My laptop is killing my sanity!

January 16, 2008 7:43 PM

Okay, hive mind wise ones, please help save my sanity. I have an HP Pavilion dv9000 laptop that I bought in September. In general, it works great... except at random times, when I'm online, and the whole damn thing freezes up.

It only happens when I'm online, and the only way to unfreeze it is to hold the power button down until it shuts off. Then I have to wait until it mostly boots up, and then it gets stuck on a black screen until I hit CTR-ALT-DEL, and choose to restart, and then, finally, after a long wait, it's back up and running.

What gives? I'm not running anything major. I'm using Firefox, and my operating system is Vista. I updated Java on the advice of a friend, and that didn't help. It happens at least once a day, and it's driving me crazy. I've kept track, and there isn't any one program that locks it up -- it just happens randomly.

posted by sarcasticah to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

When you say it freezes up, how frozen is it? Are the fans going when it freezes? Do you hear the hard drive doing stuff? Can you move the mouse at all? If you hit the caps lock or num lock key, do the indicator lights turn on and off? Or is it completely and totally frozen?

Also, how hot is the laptop getting, and what kind of a surface do you keep it on?
posted by evariste at 9:08 PM on January 16, 2008

Launch the Reliability and Performance Monitor (windows key, type that) and see if there are any crashes recorded around the times of the freeze ups.

I have a dv6000 and Vista and haven't seen that problem at all. Run Windows Update and make sure your network adapter's drivers are updated. Also make sure you run the HP Update application to grab everything.
posted by disillusioned at 11:22 PM on January 16, 2008

The last freezing HP laptop I dealt with was sucking a table mat up into its air intake. Make sure there's nothing loose underneath it.
posted by flabdablet at 2:04 AM on January 17, 2008

Also, try booting it from an Ubuntu live CD and running Firefox off that. If it still freezes the same way, you can be fairly certain it's a hardware fault. The Ubuntu live CD will also let you run Memtest86, which may be helpful; if that runs error-free overnight, it's probably not your RAM at fault.
posted by flabdablet at 2:06 AM on January 17, 2008

Response by poster: evariste, it completely freezes. The mouse won't move, no fans, no nothing. (Although I haven't checked the numbers lock thing...) It's sitting on my coffee table, which is just plain wood.

I'll try these suggestions when I get home tonight -- thanks, all!
posted by sarcasticah at 8:46 AM on January 17, 2008

I had a similar issue with my Viao and Vista, and it turned out that Norton Firewall was keeping the system from releasing unused DLLs (I used TweakVI to get an idea of what was going on); I switched to Zone Alarm & haven't had a problem since. YMMV.
posted by tigerjade at 9:12 AM on January 17, 2008

Response by poster: Okay, so... disillusioned, I ran Windows Update and HP Update, and they were both up-to-date. The Reliability and Performance Monitor just shows that Firefox has just stopped working on some occasions, or that the computer was not shut down properly -- which would be the times when it's locked up on me. (The Firefox errors happen at different times.)
posted by sarcasticah at 4:13 PM on January 17, 2008