Sony laptop keeps crashing

Keanosafc

my laptop has vista however it crashes occasionally, i've ran c-cleaner, spybot, lavasoft adaware however they don't find any infected files.

if anyone has ideas of how to solve this i would be grateful

vyseyboy

Any error messages? Just freezes? Or a bluescreen?

If you're certian there's no malware, the next candidate I'd be looking at would be buggy drivers.

Check for updated graphics / sound drivers, and head to the manufacturer's website for motherboard drivers, see if there's any newer ones.

Could also try a program called memtest 86+ to check for faulty RAM, which might be a cause of crashes.

There could be a number of other causes - overheating, unreliable power supply...

Keanosafc

Thanks, it actually brings up a bluescreen, can't remember exactly what it says but its something like "if this is the first time this has happened just restart, however if not contact administrator"

i'll try to update the firmware/drivers etc, never thought of that.

HAMMERS_2

i have also got a sony laptop but the souns has stoped working on it, when i go to the icon for the volume it says " no audio outpute device is installed" but it has been working fine the last few weeks??

can anyone help?

vyseyboy

Hammers:

Sould like you've either 1. uninstalled the drivers somehow or 2. Disabled the on-board audio.

For 1. Visit the sony site downloads section for your laptop model and look for the audio driver.

For 2. You have to enter the BIOS and look for an option such as "onboard sound/audio", making sure it's enabled. The option is probably in Advanced / Peripheral configuration. You might have to browse around to find it though. Don't change anything else unless you know what you're doing!

I think to enter the BIOS on Sony Vaio's, you press F3 JUST after power on, then either F2 or F1 to enter BIOS setup.

Keanosafc

Vyseyboy, hi whilst searching about for solutions i notice on the bootup screen, (safemode etc) the laptop gives me an option to go into recovery suite, i selected this to see what it would do, but the first menu options looked as though it would re-install windows.

I didn't proceed as i don't want to lose what i have on the laptop, do you have any idea of what this may be.

vyseyboy

Sorry, I don't really know about that. The recovery suite you describe sounds like some kind of proprietary setup that Sony laptops must have on a "reserved" part of the hard drive. And yes, proceeding probably would overwrite all of your old programs and data!