Please help me solve the following problem: Powerpoint freezes during presentations.

Joe Camacho MKII

Hello guys, hopefully this is the correct subforum.

I have been having the following problem for months now, and I am starting to think it is a hardware problem, but I would like your opinions about it.

I have an ASUS TP201SA laptop. Bought it last year, around Jan 2017. Small, not very powerful, but it suits my work needs. I work as an attorney and as a teacher, so Office and basic internet browsing is more than enough. I really like it's size and battery life. I have been a fan of netbooks for years so I wanted a new laptop with a similar size. Could use more ram, currently has 4 gbs, but I am not sure if it can use anymore.

Obviously, as soon as I got it, I installed the latest Office I could, Office 2013. And all was good, a bit slow, compared to my main computer, but I understand. The problems started appearing when I used powerpoint during my clases. I regularly use my computer, for HOURS, and it does not freeze or hang, usually typing stuff or surfing the web. But when I use it during class, there is a chance it will freeze, and I haven't been able to replicate the problem. Sometimes it won't freeze, sometimes it will freeze once or even several times during class. I am not able to return to desktop, I have to manually turn it off and on again.

Things I have tried:
Changing the HDMI cable.
Running it with different mouse devices/without a mouse.
Uninstalled Office 2013 and installed Office 2016.
Running the proyector as a duplicated screen.
Running the proyector as an extended screen.
Changing the proyector.

Sometimes, I think I have felt the computer is unually hot, but not everytime it freezes. Maybe it is overheating?

Thinks I haven't tried but might work?
Use a fan pad to blow air to cool it off during presentations. (to prevent it from overheating?)
Try and get more ram for it. (I don't know if it possible to do so, as if the laptop can handle more)

Well, that is all I can think of regarding my problem. I hope you guys can help me figure out this problem, I seriously don't want to buy a new computer.

Thanks for the help!

LD50

If it is an overheating issue, you might have some luck using compressed air to dust out the heatsink and fan assembly.

Joe Camacho MKII

LD50 wrote: »

If it is an overheating issue, you might have some luck using compressed air to dust out the heatsink and fan assembly.

Thanks for your help! The thing is, it is one of those small laptop/tablet kind of hybrid computer; so I can't* use compressed air on the air vents*; at least not without dissasembling the laptop. But it might be worth trying!

LD50

I'm not familiar with how easy or difficult it is to service that model of laptop. With mine, it's pretty easy to pull off the bottom panel and have easy access to the heat sink. I've seen HP models that getting to the assembly is worse than going to the dentist.

Shadowfire

It's only crashing in office, and PowerPoint in particular?

My gut would be to remove office entirely and reinstall it. Don't just uninstall through control panel, use the office removal tool.

https://aka.ms/diag_officeuninstall

Joe Camacho MKII

Shadowfire wrote: »

It's only crashing in office, and PowerPoint in particular?

My gut would be to remove office entirely and reinstall it. Don't just uninstall through control panel, use the office removal tool.

https://aka.ms/diag_officeuninstall

Yeah, and not using powerpoint, using it on presentation mode while proyecting. I have tried letting the computer sit on presentation mode by itself and it did not freeze.

I might try your solution, but I need some down time from work. Thanks!

wunderbar

You're probably overtaxing the device. Looking it up, it's running a Celeron dual core processor. And even at 4GB of ram, if you have a bunch of background tasks that'll eat the ram.

My best guess is that you are encountering thermal issues because it doesn't take much to pin that processor to 100%. On a older similar device I had, If I ever maxxed out the processor for more than a few seconds it would throttle down all the way to 500mhz, which made windows unusable. Once the processor cools down, it'll throttle back up to regular speed.

In this case, it could be that you're hitting the GPU and not CPU, and that can still cause thermal issues.

Joe Camacho MKII

wunderbar wrote: »

You're probably overtaxing the device. Looking it up, it's running a Celeron dual core processor. And even at 4GB of ram, if you have a bunch of background tasks that'll eat the ram.

My best guess is that you are encountering thermal issues because it doesn't take much to pin that processor to 100%. On a older similar device I had, If I ever maxxed out the processor for more than a few seconds it would throttle down all the way to 500mhz, which made windows unusable. Once the processor cools down, it'll throttle back up to regular speed.

In this case, it could be that you're hitting the GPU and not CPU, and that can still cause thermal issues.

Would getting more ram help in any way? Or is it exclusively a heating issue?

Thanks for your help!

Zilla360

Have you tried LibreOffice?
If your presentations freeze up using that as well we can definitely pin it down to being a hardware problem.

Joe Camacho MKII

Zilla360 wrote: »

Have you tried LibreOffice?
If your presentations freeze up using that as well we can definitely pin it down to being a hardware problem.

I haven't actually. Might as well try! It would be easier to finally discard and software problems.

Thanks!

Joe Camacho MKII

Update: Sorry for the double post, but I just had my second class yesterday using libreoffice impress to proyect my slides and my computer did not freeze. My monday and tuesday classes are in different classrooms with different Air Conditioning (One doesn't feel as cold as the other), so I wanted test it during both classes before reporting. Did not used a cooling pad.

Hopefully it won't freeze again! Thanks for the help @Zilla360 !