Laptop boots up as normal and then freezes
I have a HP laptop and whenever I turn it on, it seems to boot up fine. All the icons appear on the screen. Then I try to click on any icon and nothing happens. I cannot access the start menu either. Its like everything is frozen.
I usually have to turn off and on the laptop about 6-8 times before it actually boots up and can work normal.
I have never had a problem like this and I am scared that my laptop is dying.
There could be a few different possible problems with your laptop.
First of all, this might be a software related problem. Test if your laptop freezes in Safe Mode. Turn on the laptop and press F8 as soon as HP logo appears on the screen, select Safe Mode from the menu. If the laptop freezes in normal mode but works fine in Safe Mode, most likely you have some kind of software related issue. I’m not going to troubleshoot any software related issues because it might take hours and bring no results. In this case backup all personal data from the hard drive and reinstall the operating system from the recovery disc.
If the laptop freezes even in Safe Mode, I would run diagnostic tests on the hard drive and memory. You can test the hard drive with Hitachi’s DFT test and memory with Memtest86+. Links to both utilities are located in “Useful Links” on the right side of the website.
If the hard drive fails to pass the test, replace the hard drive and reinstall the operating system.
If the memory fails to pass the test, replace the memory module.
Also, try removing the wireless card and modem one by one and run the laptop without them. A faulty wireless card can freeze up the whole system.
August 30th, 2011 at 8:44 am
Hi,
I’m looking for help with my Toshiba Satellite A200, which runs Windows Vista.
Periodically, the screen freezes up in one of two ways: (1) the screen goes dark, or (2) the screen goes dark, except with one or many white squares filled with vertical, shaky lines. In either case, the computer is unresponsive.
The problems tend to occur not while I’m on the computer (though on rare occasions, that’s been true as well), but when I’ve left it sitting running with programs open. While I can work on the laptop for a number of hours without it acting up, it seems like I can’t leave it running for an hour without it freezing up. I’ve also noticed that the computer is no longer utilizing the Screensaver.
Before the problem began (maybe a week ago), I did have a couple months where if I tried to “sleep” the laptop overnight rather than shut it down, I would find it in the morning behaving as though it was not sleeping (though it had slept initially the night before), but also unresponsive and requiring a manual shutdown.
Also, in the last day or two, on a couple of occasions while starting up the laptop, it had to run Start-Up Repair in order to boot up properly.
Please, please, Laptop Freak, any help would be wonderful!
August 14th, 2011 at 4:25 pm
Sounds like a bad memory block to me (had the same problem with my old computer).
But don’t go rushing out buying a new memory block. It’s better to follow the error finding step-by-step process described, so you can be 100% it’s a bad memory block and not just some software issue.
December 30th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Hello, I have a Packard Bell EasyNote TJ65, and it started freezing and not responding anymore. The only way I have to restart it, it’s to take away the batteries, then put them on again and restart it; other times, it shuts down on its own and then I have the blue screen. I noticed this appears to happen when I use iTunes, and I have Windows 7. Do I need to re-install iTunes?
Tonight, though, even though I haven’t used iTunes in day, it has freezed for 3 times in a row, without any blue screen, so I had to force it once again into shutting off and then restarted it. What can I do?
Thank you in advance
November 5th, 2010 at 11:16 am
Hi, I have a Toshiba Satellite M45-S2692 that freezes randomly but always soon after startup, if not during. I reset bios to default by desoldering battery and reconnecting. I reinstalled Windows XP and OEM drivers via Toshiba recovery disc. First guess was memory. I swapped it out, no change. I disconnected all peripherals, no change. I swapped out the hard drive, no change. I have swapped out battery and power supply individually, and tested with and without each. Still no change. The machine runs without freezing in safe mode. I have no problem with the physical end of reflowing or replacing chips or capacitors if someone can give me a clue where to start looking for motherboard problem. Thanks in advance for any help you may have. Steve Page
October 12th, 2010 at 9:45 am
Hi,posting here to ask a question really.
I bought a Toshiba satellite A660 a few weeks ago (Win7, 4 gig Ram, i7 processor, Gforce Gt 330M if it helps).
my problem is on start up – about a weeka go my laptop jammed on startup and i ended up having to have to use the Toshiba Recovery hard disk tool – basically boots a partition to out-of-box state. Thing is, this installs and reinstalls well (infact i just did this again 30mins ago), but always jams on startup when i switch it off and go to turn it on again.
What happens is that it jams on ‘Windows is Starting’, but the Windows 7 logo doesnt even appear. is this because of incoreectly installed drivers? (thought therye supposed to install automatically) or more likely a hardware problem?
after the 2nd reinstallment i installed COD5 to test it and it worked perfect until the next startup…
Thanks
August 20th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Recently I tried very hard to get my CPU properly connected to the heat sink. I think I did everything right but still the laptop freezes short after startup.
I tried different things.
and the problem is the heat sink on d cpu is full of dust just open a tutorial on how to open a laptop clean the heatsink and fix t again problem solved for sure
as soon as the cpu becomes hot the laptop crashes and it takes 30sec for the cpy to get hot
i tried one more ting
i started the computer without the heatsink its ot got freezed
i took a hair driyer started the pc wid the hair driyer wid cold air facing the cpu laptop worked fine without heatsink
i kno opening laptop is rocket science so try this simple test
simple test turn on the ac and see of u getting the same problem if no then do wat i say
July 30th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
Looks like spillage had nothing to do with my problems. The reason for my problems was actually Acer screwing up with this particular model. If anyone with similar problems winds up reading this, disabling powermizer seems to have fixed everything.
July 24th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Hi! This could go under the “Liquid spills” section as well but I decided on this one because I’m not totally sure spillage has anything to do with my problems. So here goes.
About a year ago I bought an Acer Aspire 5739G laptop. Less than a month later I spilled tea on it. Without sugar (I’ve been told it’s important). I was running some Windows updates as it happened and, whilst in shock, didn’t turn the computer off right away. I just flipped it over and let some of the tea spill out. Only about 5 minutes later it dawned on me that I should turn the laptop off. I left it flipped over by an open window and went to bed.
To my enormous surprise and joy, it powered on just fine the next morning. Nothing was sticky, the touchpad and keyboard were working perfectly fine (externally, you couldn’t tell anything was wrong). I couldn’t believe my luck.
I’m not sure how long after that (my guess would be a couple of days but certainly no more than a week) the computer started randomly freezing up. When it does, all I can do is hold the power button until it shuts down.
About the freezing. Overall I think it’s gotten more frequent as time goes on but recently (during the last couple of weeks) it seems to happen less frequently. Anyway, some things I’d like to note:
1) The computer only freezes in normal mode. With this problem I have to run it in Safe Mode most of the time and it has never frozen;
2) It’s very likely it will freeze within minutes when just powered up (e.g. in the morning) but it will likely work fine if it has run in Safe Mode first (it still can freeze but that usually happens hours after starting it in Normal if at all);
3) Usually the second point is moot if I’m, for example, playing some game right after booting up. I guess it’s because of high CPU and memory usage. Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be any pattern with the freezing-up;
4)The laptop often freezes when starting up. I’m running Windows 7 and when the logo comes up, it often freezes. When booting up in Safe Mode it can freeze as well. When all the drivers have been loaded, I get a black screen and that’s it. Sometimes I have to try three or even four times to get it to work;
5) The freezing is accompanied by a monotone sound/buzz if the computer freezes when I’m listening to music or watching a movie.
The third point would seem counter-intuitive to me if there was a problem with the display adapter, memory (a guess I’ve gotten from a friend of mine) or other hardware (though I’m no expert for sure).
I’ve reinstalled Windows (different versions) since the accident but nothing’s changed so I think we can eliminate possible software or driver conflicts. But maybe it’s important to note that twice or thrice the laptop has frozen up for a second or two and then a message has appeared that says something like: “The nVidia graphics application has crashed and recovered”. The last time this happened was months ago so I may be quite off from the actual message (though the keywords – “graphics”, “crashed” and “recovered” – were in it).
I plan to disassemble the laptop tomorrow and see if maybe there’s any residue left, and clean it. If I succeed and it still freezes up (I think it’s not out of the question that the spillage and the start of freezing was just a coincidence) then I really don’t have a clue about what to do next (aside from getting it to a technician).
Sorry, this was really long but I wanted to provide as much information as possible.
July 10th, 2010 at 12:23 am
my Hp pavallion dv 9910us boots normally and my keyboard works perfectly in dos, that is if booted from win 98 cd i can do all stuff like fdisk, but in GUI my keayboard and touchpad freezes. if i keep my laptop off for 2-3 days my keyboard touchpad freezes after 15 minutes (First touchpad and after reboot keyboard also)i tried all sort of updates including bios (f32) all OS ubuntu all linux win7 xp i opened and disconnected all ports reconnected it. still problem exist.
April 21st, 2010 at 11:16 pm
i have a toshiba laptop and when i try to turn it on i type my password in, it starts to load for about 5 seconds then it freezes, how can i fix it?
March 26th, 2010 at 2:14 am
i have an acer travelmate 6592 when i bootup normal it freezes,but when im in safemode it works fine. i did test the harddrive in another laptop and computer its working fine no freezing and when i try to format or reinstall my laptop windows xp,vista,7 it just freezes. when i disable the power service in windows it works perfect.
December 30th, 2009 at 5:47 am
I have an HP dv6000. It just started to freeze after the cover has been closed for awhile. (I have “do nothing” when lid is closed in power settings.) Everything looks normal but when I click on an icon, the computer freezes. I have to use the power button to shut down. (I always then boot up in safe mode to do a clean shut down and then boot up normally after that.)
I ran a check using the system check that does a 60 second diagnostic on the whole computer. No problems at all except two printer plug and play problems which are not important.
What could closing and/or opening the lid do to cause this? Is it a short somewhere?
December 2nd, 2009 at 5:23 pm
I have a problem almost the same with the other…I accidentally removed the AC jack on my laptop while watching movies in internet. I put the jack immediately without turning off the main switch or plug and when I turn it on it’s booting up so normal but did not reaches the desktop its freeze. I leave it for an hour considering the HDD is still reading but nothing happen. I try every possibilities but doesnt work. I believed my laptop experience a electric shock. What shall I do please help me.
Thanks.
Michael
October 27th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Alex Dawson,
1. Clean the cooling fan, maybe the laptop overheats.
2. Test hard drive. Could be hard drive failure.
I posted your question and some suggestions here.
October 27th, 2009 at 11:03 am
My problem with my laptop freezing only happens when i’m running defrag. Obviously this isnt a major problem but I’d like to be able to finish it completely. Any ideas?
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:13 am
kelly,
If the laptop works fine after that, most likely it’s normal. Probably it’s running quick virus scan or searching for updates.
September 23rd, 2009 at 7:58 am
howdy friends, i have an acer 4736z and i have a very similar issue. Everytime i turn it on, it’s booting up so normal but as it reaches the desktop, it will freeze for 20 seconds or so. I don’t know if this is just normal or maybe its just loading all my programs.
Thank you.