PC driving me mad!

Cerenia

I use this laptop on mainly soft surfaces, do often use it on hard surfaces as well, so its a mix of both. The worst situations its been is when its on hard surfaces.

I've been advised to try using Firefox, to see if its a possible issue with IE, i'm noticing a majority of times its crashing is when one of my tabs is on Facebook, so going to try that. Also trying taking the battery out of the laptop when not in use as someone else advised me, and tonight, its been good, turnt on, loaded up pages fine *touch wood* I was just wondering if there was anything I could do to just help it out

macman

Have you cleaned the dust out of the fans? Get a can of air and blow it through them.

Cerenia

macman wrote: »

Have you cleaned the dust out of the fans? Get a can of air and blow it through them.

Nope, are they easy to get hold of? Can get one if they're in ASDA, if not, i'll hold up until after xmas.

JDPower

Cerenia wrote: »

Nope, are they easy to get hold of? Can get one if they're in ASDA, if not, i'll hold up until after xmas.

My local Asda sells the cans of compressed air (about £3 IIRC) so may be able to get it there. Having your laptop sat on soft surfaces when in use is the biggest laptop killer. Firstly cos the cooling systems airflow is rendered obsolete and secondly cos instead of sucking in cool air it's just sucking in all the dust and fluff so even when it's then on a solid surface the airflow inside is restricted (I had one friend who ended up having to buy a new laptop thanks to the damage caused from the above, she now follows my advice and also invested in a cooling pad).

The advice to remove the battery when running on AC power is also a very good idea - it's safer, will extend battery life and one less heat source.

From what you've said I'm sure it's either overheating or Windows corrupted and needing a reinstall.

I highly doubt it's an IE problem so doubt switching to Firefox will make the slightest difference. When you said earlier "sometimes everything crashes" what actually happens? Does the laptop just shut off, does it freeze, does it blue screen???

Cerenia

JDPower wrote: »

My local Asda sells the cans of compressed air (about £3 IIRC) so may be able to get it there. Having your laptop sat on soft surfaces when in use is the biggest laptop killer. Firstly cos the cooling systems airflow is rendered obsolete and secondly cos instead of sucking in cool air it's just sucking in all the dust and fluff so even when it's then on a solid surface the airflow inside is restricted (I had one friend who ended up having to buy a new laptop thanks to the damage caused from the above, she now follows my advice and also invested in a cooling pad).

The advice to remove the battery when running on AC power is also a very good idea - it's safer, will extend battery life and one less heat source.

From what you've said I'm sure it's either overheating or Windows corrupted and needing a reinstall.

I highly doubt it's an IE problem so doubt switching to Firefox will make the slightest difference. When you said earlier "sometimes everything crashes" what actually happens? Does the laptop just shut off, does it freeze, does it blue screen???

I've had BSOD a couple of times, but usually everything freezes, can't get into Task Manager, IE freezes, cannot select to show desktop, absolutly nothing, even if I go into standby and come back 5-10 mins later

dizziblonde

My fella managed to nicely cook the motherboard of his old laptop by using it resting on a bed blocking the air vents. Fair play to them PC World replaced like half the innards of it under warranty several times without quibbling about it - but I'd get a cooling pad or work out somewhere to use it where the base air vents aren't going to be blocked (we ended up operating that laptop balanced on a nice thick book to raise it up off a level and let the air circulate).

Tesco had the USB plug in cooling pad/fans for laptops for about £15 (think they were Belkin) last time I looked a few weeks ago - I don't recall seeing them in Asda but it's rare I go there.

computershack

nameless121 wrote: »

If a registry cleaner has been made for an individual laptop model number then it will be to fix a known problem otherwise I would not have suggested it. Look at the link.

I suggest you go learn a bit more about computing before giving such advice. Registry cleaners work on operating systems, not specific computer models.

computershack

macman wrote: »

Have you cleaned the dust out of the fans? Get a can of air and blow it through them.

Might not be enough. I refurbish laptops and a great many that come from private users have the gap between the fan and the heatsink partially or blocked up with solid fluff that is so compacted it looks like that grey felt underlay you used to get. Sometimes it is so bad that it stops the fan rotating. Just returned one today that had that fault. Would last anything from 10 minutes if used heavily up to 40 if not and then it'd shut down. Another I had went into "limp home" mode and crawled like a dog. You can't blow that out with compressed air and the only way to sort it is to take it to bits.Trouble is that when the OP took it back to the shop, chances are all it got was a blast through with compressed air. :rolleyes:

viv0147

Hi I no longer have a p.c. I now have a Mac but when I did have one I used pcpitstop, which is free it analyses your computer and afterwards it shows you flags, a chequered flag means that part of the test is good a red flag means sort it out straight away, and a yellow flag means it need sorting but there is no rush, and the best part is it tells you how to correct any faults it may find in an easy to understand way. I highly recommend this, and dont be alarmed while running the test you will see on your screen flashing images circles etc, and if you enter your email address you will be able to keep a log of your previous tests, and its free. http://www.pcpitstop.com/pcpitstop/

david39

If you are running more than one Antivirus program on the computer simultaneously, it may well be that they are interfering with each other and crashing the system under specific circumstances.

Choose one AV program and disable the others and then see if the problem persists.