Laptop Freezing

[Xenophon]

Hi guys, need some help before I throw Zart out the window.

HP Compaq Evo N1050V
1.8Ghz
40GBHDD
Windows XP Pro
256MB Ram (64MB used by graphics card)

I'll start iit up, let it run by itself and after any amount of time it will just freeze. Running very slow sometimes. Yesterday I had a look at the taskmanager and when it was running so slow noticed the following :

when checking the CPU the 'system process idle' was jumping between 50-100 while all other apps were <10.

I am/have also looked/looking at the following :

1) busy running anti-virus/ad/spyware which already has speeded up the machine as there has been about 200 items found by 4 different programs : spybot/AVG/NoAdaware/AdAware SE. funny thing though is that Spybot is picking up NoAdaware as a threat Also with spybot it is picking up threats 'funwebproducts', 'mywebsearch', 'myway mywebsearch' which i know i deleted yesterday with spybot? I only connected long enough today to the web to dowload the latest datafile for spybot.

2) have ordered an extra 512MB RAM which should arrive tomorrow.

3) Overheating? I don't know how to check this from within XP, but did place the laptop on a better ventilated surface

4) I saw a thread yesterday about the bug that is attacking the HP laptops and don't know if i could have picked that up and can't figure out if there is a fix for it

5) The charger I am using is not the HP one, could this affect the machine at all

oh yes, anybody feel free to explain 'brick' to me?

Thanx for your help

 

[The_Unbeliever]

"brick" is the term used when you try to upgrade (for example) your adsl router's firmware and something went wrong with the upgrade process and it rendered the router useless.

another meaning of brick is the sort you use to build houses with.

another meaning is the power supply unit of laptops etc.

Download speedfan, this will give you a good indication of the temperature.

Sorry I wasn't online when you needed me

 

[Xenophon]

yes TL, it is completely unacceptable. will try to dowload it when i can get the internet not to do it's own thing.

hopefully all scanning will be finished in about two hours <again>

it doesn't seem to freeze is safemode

 

[The_Techie]

it doesn't seem to freeze is safemode

Then it's most probably a software (read drivers) problem.

 

[theStudent]

Go to the HP site and update the laptops firmware... that may work

 

[proximiti99]

When last did you do a fresh install? I say you backup, format and fresh install

 

[kronoSX]

Ill do the same repair the system by reinstalling the os.

 

[PeterCH]

You seem to have malware/viruses infesting your system. The AV/antimalware apps
clean your system but maybe don't remove the items from RAM and the stuff seems to
reload/reinfect your machine.

You have a small amount of RAM for XP.

You may have defective RAM.

You may be running too many Antivirus/firewall/antispyware/other apps. With your limited RAM and a possible fragmented disk this is a serious perfromance issue.

Your disk may be almost full and/or badly fragmented.

You may have some application which is indexing your hardrives, like EasyReach Finder
or something similar. I had that commercial Search tool slow my system once, it's a great finder but it's indexing feature makes huge (2-3GB!) index files! You may have
a similar application.

Best bet is it do a FRESH install of Windows.

You may choose to backup all your files first and then FORMAT or,
you may choose to defrag the disk overnight and then reinstall
Windows without formatting. Afterwards install a Software filewall
(Comodo or Sunbelt Kerio are good and FREE) and AV scanner
and an anti-malware/spyware application before going only or
do so by first enabling Win firewall before downloading these apps.

If all else fails, you may have BAD RAM.

 

[Xenophon]

thanx guys, I part of what I wanted for Christmas. (no, not the ram,yet), but I formatted last night and today my baby is running like a dream.

Thanks for all the advise guys and have a great Christmas.

 

[sand_man]

Check the drive is not running in PIO mode (very slow and CPU intensive) instead of DMA.

To check that this is or isn't the case:
Right click my computer and go to properties OR go to "system" in the control panel
Click "Hardware" tab
Click "Device Manager" button
Expand "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers"
Go to the controller you disk is connected to (most likely the first one) and right click, properties
Click the "primary channel" tab and check what transfer mode the disk is in

This could be the problem or alternatively MOBO, CPU or faulty cooling fan..

 

[Xenophon]

ok, it seem the formatting worked as it has only frozen once so far.

second question : I installed the extra 512MB ram, but instead of it reading (768-64) = 704MB, it is only reading 448MB?

 

[killadoob]

does it freeze with that ram out>?

maybe the ram is conflicting

 

[Xenophon]

o, freezing problem is solved, just trying for all the ram to read

 

[scotty777]

maybe try take it out of the fridge? lol

 

[PeterCH]

Is the BIOS reading the RAM as 448 or Windows?

Use this app to test your memory,
http://www.memtest86.com/
It also detects the available RAM.

The downloadable version is FREE.
http://www.memtest86.com/download.html

You will need to burn it onto a DVD-R/DVD-RW and boot with that, make DVD-R bootable
setting has to be enabled in your Nero/EasyCDCreator/NTI CD/DVD Maker.

I had a faulty stick of Kingstron DDR400 Ram which gave one of my systems here headaches. The RAM worked fine for over a year, then one day the PC started giving
boot problems and windows bluescreens.

 

[Xenophon]

Well, both windows & bios picks up 447MB - ran the test for the last 2 hours and a couple of errors came up. Will post a copy of the screenshot a bit later.

What's confusing me is that it is exactly 256MB that's "missing".

edit : I have also swopped the ram around - is it possible that the 2 RAMS are not compatible?

 

[Xenophon]

now I'm seriously irritated. The freezing started up again for no reason. Probably will have to reformat again