Win 7 freezes a few minutes after booting, tried factory reset

bevmacco · 17 Jan 2016

My machine started about 4 days ago freezing about 30 minutes after startup. My son is more computer literate than I am so he helped me. We tried system restore which made things better to begin with, but then would start freezing again quickly. Of course we tried to run all scans, Avast, McAfee, and Malwarebytes. Those that would run came up clean but the some just froze up, even in safe mode. Finally, son did a factory reset which helped for a bit but not long. Right now, I can not get Task Manager to come up in Normal mode but it will in Safe mode. Excel and Libre Office open but will freeze up faster the more speadsheets I open. Excel goes away faster than Libre. I have to do a hard shut down and reboot to get it to come back up. I know I have probably forgotten some things, but we need help desperately. NO BSOD thankfully, but may not matter. I have loved this laptop (Lenovo Z575) and I really can't afford a new one anytime soon. Thanks in advance.

Mellon Head · 17 Jan 2016

Welcome to the forums, Bev.

It might be a couple of things. One is easy to fix, the other not so easy. The not so easy thing is that it might be overheating and freezing up. For that you would have to take your laptop to a shop to have it professionally cleaned and new thermal paste applied to the processor and GPU. I don't know how much that would cost where you are.

The easier thing to deal with, and something that you should do first is to properly test the memory in case it is failing. Here, we like to use a program called Memtest86+ to test the memory. It's a program that you download and burn to a CD or DVD, or to a pen drive. You boot from the CD/DVD or pen drive and it tests your memory for you. Let it run as long as it will go, preferably at least eight passes and see if there are any errors. Here is the link for the program:

Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

It sounds to me like you're having a memory problem. Definitely test that and see how you make out. Post back with the results, please, so we can advise if there is a problem.

bevmacco · 18 Jan 2016

Thanks so much for the suggestion, Mellon Head. I will give it a try later today and let you know how it goes. Actually, my laptop is working better the last few hours so who knows

torchwood · 18 Jan 2016

According to your specs your Running 2 AV's, thats a NO NO and likely causing your problem, if i was you id dump Macafee.

Roy

bevmacco · 19 Jan 2016

Thanks Roy. I have uninstalled McAfee.

paul1149 · 19 Jan 2016

See if McAfee has an uninstall utility, because the regular uninstaller leaves a lot of running processes behind.

Blowing out the radiator is my first response. You can do it with compressed air (50# max), or a can of compressed air. The thermal paste if often not necessary.

The download CCleaner and go to the Tools / startup tab. Uncheck anything that you don't need running. Go slow if not sure, but usually any mistakes can be corrected. It's not a bad idea to create a Restore Point before doing so, at Control Panel / System / System Protection. Open Task Manager and see how much CPU the machine uses at idle. Run the cleaner part of CCleaner and then defrag the hard drive.

If the problem still persists I would test the hard drive.