Get my computer to not stop responding?
August 25, 2010 1:56 PM   Subscribe

My 3 year-old hp laptop that runs 32bit windows 7 has lately chosen to stop responding to anything at random moments (including ctrl-alt-del) forcing me to shut down and lose everything I'm working on. How can I isolate the problem and hopefully fix it?

It usually happens while I'm using Chrome (probably cause I spend most of my time web browsing), but it also has happened while I was using Lightroom and iTunes. I have 4 gigs of ram, and an AMD Turion 64x2 processor with a nvidia graphics card. It's a HP Pavilion Entertainment PC (dv6500). I just started my senior year of high school today, and I'd rather not lose things I'm typing or whatever due to computer issues.

If there's any other relevant technical details that I forgot ask and I should be able to post them. Thanks for your help!
posted by kylej to Computers & Internet (8 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Youe description is not enough to give you definitive answers but you can try a lot of things:
  • Have the task manager runnig with the processes tab open, sorted by CPU utilization. Maybe you can see something interesting when it freezes. Does it jut stop taking inut, or does the whole thing freeze.
  • Have a USB keyboared and/or mouse plugged in. Do they still work?
  • Enable remote desktop connections to your laptop. Can you still reach it when it freezes? Does a ping to its IP address still work?
  • If you can't solve your problems by fiding the fault you can still try to follow the time honored solution of jut reinstalling Windows. If you have the 64bit version available, install that because you can only use 3GB of your 4GB memory with the 32bit version. Changing the Windows Version might also help with your freezing problem.
  • Before reinstalling windows you can try to get windows and all its drivers updated to the latest version.
  • On a lighter side: Don't listen to iTunes and stop browsing the web while you are working on importants stuff.

posted by mmkhd at 2:25 PM on August 25, 2010


Response by poster: To clarify, I can still use the mouse, but nothing I click on responds. Thanks for the advice mmkhd!
posted by kylej at 2:41 PM on August 25, 2010


Mmmmmh. I didn't try this with my Windows7 yet and don't have access to it right now but it should work similar to XP. Try to get into the "freezing" situation, while you have the task manager open. Does this also freeze? If not, you could kill explorer.exe and then go to "new task" and start exlorer.exe again. Maybe it even works without a keyboard if you have explorer.exe in your clipboard. This doesn't really solve your problems but maybe you learn more about the undelying fault. A bug like yours is nearly impossible to solve by internet forum.
posted by mmkhd at 2:56 PM on August 25, 2010


Could it be possible that your laptop is overheating? Maybe you should try to get a temperature monitoring app to keep an eye on it. Another thing I'd add is to do a memory test (http://www.memtest86.com/), I had the same problem before and it turned out to be a combination of both of these things.
posted by uboat at 3:25 PM on August 25, 2010


My vote is for windows reinstallation, easiest and most surefire solution imo. Plus, you get a squeaky clean fast system.
posted by soss at 3:43 PM on August 25, 2010


Have you added any new hardware recently? Like USB devices?

Here's a good free temp-monitoring program:

http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 3:57 PM on August 25, 2010


If I were you.... I would sit down and focus and do some specific Google searching on phrases like:

"dv6500 shuts down"

"dv6500 motherboard replacement"

"dv6500 black screen"

HP's "DV" line of laptops has had a wide range of hardware problems. Some of them (especially the wide-body models) exhibit motherboard failures because over enough time the slight-twisting that happens when you pick the unit up tends to crack some of the cold solder joints inside the unit. Also these units use nVidia graphics chipsets, and some of them were prone to the GPU overheating/separation problem (where = over time the graphics chip heats up and cools down enough times that it separates from the mainboard just slightly enough to cause strange graphics problems.)

Here are a couple HP Forum threads, that while they don't apply directly to the 6500 models.. they are pretty similar scenarios.

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?admit=109447626+1282776481552+28353475&threadId=1147659

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Display-and-video/Dead-Pavilion-dv6500/td-p/130056

In the early 2000's (roughly 2000 to 2005) I worked at HP and was HP-certified to do repairs on their Omnibook (corporate level) line of laptops. That doesn't make me a "expert"... but throwing it out there anyways.

The age of your laptop (3 years) is roughly the same as friends/family of mine who had similar units and all had similar fates. The failures don't relate to the hard drive.. so if the unit does fail to a point where it won't boot.. atleast you can pull the hard drive out, slap it into an USB-enclosure.. and still access your files (from another system)

Good luck!? :\
posted by jmnugent at 3:58 PM on August 25, 2010


Sounds like it might be a hardware problem, perhaps with your memory or a peripheral. Try switching your mouse, keyboard, RAM sticks, etc. and unplugging your printer, webcam, etc. to see if any of these affect the problem. To rule out the OS as a culprit without reinstalling, you could try booting off a Linux Live CD/USB stick and running that for a while to see if something similar happens in another OS.
posted by Simon Barclay at 5:55 PM on August 25, 2010


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