7 freezes after 10 minutes

tankjeepman · 04 Oct 2015

I have 7 running on a Sony laptop. After 5 to 15 minutes, it freezes. Everything just stops, no blue screen, no response from keyboard or mouse. Ctl, alt del does nothing. Hard Drive light is on. Hard shutdown is the only way to get it off. I have been able to run virus check and found nothing. It won't stay up long enough to do a dish scan or upgrade it to Windows 10. I am a basic end user who can use the standard tools but I am not into the internals of a PC. Any help would be appreciated.

ThrashZone · 05 Oct 2015

Hi and welcome to SevenForums,
You might review this and use safe mode and safe mode with networking to see what happens,
Safe Mode

If things improve use clean boot,
Troubleshoot Application Conflicts by Performing a Clean Startup
Click Start and type in the search box,
msconfig
Click on the suggestion on top or hit the Enter key,
Go to the Startup section and take some screen shots for a complete list,
Go to the Services section and on the bottom left Check the box to Hide All Microsoft services,
Repeat the screen shots,
See the links above my signature on how to take and upload screen shots here,
Cheers.

MilesAhead · 05 Oct 2015

Often when something locks up hard a short time after starting the machine it is a hardware fault. I used to get this after installing cheap network cards. After 10 to 20 minutes even if the PC was just idling, it would hard lock. I bought a different network card and the problem went away.

When the component heats up it locks up. When you leave the machine off for awhile then start it, the component has cooled down so it will run until it heats up again.

Which component you will have to trouble shoot. Have you changed any hardware recently?

tankjeepman · 07 Oct 2015

I tried the safe mode with network boot and no change. I have made no hardware changes or added any software. What else might I try? Thanks for you help.

RVAH12 · 07 Oct 2015

My guess is that it may be a thermal shutdown. How old is the laptop? Maybe it needs a good dusting, or a fan/cooler has failed or air-flow is blocked in some way. Can you find any errors logged in Console? There must be error logs with respect to the problem. Perhaps an IRQ conflict, or some other error that it can't recover from? Just guessing, the last laptops that I used were over 15 years ago, so what do I know anyway. See link: https://esupport.sony.com/US/p/model...?mdl=VPCF11KFX
Good luck.

tankjeepman · 08 Oct 2015

I will take a look at this. This is a 2010 model. I have used a chill mat for some time as it has always gotten very warm when setting on my lap. This may be the issue. When it freezes, the hard drive is running and the fan is running blowing lots of very warm/hot air out the side.

How do you look at the error logs? I will check the sony site and see if they are any help.