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.
April 6th, 2010 at 4:25 am
Good work done guys!
i have a small issue with my laptop too. My laptop keeps going off few minutes after i switch it on. On a very good day, it stays up for an hour and then goes off again. It normally goes off when i am playing music, watching a movie or when i leave it on for some time without touching the mouse or the keyboard. Currently, it is frozen and part of its blue screen has turn brown. The keyboard and the mouse are all not responding to any command. Please help me find solution to this.
December 21st, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Greetings everyone.
I’ve been having a500 problem with my Dell Vostro 1500. When i use it connected to the internet with DSL cable the laptop freezes after a while randomly and i have to restart everytime;/. When i use the laptop with wireless internet it has no problem at all… Can someone help me out? I dont have wireless at my house so it’s very frustrating having to restart so frequently:/ thank you very much in advance:)
November 17th, 2009 at 7:00 am
Hi all,
The problem on HP laptops is caused by chips working loose and the ONLY way to repair it is to re-flow the motherboard or replace it. Its generally the graphics chip and some brave souls have fixed it by heating it with a hair dryer until the solder melts than keeping it still until it cools. Best fix though is to rework it with a hot-air station. I would hazard a guess that this is the fault with other makes too. Once you have replaced RAM and the HDD to no avail.. its going to be a motherboard problem.
Good luck with it all.
September 29th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
I have a problem with my laptop. I have a Toshiba L305-S5875. When I turn on my laptop, and let all my programs start up, it freezes a few minutes later. I would have to restart the computer by pressing the power button. If I try to run anything, it would freeze. How can I fix this problem?
September 16th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
i just got my laptop and it freezes.i dont know why whay must i do?
August 16th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Lai,
Press on the power button and hold it down for 5-8 seconds. The laptop will power off.
August 16th, 2009 at 6:25 am
Hi,there! support team needs help! (asap)
i have bought 3 days ago Loptop Fujitsu the problem was when i put shutdown doesn’t responding anymore! just i see the screen saying Loging Of, but never shutdown for few hours!! i dont know what happening! pls help thank you.
July 16th, 2009 at 7:34 am
um. ive bought my laptop a few months ago, it worked fine then but for some reason now its slowing down. i have Norton 360 Anti-virus. at some points my laptop freezes for 50 seconds, i tried to remove unsued programmes to solve to probelm but nothing’s changed. i also used disk clean-up and disk defragment but still same result. my laptop is a HP G60 NoteBook PC
April 18th, 2009 at 8:55 am
DuncanC,
Looks like the same problem happens with a few different laptops, so it’s not a hardware related failure.
Do you have automatic Windows updates enabled on all these laptops? I think your problem could be related to the installed update, I’ve seen it hapenning before. Take one of the failing laptops and run System Restore to the point when the laptop worked fine, you said about 2 weeks. That could help.
Also, you can try upgrading firmware on the Wi-Fi router.
April 18th, 2009 at 7:31 am
I have a problem that has only just started in the past couple of weeks. Wireless Access Point is a Cisco and laptops connecting to it are HP nc6220/nc 6320/6710b. I can see others connceted the the WAP fine using the network but some users laptops freeze when they are booting their machines up and try to log onto the desktop. The only action is to do a hard reset disable wifi whilst Windows is booting, log on using cache mode and then switching the wifi back on and connecting to the WAP. Any ideas as it has me stumped. Many Thanks.
March 20th, 2009 at 9:30 am
i have an acer aspire 5570z from last two months my laptop behaving very strange way
First problem is that when i m power on my laptop all lights will be on but nothing appear on display than if i kept my laptop in same condition after 30 min it is booting normally and sometime after power on it is booting normall way
second problem is sometime after bios display i m getting message that operation system not found
third problem is my windows is freezing sometime during logon and sometime while i m working 30 min sometime after 5 min and sometime within a min
i gave my laptop to one technician he could not sort out problem he was telling that may be your hard disk connector has problem
but as per knowledge hard disk not required up to bios start up
i replaced hard disk also
if u can help me i will be very thankfull to you
February 11th, 2009 at 12:36 am
I have an HP Pavillion dv 9000 and for some reason, when I boot up and get online everything is fine – if I get up from the computer for 15 or 20 minutes and come back it’s all frozen. This seems to happen even if I’m not online. I generally wind up shutting down by pressing the button because I can’t get it to shutdown properly. Also if I hit the left click on the mouse enough or try typing enough I’ll get a beep once from the computer.
Thanks so much – hope someone can help!
January 27th, 2009 at 3:42 am
hello…
im having an issue with my laptop recently. firstly when i turn it on.. the windowd signature tune plays in pauses. then after it loads and i open any programme, the laptop freezes up for a few seconds. my mouse motion freezes and so does my music when im playing it on winap or any other music programme. (it sounds like im pressing pause every second.) this carries on for a few seconds and then its fine. also my hard drive makes a louder whirring sound than it used to and its getting my laptop feels like its getting hot faster than before. what do you think the problem is? ive run all sorts of anti viruses and spyware/ adware scans but theyre not of help. any help you can give me would be much appreciated.
thanks in advance
troubled!
September 10th, 2008 at 12:02 am
oh and if ur laptop jams when minimzing or closing programs try ‘ hide desktop icons’ it will smoothen up ur minimizing or executing programs
September 10th, 2008 at 12:00 am
My laptop used to freeze for 0.5 second and just keeps repeating which is difficult to use especialy when listening to music. I have tried removing batteries and it helped a little. Then i brought it to the technician and he said hardware problem so he replaced my hard drive which cost quite a lot but it REALLY HELPED! i recommend this to every1 who has the same problem as i did!! i hoped it helps!!
June 1st, 2008 at 5:05 am
Hello.
I have this same problem now with my acer travelmate 4670 and it has two batteries installed in the unit.
when i take the optical drive battry out of the unit the system works fine. When it is replaced the computer starts to loose keyboard and mouse inputs. thanks for the help
January 27th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Josh,
It could be software related issue.
First of all, backup all important data and reinstall factory software or at least try reverting the system back to the time when the laptop worked fine. You can do it with Windows system restore utility.
January 21st, 2008 at 6:22 pm
I bought a new laptop a week ago. It worked fine for the first few days, but now, if I connect to the internet at my apartment at all (ethernet cable or wireless) it will freeze (totally freeze… no mouse or keyboard input, though sometimes the time in the corner will still go up) after about 5 minutes. If I connect on campus, it works just fine. If I don’t connect at all, it doesn’t freeze either. What could be the problem?
September 30th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Hey Shannon R.,
Not sure what is going on with your laptop. I’ve published your question here: Laptop freezes when I am using wireless connection
Hopefully somebody can help you. I posted my suggestions in there.
September 25th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
I have an HP Pavilion dv6000 that came with Vista. I am having problems with it freezing literally “every 6 minutes” when I’m using wireless….this is NOT an issue at all if I have the ethernet plugged in directly from the DSL modem. I have a Linksys router, and I installed the latest firmware. I don’t know if this is an HP problem, a Vista issue, or if I simply have a bad wireless card. Anyone else experiencing this? (I’ve had this problem both with the laptop plugged in and just on the battery).
Thank you in advance for any help!
Shannon
September 7th, 2007 at 7:42 am
Try unplugging the laptop battery. A bad battery can cause the system to free every few seconds.
Kelvin
July 14th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Hi Laptop,
I have a Toshiba m45-s2653 and whenever it boots normally into Windows XP, it would freeze up. I have updated the latest BIOS and reinstalled the OS numerous times and it always freezes up. However, when I boot up in safe mode, it never freezes. What could have cause this problem? Could it be the drivers or software? Thanks
February 18th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Hello I’ve been having problems with my IBM ThinkPad380XD.I have to keep restarting it over and over and I can’t get anywhere on the desktop because it locks up which causes me to have to turn it off by the on/off button.Cant log in or out or go into the internet not even going into properties to see what’s wrong.I would like to know how this can fixed without me trying to buy the items to go inside the computer.
February 3rd, 2007 at 9:13 am
Hi,
I have fujitsu laptop running win xp OS. from long back i have a problem with my laptop. it will work fine if i did not connect it to the network but if i connect it to the network it will take so long to get on to the network. once it is connected i can work for some time and of suddenly it freezez for some time and wil be back to normal after 5 mins. some times it will not come back until i disable the network connection. i thought the problem si with the network connection and i tried with my wireless network, it still does the same thing, it freezez and i need to disable and enable it to bring it back to work. Please let me know what is the wrong with my laptop.
I tried restarting and increasing virtual memory but still the same. it has 512 mb memory and 40gb hard disk
January 7th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Hi, i’ev got a PackardBell H5315 notebook, which has been working fine for about 18 mths now, but recently it’s gone mad. When i minimize or maximise different windows such as folders, websites etc. its jams and stays jammed for atleast 5 mins, and then comes back in a slow fashion, and then it wud do the same thing every half an hour roughly. However when it jams if i lift the laptop and put it bak down with abit of force, it comes which is bizzare and has got me baffled. Dpes anyone know the problem?
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Hey! I wanted to give you my sincerest thanks. It was a software issue after all, since installing Windows 98 didn’t show any freezes at all. Looks like there was some bugs going on between win XP and the Speedstep technology. I had to disable it, losing some battery time, but at least no more freezing!
Regards from Argentina,
Federico.
January 3rd, 2007 at 12:28 am
Lashon,
Visit the laptop manufacturer’s website and check if there is a newer driver for the wireless card and install it. Make sure the wireless router has the latest firmware installed, upgrade it if there is an updated version.
January 2nd, 2007 at 7:40 pm
I have a wirless wlan 1470 mini pci card installed that came with my laptop. I have setup a wireless network with a linksys wireless-g router from my desktop, my laptop freezes up everytime i connect or loses the network connection. My laptop has WiFi. The network is setup with WEP. I tried disabling it but that will not let me connect on the wireless. Please help.
LaShon
December 17th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Federico,
I don’t think that you can reassign IRQs yourself, at least I don’t know how to do that.
Here are some ideas that you can give a shot.
1. You might have faulty hardware. Remove all devices that you can access, such as DVD drive, wireless card, PCMCIA card, USB devices, etc… Run the laptop without them and test if the laptop still freezes intermittently. If the laptop works fine without these devices, install them back one by one until the laptop fails again to find out with device is causing the problem.
2. Listen for the hard drive sounds. Does it sound normal? May be the hard drive makes clicking sounds “every 10 seconds or so”, like it’s trying but cannot access some information on it? You can test the hard drive with Hitachi DFT test. From my experience this utility work fine on most laptop drives.
3. It might be a software issue. Make sure that you load correct device drivers. You also can try this. Install just Windows OS, without any device drivers. Test if the laptop freezes. If the laptop works fine without drivers installed, start installing them one by one and test the laptop after each installed device driver. Find with driver is causing the problem.
4. This method is more advanced. Boot the laptop from any live Linux CD, you can use Knoppix and test if you still have the same problem in Linux. If it works fine in Linux, then most likely there is nothing wrong with the hardware and your problem is software related. It also might indicate that you have a faulty hard drive because live Linux runs from a CD/DVD disk, not from the hard drive.
It’s must my guess, some ideas to try.
BTW, my English is even worst. It’s not my native language too.
December 17th, 2006 at 2:16 am
Hello from Argentina!
I didn’t want to bother you with my question but I ran out of ideas now and I don’t find the answer on the Internet. Here is my case: I have a laptop (HP Omnibook 6000) that is having some stuttering (or mini-freezes) problem. Every 10 seconds or so it freezes for half a sec and then continues as normal. The problem is that if I’m typing something, during the freeze no keys are recognized. Ie: if I try to type “www.google.com”, it ends something like “ww.googl.com” The mouse also stops responding during this freeze.
Looking all over the internet I found several causes, and answers but none of them will work. I already formatted and reinstalled Windows, I’m 100% certain there is no spywares or virus.
One last thing, I read in a forum that IRQs may cause this behavior, so I went to device manager and saw that the vid card, the USB controller, the PCMCIA slots were all in IRQ 10. There are some free IRQs but I cannot change anything.
I hope you can help me in any way. Thanks in advance and your help is much appreciated!
PD: Sorry for my english, it’s not my native language.