Packard Bell

Ave Sodalis

I'm having a few problems with my Packard Bell EasyNote TM.

I got it Christmas 2010 and a few months afterwards, I was starting to have have problems with programs not responding. It's gotten worse now though, and the computer constantly freezes. At first, I thought it was just Adobe crashing on the internet and causing it to freeze but it's happening to every other program. The computer is also crashing every few weeks.

I'm a college student and this is very annoying as there have been times that I've lost work due to the crashing and the freezing is just a hindrance. It doesn't seem to be a virus as all the anti-virus scans have come up clean.

Any ideas?

holcus

Is it not overheating? can you hear fan working all the time? what antivirus did you use? is it up to date with virus definitions? any strange noises coming from harddrive? test it with HDD tune or similliar Disk testing software.
Can you see it somehow related to moving, or touching certain part of a laptop?
Does it happen with battery taken out or on battery alone?

Ave Sodalis

holcus wrote: »

Is it not overheating? can you hear fan working all the time? what antivirus did you use? is it up to date with virus definitions? any strange noises coming from harddrive? test it with HDD tune or similliar Disk testing software.
Can you see it somehow related to moving, or touching certain part of a laptop?
Does it happen with battery taken out or on battery alone?

Nope, not over heating and yup I can hear the quiet hum of the fan all the time.
I use Avira and ZoneAlarm as anti-virus software and Emsisoft as an anti-malware. Avira updates and runs scans regularly and I run a full scan every month.
No strange noises from Harddrive either. Is there a free version of that? I've looked it up and I don't really fancy paying that much
Nope, the freezing is spontaneous and can happen if I'm using the computer all day or if I've just started it up. It can go hours without freezing once or just 5 mins. Battery doesn't seem to effect it either. It really does seem to be random

holcus

HDD Tune free version directly from manufacturers website:
http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe
When you run it in TAB Health check 05 (Realocated Sector Count) and tell us all values there, then start error scan and check for any changes in Realocated Sector Count after scan

If you hear Fan all the time I would recommend cleaning it from inside. Anyway; 2 years is enough to accumulate a nice "fur" on a heatsink that could stop airflow. Did you notice it freezing more likelly again after you restart from freezed? Or does it also freeze when you are not using it?

You shouldn't be using 2 antiviruses, this can lead to all sorts of problems in operating system. Remove one: Emisoft or Avira and reinstall the other. Or better: you could download MalwareBytes Antimalware, remove both antiviruses, full scan, remove Malwarebytes and then install antivirus of your choice.

First time I missed a part that it crashes as well as freezez. Which applications crash? Is it a blue screen or just info that certain program has stopped working?

Ave Sodalis

holcus wrote: »

HDD Tune free version directly from manufacturers website:
http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe
When you run it in TAB Health check 05 (Realocated Sector Count) and tell us all values there, then start error scan and check for any changes in Realocated Sector Count after scan

If you hear Fan all the time I would recommend cleaning it from inside. Anyway; 2 years is enough to accumulate a nice "fur" on a heatsink that could stop airflow. Did you notice it freezing more likelly again after you restart from freezed? Or does it also freeze when you are not using it?

You shouldn't be using 2 antiviruses, this can lead to all sorts of problems in operating system. Remove one: Emisoft or Avira and reinstall the other. Or better: you could download MalwareBytes Antimalware, remove both antiviruses, full scan, remove Malwarebytes and then install antivirus of your choice.

First time I missed a part that it crashes as well as freezez. Which applications crash? Is it a blue screen or just info that certain program has stopped working?

Thank you! So I ran that scan and TAB 05 has 200, 200, 140, 0, OK
On the error scan there was one damage when it froze again but there was no difference to reallocated sector count.

It freezes when not in use too, if I just have the computer open but working on something else.

I was just given what mum gave me. She's a teacher in IT but couldn't look at my laptop because I'm at uni and she hasn't time when I'm home. She has the same running on her laptop and it works perfectly.

It's a blue screen so the whole computer crashes and has to restart itself

holcus

Hold on, you are saying that it froze on the same time when it encountered error on disk surface? I'm assuming the test did not complete.

Blue Screens usually give good info on a problem.
Download Blue Screen Viewer:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html
(download is on bottom of the page, just before languages)

It's not simple as hdtune to use but you should be ok. Run it and try to save all BSODs from last month, zip them and attach to your post for analysis.

If answer for the 1st question is positive you don't need to do the Blue scren part

Ave Sodalis

holcus wrote: »

Hold on, you are saying that it froze on the same time when it encountered error on disk surface? I'm assuming the test did not complete.

Blue Screens usually give good info on a problem.
Download Blue Screen Viewer:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html
(download is on bottom of the page, just before languages)

It's not simple as hdtune to use but you should be ok. Run it and try to save all BSODs from last month, zip them and attach to your post for analysis.

If answer for the 1st question is positive you don't need to do the Blue scren part

Nope, it froze and then the error showed up. The test continued on afterwards.

holcus

OK so it freezes for some time and then recovers without need to restart.
This BSOD is well described here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/137539
you should check your RAM with Memtest86+

Ave Sodalis

Memtest86+ is having a bit of difficulty installing. Errors keep popping up

holcus

Best if you burn ISO to a CD and boot it independent from Operating System