Visionz

So my laptop here at work keeps locking up and the only way to do anything is to force it to power down and boot back up. The error logs dont show anything, and tech support here isnt very much help. So I'm wondering if maybe anyone here can point me in the right direction to what could be causing it. It does it after about 10-20 min at a time. Here are my specs:



- 6 month old Dell Inspiron

- 4 GB of RAM

- 450 GB HD (403 free)

- Windows 7 Professional

- Intel i5 processor

- Following things open: Outlook, 3 Firefox 3.6.18 browsers, plus 2 word docs

- Windows updates and browser updates are current

- Locks up whether I'm connected to the LAN or on wireless

- No common work attribute is connected to making it lock up

- Error & registry logs show nothing

- BiOS was updated about 3 months ago





It does this every couple of months too. After forcing it to shut down about 9-10 times through out the day, it will automatically start working fine again with no lock ups for another couple of months and then start doing it again.



OH, and before DTN comes in here and tells me to use









Just remember, this is a laptop supplied by my company and was intended to be a work horse (hence the i5 processor), and do everything needed. 100% of the computers & servers here are all running windows.

DTN

The most common cause of lock ups are memory errors.... um... there's an option on startup in Ubuntu to check for memory erros.

The next most common cause of lock ups are disk errors..... um... There's a "Disk utility" in Ubuntu that will check SMART status as well as test the entire hard disk for errors...

Sorry... This is the reason I recommend everyone have a copy of Ubuntu on a flash drive for diagnostic purposes. You can boot the computer once from a Ubuntu Live USB drive, figure out what's going wrong, then fix it.



Check your bios to see if you have any memory or disk test options.... Some computers have this. Don't count on it....

You could always try inserting the recovery disk from your computer's manufacturer and see if they have any options.. It's possible...

Windows has the chkdsk utility you can always use http://www.vistax64....sk-utility.html but it does not do SMART....

187sks

Type "CMD" in the Start Menu's Search Programs and Files box and hit enter.



Type "chkdsk c: /f /r" and hit enter. If C is not your main drive's letter then use the correct drive letter.



It should take quite a while to scan. Probably +/- 1 hour. If this doesn't work post back.