 passes of memtest86+ and found no errors. any help is greatly appreciated.

Specs
Win 7
Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 2.53G
4gb RAM
GeForce GTX 260M

 

[ilisidi]

could be overheating? or there could be a loose connector somewhere.

 

[Charlie98]

What kind of AV are you running?

 

[PrimaryP]

Right now I'm just using MSE, but I had been using antivir. I've been using a program called "HWMoniter" to check the temps and so far nothing has been running hot at all.

The laptop just recently froze again(30 min ago), but this time rather than just repeating the same sound over and over, the audio slowed waaay down and the screen froze, then audio was perfectly fine but nothing else worked.

 

[Charlie98]

I had McAfee on my Dell laptop and it just about rendered it useless. We are talking about 10 minutes to boot, and hang, hang, hang.

What you have kind of sounds like a driver issue.

Did you reload W7 fresh on your new HDD, or did you clone it over?

 

[denis280]

Right now I'm just using MSE, but I had been using antivir. I've been using a program called "HWMoniter" to check the temps and so far nothing has been running hot at all.

The laptop just recently froze again(30 min ago), but this time rather than just repeating the same sound over and over, the audio slowed waaay down and the screen froze, then audio was perfectly fine but nothing else worked.

What are the temp from HWMoniter.

 

[oynaz]

That defenitely sounds like overheating. Start by cleaning the insides.

 

[PrimaryP]

the temps in HWmoniter never went above 78C while streaming video, i blew out the inside pretty good with canned air when i installed the new HDD. I installed a fresh windows rather than copy mine over, updated drivers afterwards.

 

[ilisidi]

I had some weird issues with my laptop that started like this and devolved into it not booting (and making clicking noises). found out that one of the connectors had gotten lose and just kept working it's way looser and looser until it disconnected, at which time my laptop stopped functioning. you might want to check and make sure that nothing got loose when you were installing the new hd/blowing out the inside.

 

[kevinsbane]

Memtest86+ does not necessarily catch all memory errors. I was erroring and getting random hard locks on my desktop, and my Memtest86+ tests were turning out all clear. Try running Prime95 on blend; that would lock my computer up reliably. If it hard locks there, I would suggest trying new ram. After I swapped out my ram, I could run Prime blends and it stopped my random hard locks.

 

[Charlie98]

Laptops are kind of a pain to disassemble, but it's the only real way to get all the crap out of the HS/HSF. That stuff was stuck like glue to mine...

 

[PrimaryP]

How can it be an overheating problem if it is locking up before even loading windows after being turned off for 12 hours?

 

[Puppies04]

How can it be an overheating problem if it is locking up before even loading windows after being turned off for 12 hours?

It can't, sound to me like a hardware problem. Either something has a bad connection or something is about to die. Now all you have to do is find out which one.

Edit.

Have you cleared your GPU drivers out and reinstalled the latest version?

 

[Joepublic2]

Make sure the hdd and optical drive connections are good like others have suggested. Try Prime95 and booting a linux live cd and playing around with it for a while to see if it still locks up.

Laptops are kind of a pain to disassemble, but it's the only real way to get all the crap out of the HS/HSF. That stuff was stuck like glue to mine...

Try 100 psi pressurized air. Immobilize the fan before that with a needle or something thought so you don't spin it too fast and tear up the bearing(s).

Random lockups are the hardest to diagnose. Unfortunately it could be the video chipset. I've worked on several laptops that had similar problems with GTX 260M chipset (and a bunch of other nvidia designs around that time), if it's still under warranty I'd send it in for repair. There was even a class action lawsuit over it and nvidia settled out of court but unfortunately the "filing phase" is over.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1736698/nvidia-settles-bumpgate-class-action-lawsuit

http://www.nvidiasettlement.com/index.html

 

[PrimaryP]

I've got the latest Nvidia drivers, I just replaced the HDD. I've gotta grab some more blank discs to try Prime95, I've never used linux before though.

 

[Matt1970]

Did you look in your event viewer?

 

[PrimaryP]

Ive checked the event viewer before, the only thing i can find are certain things not loading because its frozen and the hard restart. But honestly, I'm not 100% sure what I should be looking for anyway. I can try to post screenshots or something if that could help.

 

[PrimaryP]

I've successfully played 3 league of legends games, without having the laptop freeze. I havent had a chance to do anything else yet so this is just a lucky streak. The highest temp the GPU reached was 94C, 59C for CPU.

 

[kevinsbane]

I've got the latest Nvidia drivers, I just replaced the HDD. I've gotta grab some more blank discs to try Prime95, I've never used linux before though.

Er, you shouldn't need linux. See here.

It should run natively in windows 7 64 bit.