help diagnosing laptop problem

dealhunter1985

Hi Guys
I have a Toshiba Satellite A500 15m I bought I guess 3 years ago and since a few months, its been locking up all of a sudden at random times..
Sometimes it would occur at the windows logon screen. Othertimes it would work fine for 10 minutes and then lock up.
There seems to be no consistency as to when it occurs.

Whats really strange is I havent used the laptop in a couple of months.
I took it out yesterday and switched it on and it doesnt seem to lock up as much anymore. Infact the only way I can get it to lock up now is by for example transferring files from the computer to a USB device. It starts copying fine but then just times out and the computer locks up.
This was only transferring a gig of data. My hard drive is divided into 3 partitions. I copied 40 gigs from one partition to the other successfully so it seems to be a problem when the USB is involved.

Would anyone have any suggestions on where to go from here.. How to idenfity the exact route cause so i can look into getting it fixed if at all possible. Its a great laptop and I would prefer to spend a couple of hundred euro getting it fixed instead of buying a new one..

tnx for reading!

Owenw

Cover the basics:

Run Windows check disk, check for latest drivers and Windows updates.
Run anti-virus, malware & adware removal utilities.

Run a basic diagnostics to see if anything obvious shows up (e.g. cooling fan failure):
http://www.aida64.com/downloads/a64xe (30 day free trial)

Toshiba diag tools:
http://support.toshiba.com/support/family?fname=Satellite

Google the problem, it may be common and solved or at least diagnosed.

Look up the Toshiba support forums:
http://forums.computers.toshiba-europe.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=58

Find a good IT repair guy or contact Toshiba (probably the most expensive last resort option) :
http://www.toshiba.ie/innovation/generic/computing-support/

hth