Racer's Lounge - Laptop is Constantly Freezing!

Well I am curious if anyone could help me track down why our 15R/M5010 is constantly freezing.
It will either freeze while its booting up or just randomly when using the notebook(typing a word document, surfing the web, etc.).
And when it freezes it wont let you do anything for about 10-15 minutes.
Once it stops freezing it will work real quick and nice(how it should be doing at all times).
The mouse will not move at all either when it freezes.

I am curious if its a hardware issue or if its a software issue. :confused: :confused:

I decided to try to upgrade the RAM to 8 GB but it did not make a difference.

The computers specs are here:

Dell 15R/M5010R with a AMD Athlon II Dual Core P320 2.1GHz, 8gb ram ddr3, 320gb HDD (5400rpm), and Windows 7 Premium 64-bit.

Any Info would be greatly appreciated!

Sounds like the hard drive, but I'd have to mess with it more to be sure. I was going to say that the processor was pegged, but I can't see that being true for 10-15 minutes.

have you checked for viruses? did it do this when you bought it? do you have restore disc?

easy way to tell, wipe the hard drive and install a fresh OS. If the problems continue then you know it's hardware, if they go away then it's fixed and you know it was software.

I work on computers for a living.

If this is a Vista or Windows 7 install, make sure to first make sure the computer is set to High Performance in the power options menu.

If not the computer will constatnly try and turn off the HD, many older HD have problems with this setting.

If this is a Dell ensure that the BIOS settings have the Hard drive set to
"performance" this will ensure it does not have any interference from outside of your OS.

Run you usual Malwarebytes scan and see if anything is running in the background that shouldn't.

If all else fails, try a fresh install.

can be a lot of things. i would look for a hard drive issue. run a disc scan for hard drive errors and defragment it. can also be virtual memory being low or you are running so many processes that your ram is taken up. check how much memory you have free on the hard drive. only other thing i can think of is a bios error, a driver conflict, windows issue, or a virus.

I work on computers for a living.

If this is a Vista or Windows 7 install, make sure to first make sure the computer is set to High Performance in the power options menu.

If not the computer will constatnly try and turn off the HD, many older HD have problems with this setting.

If this is a Dell ensure that the BIOS settings have the Hard drive set to
"performance" this will ensure it does not have any interference from outside of your OS.

Run you usual Malwarebytes scan and see if anything is running in the background that shouldn't.

If all else fails, try a fresh install.

Thanks for the info!
I was wondering how would I set the BIOS Settings to "Performance"?

I have heard that certain dvd drivers can cause this. What is yours?

But here is my advice.

1. Right click My Computer.
2. Select Properties.
3. Click Advanced System Settings link at the left hand side of the window.
4. Click Advanced tab.
5. In Performance frame, click Settings button.
6. Select the option Adjust for best performance and click OK | OK.

• Block the start-ups and services
• Defragment the disks
• Defragment your registry
• Disinfect the system
• Improve Speed through Reginout

I might've suggested a heat issue but you say it happens during boot-up too. I say you re-install the OS; as a Windows user you should be doing that every 6 months or so anyway, lol...

A couple of things first:


How long ago did the problem start happening? Has it always done this?
Stupidly enough, check the system time and date. Windows has some funky things happen if those are not correct.
Ensure you are using the laptop in a way that the cooling fan is ventilated (I can't tell you the number of people whining about laptop not working after using in their bed and cooling fan is blocked by a fuzzy blanket).
How often does it freeze? Just the once after boot up? Do you have perfomance or maintenance items scheduled (like checkdisk or defrag?). If that's not the case, when WAS the last time you ran those?
Is all the memory swappable? Or is some of it built onto the board? If it is all swappable, take out the original chips and try to run on just the new stuff.
As mentioned, anti-virus/malware?