My laptop freezes up after a few seconds when it’s connected or not connected to the network
My Acer TravelMAte 3650 (not flashy I know) is having issues! It freezes up when I am using it at home. It is a temporary freeze up, it used to go for about 30 seconds and occur every couple of minutes, I have run a heap of anti-virus stuff, adware and spyware programs to try and find out what might be the problem. All of the computers components seem to be find according to device manager as well. Now the freezing is down to about 2 seconds or so, (if you are playing music you can hear when it freezes because it will get stuck on that note). Here comes the confusing part, when I am using it at home I will have all of these troubles with it and at home I am not connected to the net or any wireless networks. When I use it at collage or at a friend’s house or any where else that I have it connected to a wireless, then it doesn’t seem to play up at all. I thought if my laptop was going to have any issues, it would have been when it was connected, not the other way around. Please help me because I travel a lot and need my laptop to show clients their work.
A problem like yours could be triggered by a piece of malicious code installed on the hard drive. It’s trying to connect to a remote server causing the laptop to freeze up. It might try to connect regardless if a network connection is present or not. There is no spyware or adware removal tool that can clean your system 100%. Some malicious programs are not detectable because they are new. Cleaning up a laptop from spyware and adware might take hours and hours and still there is no guaranty if it will help.
When I have to troubleshoot a laptop that freezes up, locks up or runs slow, I always install my test drive and reload the operating system. If the laptop works fine after the operating system is reloaded then it’s a software problem. If I still have the same issue then it’s a hardware problem. I understand that not everyone has a luxury of having a spare hard drive. So, if you don’t have it then I would go with reloading the laptop back to original factory defaults using a recovery media.
I know that it will take some time to back up the data and reload the laptop, but from my experience it’s still the best way to find out if the problem is caused by software or by a faulty hardware.
September 29th, 2011 at 9:50 pm
It sounds like a malware problem to me. Were you able to resolve it? If not, please try running a scan of your computer with any malware cleaner, and then remove any troubling files. I’m certain it will start working.
September 10th, 2010 at 6:36 pm
My Tishiba Laptop (Satellite L670) freezes and does not un-freeze after a few seconds that i am connected to the internet. I am tryin to “System Restore” my laptop.
August 7th, 2010 at 12:32 pm
I have just experience a similar event with my Toshiba laptop. It only failes when I boot the unit up with the wireless switch on. This also only happens at my home location. BIZZAR. I thought it may be external interfearance causing the wireless to pick up an unrecognized opcode and cause a system boot failure, so I powered down my entire house but the unit still locked up on boot up. I loaded fresh sw from the OEM disks and it locked up during the network driver load. I have a service plan with best buy and they replaced the hard drive and reloaded software. Still the same problem. I cant get the unit to lock up anywhere else and it works fine at the best buy store. I must be in a black hole here
SO for now I boot up with out wireless on and use it hard wired to the network jack. That kind of defiets the purpose of the portability of the laptop. The Best buy tech looks at me like I am smoking dope, so I have brought it in in the lock up state to show him, and he reboots it with no issue. I have driven all over town with the wireless up and rebooted sincing to any unsecured network I can find. So far its not failed, and I am frustrated. Good luck with your issue but so far they wont replace the hardware unless they can repeat the issue. But they won’t come to my house to see the failure.
August 2nd, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Im also experince the same problem…i’ve tried format my laptop with fresh window 7 but the problem still occured. It must be hardware failure as new window copy could’t fix it…
April 21st, 2010 at 8:37 am
Ian Silk,
How do you know that your hard drive stops working for a few seconds? Provide more info about the failure. What are you experiencing?
April 20th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Why does the harddrive on my laptop stop working for a few seconds then starts working again