HP laptop freezing randomly

[Inya500]

Hello all, I own an HP Pavilion dv6, I got it last Sunday from a friend. Everything worked great until yesterday, it started randomly freezing, it didn't respond to the keyboard and the cursor was frozen as well; the only thing I could do was restart. I've ran memory tests, changed the ram, even reset it to factory settings but nothing has worked.

I've ran chkdsk a few times as well, but no avail. Is there anything I can do to possibly fix this?

 

[alphanumeric]

Go into the Power settings in Control Panel and turn off Sleep and hibernate, Put it in the Power User always on setup. Then see what happens. If it stops locking up then its a sleep or hibernate issue where its not coming back out again. If it gets worse then it may be overheating do to lack of cooling. It may be a good idea to run some diagnostics on the hard drive. You can get those on the drive makers web site.

 

[Inya500]

Go into the Power settings in Control Panel and turn off Sleep and hibernate, Put it in the Power User always on setup. Then see what happens. If it stops locking up then its a sleep or hibernate issue where its not coming back out again. If it gets worse then it may be overheating do to lack of cooling. It may be a good idea to run some diagnostics on the hard drive. You can get those on the drive makers web site.

It ran well for a few moments, though it froze again unfortunately. I don't think it's a hibernate/sleep issue. I have a cooling pad, but it still seems to get rather hot. It could be an overheating issue. At the moment I'm running a Primary Hard Disk Self Test from the Bios, I will post the results when finished.

 

[Inya500]

The test passed, I can only assume that it's a overheating issue. What can I do to remedy this? Should I just get someone to take it apart to clean? Is there a cooling gel that I need perhaps?

 

[alphanumeric]

You can buy small cans of compressed air at places like Staples, etc that can be used to blow the dust out of the cooling ducts. If the fan is really gunked up you may have to take to a computer repair shop to have it looked at. You could try opening it up your self but be warned its no easy job. I'd hunt up a service manual so you can see where all the screws are etc before you even try it.

 

[Inya500]

You can buy small cans of compressed air at places like Staples, etc that can be used to blow the dust out of the cooling ducts. If the fan is really gunked up you may have to take to a computer repair shop to have it looked at. You could try opening it up your self but be warned its no easy job. I'd hunt up a service manual so you can see where all the screws are etc before you even try it.

So we got it taken apart and aired out, but it still froze. This is rather saddening, is there anything else I could possibly do? Or should I just take it to a repair shop?

 

[alphanumeric]

About the only thing that you "might" be able to do is replace the thermal compound on the CPU heat sink. If it is an overheating issue that "might" fix it. Its really hard to say what the issue is, I'm really just guessing based on what you say. I think I would still run the hard drive diagnostic from the hard drive manufacturer. It should be a more detailed test to really rule out a hard drive fault. I've seen drives pass the quick test but fail the full more detailed test.

 

[Inya500]

Okay, I'm updating the things that I've done so far. I took the laptop to Staples and they ran their diagnostics system on it. Unfortunately nothing was found. I've disabled all start up programs and even tried lessening the power that the processor uses. Still no fix. I will attempt the thermal compound thing as soon as I get the funds for it. I hope this works, so far we've tried almost everything and it still freezes.

 

[gregrocker]

Check the temperatures first so you know for sure if that's responsible: Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7.

Then you can either work through the other Steps to go over it thoroughly, or skip to doing a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 to replace the HP factory preinstall which is the worst possible install of Win7 one can have, larded with bloatware and duplicate utilities which interfere with better versions built into WIn7.