Gateway laptop locking up and other fun weird things...

Warm weather greetings forum members!

I'm writing this on behalf of a friend, so I might not have all the details.

So a few months ago, one of my friends was having issues with his laptop freezing up randomly. He said that using google chrome was freezing the laptop up. He came down to visit from university and I checked it out. At the time, he had McAfee internet protection, which was causing a serious file issue where the libraries were being hidden and other files as well. I resolved that problem earlier, but it came about again. I decided to search for all of his files and back them up and I THOROUGHLY wiped down the hard drive, which took about eight hours. I later reinstalled Windows 7 on it and made sure everything was running fine. I have AVG free installed with IE9 updated and no chrome on it. I checked the hard drive, RAM and system stability, everything came out fine.

Today, he was telling me that his laptop was freezing up again. He says that just watching a video in chrome, IE9, or firefox will do it. And by his laptop, he means Windows isn't responding, no mouse pointer movement, Ctrl Alt Delete doesn't do anything, and he has to kill the power manually and reboot.

I am stumped. When I had it, I found no issue with it. Videos were playing fine in IE, everything was working correctly. He thinks that the internet connection at his university might be doing something, but I don't think so. My only idea is something with Adobe Flash player is screwing with something.

Anyone have any ideas or suggestions? Thanks!

Did you check the memory and other hardware?

RAM - Test with Memtest86+ for 5-6 passes.

Run HD maker's HD Diagnostic extended CD scan followed by Disk Check

No one here recommends AVG bloatware. Use Microsoft Security Essentials with Win7 firewall kept updated.

Establish a clean boot, check the logs for repeat errors and use System Resources to check for problems and solutions and other steps here for Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7

I've already done RAM and hard drive checks. I think, but I don't remember if I did do a stress test. That could possibly expose something.

I've already done most of the troubleshooting steps except for Process Monitor...

I doubt there could be an issue with Windows since the problem happens, according to my friend, when a YouTube video is playing or even on Pandora.

Coke Robot said:

I've already done RAM and hard drive checks. I think, but I don't remember if I did do a stress test. That could possibly expose something.

I've already done most of the troubleshooting steps except for Process Monitor...

Click to expand...

Also try Process Explorer...