COMPUTER FREEZE

[Duxx]

hI RICK
I HAVE AN HP COMPUTER THAT KEEPS FREEZING. IT HAPPENS WHEN ITS IDLE AND SOMETIMES EVEN WHEN IM USING IT.
I HAVE PERFORMED THE BASIC TROUBLESHOOTING BUT NO LUCK.PLEASE HELP
THANKS

[rickhunter]

If it completely locks up (i.e. you can't even move the mouse pointer) 90% of the time it's a power supply issue.  The other times are bad caps on mainboard, corrupt dll's and sometimes spamware (though unlikely, just makes computer really slow).

If the computer is under warranty I would suggest you take care of it now.  If it's out of warranty, I'd try and borrow a power supply from somebody else and see if that fixes it.

[Brianzz]

Wipe out your air vents and pop your cover off and blow out your fans.. HP has a bad habit of over clocking processors and not putting a big enough fan on them to keep them cool.

[channelmaniac]

Also bad RAM can cause it to lock up... but if the computer has been stable for a long time my vote is on a power problem.

Take a look around the heatsink on the mother board. Look at the capacitors in that area of the board and check them to see if they have split their tops open or blown the rubber plugs out of the bottom. If they have then you need to replace them. Also, try a different power supply as was suggested by Rick.

[jdkmunch]

Nasty problem.  Start with the cheapest first

If you can the first thing I would do is wipe windows and start with a fresh copy to eliminate software-  then with no programs installed if it still locks up do the following :

1.  Dust on fans / heat sink
2.  Power Supply
3.  RAM
4.  Motherboard

[Duxx]

THANKS TO ALL
I WILL TRY IT AND LET YOU GUYS KNOW.
THANKS AGAIN

[uniman]

I had to replace the hard drive in my Dell laptop. Windows refused to bootup and diagnostics said error 142 and 146. Dell tech support said they wanted $49 to tell me what those codes meant. A search of the internet basically said bad drive, replace it, so I did.

So my question is; Has anyone used a hard drive docking station-to-usb to retrieve data from a damaged hard drive?
It appears a sector(s) with windows bootup was damaged.

[jay]

I had a buddy that hit me up when I was over to look at his computer  that was blue screening on boot up. I expected to find a virus but I couldn't bring it up even in safe mode.

I pulled his drive and hooked it up to another computer running xp - I did not have a USB adapter but it was sata so I just plugged it in.

Upon boot windows XP instantly recognised another drive and did a integrity check - found about 3 bad clusters, it chunked for a while (30min) and finally was done.

I could view all the files on the drive. My inital instinct was to move them to a USB key but not having one of those with me either so I put the drive back in the orginal computer and it worked well.

I have used the USB adapters with a fair bit of success - unless of course the drive is dead dead.

If you do find a drive that has died due to the electronics etc.....go to the western digital web site and hit drive recovery. It will give you a good list of companies that will recover drives.
We had to do one for work and it was about $900 - prices vary depending on the type of drive and how badly its corrupted.

[next_gaming]

Hello all

I have this trouble, one time i just build a usb xp bootloader, for recover the information from my harddrive whit great results, here is a link to build own xp boot loader in english.

http://www.eeeguides.com/2007/11/installing-windows-xp-from-usb-thumb.html


to fix or repair disks i used  hdd regenerator or hd tune both programs works fine to recover the hdd maybe this can help.

Next

[rickhunter]

I had to replace the hard drive in my Dell laptop. Windows refused to bootup and diagnostics said error 142 and 146. Dell tech support said they wanted $49 to tell me what those codes meant. A search of the internet basically said bad drive, replace it, so I did.

So my question is; Has anyone used a hard drive docking station-to-usb to retrieve data from a damaged hard drive?
It appears a sector(s) with windows bootup was damaged.

I use them all the time at work to recover data.  Be careful with using one of those "repair disks."  Depending on the condition of your drive, those things will kill your data if the drive is in a bad state.  I usually try the USB docking once or twice.  If I get excessive disk seeks read errors while trying to recover data, I stop.  You need to place a value on your data and see if it is worth it for you to pay a professional service like Jay mentioned to have them recover it for you.  If it's just trivial stuff you would like, but can replace, then have a go at one of those "Repair disks"  If the data is very important to you, don't even try the repair disks, just pony up for the professional service, and I don't mean the "computer expert" in town, send it to REAL pro's with clean rooms and the necessary hardware like ontrack.  Also have a look at who made your drive, sometimes the manufacturer will offer data recovery services for their drives, I would be more inclined to send it to the manufacturer, who might have better success than somebody else.  I have used ontrack 3 times with good results,

[channelmaniac]

If you are getting system level (BIOS) errors for the drive then I'm willing to bet the drive is toast. Try putting it in a freezer overnight and see if you can read the data off of it. If you can't then you need to decide if you want to pay the BIG bucks to get your data recovered.

[uniman]

There are just a few files and pic's that I want to recover. Not worth the pro service price. I don't think the drive is in that bad of shape.
Think I will try the docking station, gives me a reason to buy a new toy.
Thanks for all the replies!

[stayouttadabunker]

Yeah, Save what you want ...trash the rest.
To heck with that ol' hard drive...
go out and get yourself a spanking new one!

[CommTech]

I would try attaching it through the USB port first. You can pick up a USB adapter for your drive for less than $40. 

If That doesn't work, Check www.GRC.com for a program called SPINRITE by Steve Gibson.
SPINRITE is probably the most effective utility you can buy for repairing and recovering Hard drive issues (non-electronic or hardware issues).  SPINERITE will repair and recover data that other recovery software will not.
SPINRITE will set you back 89 bucks, but it is a good utility to own.  Check out the FAQ and the user testimonials at www.GRC.com.

[rickhunter]

The hard drive docking solutions are by the most part USB enclosures that are "open".  Two thumbs up from me for Spinrite.  It works as long as the drive is not too badly damaged.

[StatFreak]

I'll add my voice to the chorus supporting Spinrite. It has saved by behind once or twice. Don't neglect the suggestion of freezing the drive first if you believe the problems to be physical. If it works you can save yourself $100.

[tjkeller]

I am currently in process of "recovering" my wife's laptop.
For whatever reason, out of the blue, it started crashing...the deadly BLUE screen!
I first did a Windows re-install which allowed it to run long enough to capture necessary info off the drive.
Still would blue screen on occasion.
Next I started cleaning the registry as this is where I've seen TONS of issues spawn from.
Started getting more constant blue screens again so I replaced hard drive with NEW and fresh install of Windows (XP Media Ctr Ed)
with Compaq's Recovery Disks which basically took the PC back to Original Factory Settings as if NEW Out of the box.
STILL was getting blue screens.
After some further research, I discovered that like channelmaniac mentioned above, RAM can be a culprit so I downloaded
a memory check utility and SURE ENOUGH...bad memory module. The hell of it is, I bought these 1gb Memory modules NEW
less than a year ago. One of them seems to be OK and passed testing so I just removed the bad one.
NOW, her laptop seems to be working just fine and I haven't had any issues yet. I'm just in the process of downloading all
the updates and re-installing the software she needs.

Here are some links to FREEWARE Utilities:
AML Free Registry Cleaner  (VERY Good Utility)
Free Window Registry Repair
CCleaner  (EXCELLENT muti-functional Utility)
Memtest86 (Excellent Memory Diagnostic Tool) *Click "Free Download" on the left to download a copy free. You can also buy a disk from them.
     You must have a CD Burner and Blank CD to burn a bootable ISO image to disk. Shutdown & restart PC with this disk in the drive and tool will run.
     *Note...at end of test if no errors, program recycles so you'll need to hit "esc" to end.
Spybot Search & Destroy  (Excellent Spyware/Malware Utility) *Donation is asked for but NOT required
Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware  aka mbam (Excellent Malware Utility) FREE Version as well as option to Purchase FULL Version
Recuva FREE File Recovery Program from the makers of CCleaner
Defraggler FREE Defrag program from the makers of CCleaner

(Check out the other free utility programs offered by Piriform, the makers of CCleaner by clicking any of the links above for their products...these guys are SAVIORS!)

There are tons & TONS of these type things out there but not all are safe. Most of the above have high ratings from cnet and/or other key organizations.
I have used all of these not only without issue but they have gotten me out of many pickles. In most cases I have to use these in concert and let each
program do its part. I have yet to find any one program that truly does it all...different ones catch different things that another missed.

tjkeller 
  Docs

[StatFreak]

Thanks for posting the links to those utilities TJ.
K+

[channelmaniac]

Glad you got it figured out!

The problem with Windows XP/Vista is that they have it set from the factory (HP, Toshiba, and IBM at least do this...) to quickly reboot. You don't get to see what is on the screen. If you can change the settings to leave the blue screen info up you can then write down the error message and Google it.

There's no need to copy down the whole screen, just the first 2 lines. The error message such as IRQ NOT LESS OR EQUAL, the error# such as 0x00000007, and then the four numbers in a row on the next line which helps you to determine what address the error occurred at. The biggest thing is the name and error #. That should allow you to run a Google search to get information on what the possible problems could be.

Always start with the simple things first: What was the last bit of hardware or software added? Did this happen right after that? No? Did you have something odd happen on the computer just before it died? Any error messages pop up in Windows before the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death)???

RJ

[rickhunter]

I've recently como accross a few laptops with the IRQ Less than or equal.  Believe it or not, on those machines, I've removed Symantec Endpoint and it has solved the problem.  So go figure.  It's curious that I've seen it three times in the last 4 months and removing norton solved it.  I replaced it with an older version of the software (Client Security) and it solved the issue.  I'm wondering if I need to get an update from symantec for these issues.  It's strange that it has not happened on the other laptops that are running the same configuration though.

[knagl]

TJ-

I had the exact same random blue-screen errrors like your wife's laptop shortly after buying my laptop and upgrading the memory in it.  I thought I was going to have to send it in for service, but then for kicks I put the original memory back in and it resolved all of the issues.  I exchanged the memory I had bought for two new sticks, put them in, and haven't had a problem since.  Bad memory can do some funky things, including work perfectly for a few days and then conk out for no apparent reason.

[tjkeller]

I had the exact same random blue-screen errors like your wife's laptop shortly after buying my laptop and upgrading the memory in it.  I thought I was going to have to send it in for service, but then for kicks I put the original memory back in and it resolved all of the issues.  I exchanged the memory I had bought for two new sticks, put them in, and haven't had a problem since.  Bad memory can do some funky things, including work perfectly for a few days and then conk out for no apparent reason.

Indeed. This memory had been in use without problem for like 8 months then all the sudden blue screens.
Oddly enough i went back and checked the memory module but it tested OK. When both installed it tested bad.
They are exactly the same modules...a pair purchased at the same time...weird! Does not exceed max memory
on pc so either something wrong with socket or just with comm btwn the two. At any rate, working fine now
with just one module. At 1gb that's more than enough for my wife's applications!