Toshiba Satellite L555 freezing up! (Tech Head Challenge) Please Help!

Manufacturer: Toshiba
Model: Satellite l555d
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
CPU/Ram: 2.3 GHz / 3838 MB
Video Card: AMD M880G with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200
Sound Card: Realtek High Definition Audio

It's been happening lately. My Toshiba Satellite(windows 7 home permium 64 bits) has been freezing up with multiple, thin, multi-colored lines with a noise similar to when a sound track on a CD sticks or freezes and no mouse response or any kind of response at all. I have to press and hold the power botton and force it to shut down. I noticed it does this more often when I try to play a video game,virus scan,video call on Skype and less frequently on youtube (youtube might just be a coincidence). Sometimes after the computer restarts and I virus scan or Skype then I have no problems. I think it happens when I virus scan or skype when I have both multiple firefox and google chrome windows open at once but I cannot be sure. I've tested the theory a few times but it's inconclusive however I am confident that virus scans or video game are most likely to trigger the freeze even if they are the only thing I have open on the screen.

Sometimes I get that message in the blue box that says "Windows is shutting down to prevent damage to your computer....." The strange thing is that after I force it to shut down if I try to restart it immidiately then it will boot. All the lights will come on except the orange one in the left hand corner,the screen does not come on and windows does not load. If I leave it for 30 minutes or sometimes less after it crashed then it will restart .The funny thing is that I had this problems about 8 months ago when I tried playing a video game called A.V.A. About 2 minutes into play it would freeze with the same noise I mentioned earlier.I repeatedly tried to play the game and it happened every single time and everytime I force shut down the laptop and try to restart it right after then windows will not load and the orange light does not come on. I removed the game and reinstalled it and I never had that problem again.Since I got the laptop it has randomly restarted like 4 times and I've had it for about 1 year and 2 months but now it is just freezing up (mostly) or I get that message in the blue box. At around April of this year the game stopped working. I keep getting error reports when I try to reinstall it and my windows no longer recongnized the digital signature of the company that made the game.

I'm not sure if it's overheating,I have a hard drive or motherboard problem or if it's a software problem. I've tried:
System Restore
Defrag
Disc Clean up

Non of these have helped. I've also tried using SeaTool for Windows to try to look for errors in my hard drive and it has not found any. I've also done that thing where Windows,with the black screen and white text, check through your files for errors and corrupted stuff but that report says that it hasn't found any errors at all. My computer has no slow down in performance that I can notice. It doesn't take long to start up nor does it take long to shut down. I don't get random error reports or anything like that. It works fine except for the freezing bit.

The fan seems to be working just fine and the latop doesn't get that hot. Sometimes it freezes when it's barely warm to the touch and other times it would be significantly warmer but it would not freeze even if I have multiple firefox and googlechrome windows open. Before all of this when my game was working I use to play for hours with the exhaust at the side significantly heating up the desk and the computer would run perfectly without problems except that brief period I mentioned earlier where the game froze 3 minutes in to actually playing the game,reinstalled it and solved the problem. Yesterday it froze on me while I was on skpye and today it froze on me about 5 minutes after windows log in on youtube without the computer getting hot,just barely warm. I just don't get it!

I've try using a vaccum to clean the vents without opening the computer. I've removed and reinserted my memory just incase they were loose and I've also removed and reinserted the hard drive to be sure that it was in properly and that has not stopped the problem either.

N.B. I did do a virus scan with a trial version of Kaspersky Pure that I installed less than a month ago and it does say that I have a virus called "virus heur trojan.script.iframer" and a medium and high risk events. I've tried to remove or quarantine them but nothing happens and when I scan again with Kaspersky Pure or Kaspersky Virus removal tool they find no viruses BUT the trojan report is still there with the option of removing and quanrantine.

As I've said before I've seen no slow down in performance and it works just fine except for the freezing and the blue box message. The only noticeable problem is that both firefox and googlechrome have been just a little,little bit buggy in that sometimes I would have to close down a window and reopen it again because the pages were not loading but that's only on Facebook and a few other websites and I thnk that's because of my internet connection. I've noticed that firefox is a little bit slower than usual but that's it. As I said, I've gotten NO random error reports,not from windows 7 or my browser.

tanujchadha said:

First of all, looking at the issue which you have written, It could be an issue with the video acceleration on the system. Did you try the following:

1) Video Drivers update (from windows update / video card manufacturers website)

2) BIOS Update.

3) Try to run a diagnostic test on the Video card.

4) Try to run a diagnostic test on the memory modules.

As far as the virus is concerned, did you try to run some other utility to scan and check if the system was really infected. Or if you can then uninstall Kaspersky and install Avast and run a boot time scan and check.

Try to update the video card drivers from the following link.

ATI Catalyst

To do a BIOS update use the following link.

Toshiba Support - Homepage

I'll go do that right away and thank so much for the link. I will keep you updated! Once again,thanks for the help.

Groudie said:

tanujchadha said:

First of all, looking at the issue which you have written, It could be an issue with the video acceleration on the system. Did you try the following:

1) Video Drivers update (from windows update / video card manufacturers website)

2) BIOS Update.

3) Try to run a diagnostic test on the Video card.

4) Try to run a diagnostic test on the memory modules.

As far as the virus is concerned, did you try to run some other utility to scan and check if the system was really infected. Or if you can then uninstall Kaspersky and install Avast and run a boot time scan and check.

Try to update the video card drivers from the following link.

ATI Catalyst

To do a BIOS update use the following link.

Toshiba Support - Homepage

I'll go do that right away and thank so much for the link. I will keep you updated! Once again,thanks for the help.

I just did a Driver Scan and it said only 3 were outdated which were:
Realtek Family Control
Realtek Wireless LAN
Realtek USB 2.0 Card Reader


I did the windows memory diagnostics test and it doesn't show any errors.

I could not figure out how to run a test on my video card. Can you suggest a safe and reliable test for me?

I'm having problems with the AMD catalyst display driver. During the installation process it stops and tells me that my hardware/software is incompatible and that I should update,the verson of my graphics adapter is not supported and that I should contact my notebook provider for graphic driver update.... I'll keep working on the issue and see if I can resolve it.

I saw a website called toshiba.driverspro.org. It offers update but I'm not if to trust it. Do you know anything about it?

thanks

For the drivers update using a drivers utility I would say that was a safe bet, but if you can also check Toshiba's website to see if there is any critical driver update for the system.

As far as the video card driver is concerned did u uninstall the drivers from the system and then re-install it. or Did you try to install it from the windows update from Device Manager.

Try to run a diagnostics test on the system use the following link:

How do I Troubleshoot a Toshiba Laptop? | eHow.com

For the video card test use the following utility:

Video Card - Stress Test with Furmark

Did you also try the BIOS update ?

tanujchadha said:

For the drivers update using a drivers utility I would say that was a safe bet, but if you can also check Toshiba's website to see if there is any critical driver update for the system.

As far as the video card driver is concerned did u uninstall the drivers from the system and then re-install it. or Did you try to install it from the windows update from Device Manager.

Try to run a diagnostics test on the system use the following link:

How do I Troubleshoot a Toshiba Laptop? | eHow.com

For the video card test use the following utility:

Video Card - Stress Test with Furmark

Did you also try the BIOS update ?

I think the video card driver was the problem. I used a toshiba application installer I had on my system to update my video card drivers as well as a few like sound,web cam, etc just to be safe and I'm no longer having the problem. I ran a couple of tests.

The first was 3 youtube videos running on gchrome and firefox as well as an anime on another website. Sometimes the anime alone would freeze it before but she worked fine. No Problems at all (that test lasted 30 minutes)

The second was with 3 youtube videos and an anime video along with a virus scan all at once..... It didn't freeze and this was done immediately after the first test. ( test lasted for about an hour)

The third was done later on during the day. I had 3, one hour long youtube videos running, an anime on another website, a full virus scan and skype without video calling. She worked fine. No problems at all. ( test lasted for a little over an hour)

The last test was done right after as I wanted the system to still be "hot" from the last test so that I can add more pressure to push it a bit just to eliminate the possibility of overheating. I had the 3 youtube videos,the anime,virus scan,video call on skype and msn open while being active on the computer browsing and stuff and nothing happened. She worked just fine. She got warm and her fans were running at full power but it didn't freeze or shut down. ( test lasted for about 1 hour and 30 minutes)

With that said it doesn't look like it's a overheating problem at all. I never would have thought that a video card driver would be the cause but you learn something new everyday.

I have not done the BIOS update yet. I wanted to leave my system as it is now for 2 weeks just to make sure it was the video card driver problem. I'll monitor my computer for a little bit then do that update.

I'll keep you posted.