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Dell Vostro 1720 keeps freezing and it's really pissing me off!

amateurhouramateurhour One day I'll be professionalhourThe woods somewhere in TennesseeRegistered User regular
edited July 2011 in Help / Advice Forum
So I've got a dell Vostro 1720 that's out of warranty and it's running win7 home premium (legit OEM install) and it suddenly just started freezing somewhere between the welcome screen and immediately after login. It just completely locks up and the fan starts spinning loudly and closing the case won't put it to sleep. It went from happening every so often, like once a week or less, to every third time I turn it on to now every single time. I'm typing this from my wife's laptop because I haven't been able to get to mine for two days now.

Any help would me much appreciated. Thanks!

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    The Crowing OneThe Crowing One Registered User regular
    The first thing you'll probably want to do is run a boot scan for malware/viruses. I tend to use AVG, but I think there are a few others out there. That'll rule out malicious third-party crap.

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    tardcoretardcore Registered User regular
    Possibly something is overheating? Is it getting hotter than usual?

    Also, you should perform a Ram check.
    http://www.memtest.org/

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    The Crowing OneThe Crowing One Registered User regular
    tardcore wrote:
    Possibly something is overheating? Is it getting hotter than usual?

    The fans are going crazy when it freezes, right? I think that overheating is a good candidate. Opening the case and cleaning the fans could help.

    In my own experience, I've been keeping an old 2005 Inspiron6000 running for years now with little tweaks and repairs. I was having this issue a few years ago and it was mostly resolved when I wiped and reinstalled the OS. You seem far from that point, though.

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    ThanatosThanatos Registered User regular
    Have you tried booting into safe mode?

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    amateurhouramateurhour One day I'll be professionalhour The woods somewhere in TennesseeRegistered User regular
    Yeah I can boot into safe mode, so I don't think it's a corrupted OS install. I honestly think it's just overheating or something, but I wasn't sure and google hasn't been any help today. I'm going to try taking it apart and cleaning it out today to see if that helps, and hopefully it's not proper fucked.

    It's not a virus or malware. I keep that pretty locked down and run a daily scan with windows defender and a weekly AVG/Spybot scan before the automated backup kicks in. I'd just restore to a previous backup if I could get the damn thing to boot properly. I don't think I can run the backup from safe mode.

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    amateurhouramateurhour One day I'll be professionalhour The woods somewhere in TennesseeRegistered User regular
    ...aaaaand now I'm miraculously in with no issues. CPU seems to be running fine and laptop is nice and cool...

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    ThanatosThanatos Registered User regular
    I'd strongly suggest backing up everything. Laptops are not known for their long-term viability.

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Penny Arcade Forums› Help / Advice Forum