Laptop keeps freezing up for a few seconds at a time.

TubularLuggage

My laptop of two years has recently developed a strange problem.
As of yesterday, it frequently freezes up for a few seconds, though the cursor can still be moved around. I ran a virus scan which came up empty, and I haven't used my laptop for anything lately other than very standard things (web browsing (sites I regularly visit), word processing, watching videos, etc).
Technically I can still use it, but you can imagine how irritating it would be to have it freeze up for a few seconds every minute or two.

It's an HP Pavilion dv6000
Windows Vista
AMD Turion64 x2
nvidia7200GO video card
2GB Memory

It happens no matter what I'm running. Any thoughts?

Mustachio Jones

I'm assuming normal use; light transportation here or there.

Open up a command prompt:

chkdsk

You could run it with /f or /r after it, but in the event there's an issue and it tries to fix it, you could lose the data on the block that it fixes, so just scan it first. Alternatively, event viewer will have a log of system errors. Give that a glance, as it could be something else.

It sounds like there's a bad block on the disk where Windows is trying to keep its page file.

TubularLuggage

Mustachio Jones wrote: »

I'm assuming normal use; light transportation here or there.

Open up a command prompt:

chkdsk

You could run it with /f or /r after it, but in the event there's an issue and it tries to fix it, you could lose the data on the block that it fixes, so just scan it first. Alternatively, event viewer will have a log of system errors. Give that a glance, as it could be something else.

It sounds like there's a bad block on the disk where Windows is trying to keep its page file.

I did that, and it seems to be running smoothly now.
Thank-you.

Mustachio Jones

While likely not an immediate concern, I would probably look into backing everything up in the event the hard drive decides to play for keeps and take all your data with it.

A bad block is a sign of a disk rounding the toilet. Could be another year before it eats it, but take this as a warning and take the necessary steps to ensure you've got all your stuff somewhere just in case.

Torque Monkey

I'd definitely agree with Mr. Jones here, a backup as a precautionary measure is always a good idea, especially when chkdsk has good results. If you want to be thorough, you may try burning a copy of http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools and running that to confirm that there are/are not HDD errors detected.

TubularLuggage

Definitely in agreement about frequent backups. Always a good idea.