Paddy Galore! Posted September 4, 2010 Report Share Posted September 4, 2010 hi chaps, having some trouble with the ol' pooter. Now contrary to the title i'm not expecting any miracles but, anyone know how to fix laptops? the screen keeps freezing every 20mins or so, done a diagnostic and nothing shows, did a scan, diddly squat, uninstalled a load of old toot that might help free up some memory but no joy, it's a lot better than it was but still not up to scratch. A friend of mine recommended to uninstall vista entirely and install XP, it did sound like a chore and he wasn't keen to do it even after i fixed his mower It did leave me wondering tho, is it worth it and how much could i expect to pay to have it done? thanks for any help fellas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lspencer Posted September 4, 2010 Report Share Posted September 4, 2010 Put your vista disc bin the computer and follow the on screen instructions. When asked do you want to 'New Install' or 'Repair' choose Repair.Usually solves any bugs or glitches. Hope this helps Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paddy Galore! Posted September 4, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 4, 2010 Put your vista disc bin the computer and follow the on screen instructions. When asked do you want to 'New Install' or 'Repair' choose Repair.Usually solves any bugs or glitches.Hope this helps don't have a disk mate, it came pre installed. i'll try getting an online scan but apparently it doesn't have enough memory to cope according to my neighbour, that's why we uninstalled all the stuff i dont need, approx 50% of the vista memory is free (55meg) and 95% of the data memory is free (53meg) just not understanding why it's playing up all of a sudden? I was worried i'd picked up a virus but the scan is clear. should i just bin it? thanks for the reply tho. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lspencer Posted September 4, 2010 Report Share Posted September 4, 2010 No dont bin it. Have you tried running a full disc frag on it? Otherwise take it in to a repair shop (Not PC World, they are robbery) and they should performe a diagnosis of the problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigrob Posted September 4, 2010 Report Share Posted September 4, 2010 Do what spencer said - get a disc off E.bay - I did this and it works - bigrob. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neels Posted September 4, 2010 Report Share Posted September 4, 2010 Hiya mate Not sure I get all of that (55meg is not a lot at all), but have you tried re-installing the screen drivers? Should be able to get that off the net How old is the laptop, what did you do just before it started playing up, ...... Neels don't have a disk mate, it came pre installed. i'll try getting an online scan but apparently it doesn't have enough memory to cope according to my neighbour, that's why we uninstalled all the stuff i dont need, approx 50% of the vista memory is free (55meg) and 95% of the data memory is free (53meg) just not understanding why it's playing up all of a sudden? I was worried i'd picked up a virus but the scan is clear. should i just bin it? thanks for the reply tho. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paddy Galore! Posted September 4, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 4, 2010 No dont bin it. Have you tried running a full disc frag on it? Otherwise take it in to a repair shop (Not PC World, they are robbery) and they should performe a diagnosis of the problem. I think so, windows diagnostic tool, and a toshiba diagnostic tool, even been through all of it manually. Scanned everything, individually, uninstalled the vodafone stuff and reinstalled from the original disc. Do what spencer said - get a disc off E.bay - I did this and it works - bigrob. thanks guys, will do, would you recommend vista again or go back to XP? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lspencer Posted September 4, 2010 Report Share Posted September 4, 2010 Run vista on my laptop and xp on desktop, find both are sound.Its user preference Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silpig5 Posted September 4, 2010 Report Share Posted September 4, 2010 graham , if you only surf and email and such stuff , bin vista and install xp . if you do lots of gumf on a pewter and really need vista , take it to andy at norwich computers top off magdelen st , tell him yr my mate and he will get you rocking again as cheap as he can . adi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paddy Galore! Posted September 4, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 4, 2010 Hiya mate Not sure I get all of that (55meg is not a lot at all), but have you tried re-installing the screen drivers? Should be able to get that off the net How old is the laptop, what did you do just before it started playing up, ...... Neels Hi neels, no not a lot of memory, only 120gig memory in total, split between vista and another drive. it was a cheap deal i got with vodafone 2 years ago. as i remember i'd just installed a few updates, it worked fine for the rest of the night but had problems starting the next morning. got a load of squit from vodafone so no help there, talked with my neighbour who does stuff like this for a living, doesn't know vista very well tho Adi, you're a gent, most of my time on the web is PW time, so maybe XP is the way to go Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paddy Galore! Posted September 4, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 4, 2010 Just checked thru files, disk defrag is set to occur once every week, last defrag was last weds, did a miny clean up of files while i was there saved another 6gig. every little helps i guess Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paddy Galore! Posted September 4, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 4, 2010 I wish my wife went down on me this often Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclemicky Posted September 4, 2010 Report Share Posted September 4, 2010 Gram have you tried "system restore" to when it did not freeze up , Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sinistercr0c Posted September 5, 2010 Report Share Posted September 5, 2010 (edited) Gram, you need to understand that there is a difference between memeory and disc space. Your system will be suffering (most likely) from a lack of memory, not disc space, so there is limited value in clearing out loads of space on your hard drive. A regular disc defrag is a good thing, but in order for you to see what is causing your computer to freeze, you need to run task manager and keep it running as a minimised window on your desktop until you get the problem when hopefully you can look at it. This is easy to do as follows: Right click on the taskbar (blue bar at the bottom of your screen). This will bring up a picklist from which you can click on 'task Manager' Task manager has a number of tabs (Applications, Processes, Performance, Networking). Click on the performance tab and you get a nice realtime graph of the performance utilisation of your CPU and memeory. It is likely that when your system freezes, your performance graph hits 100%. If this is the case then click on the processes tab and then click on the CPU column title until your processes are listed by their utilisation (normally system idle is at the top with 99% of the CPU if nothing is going on with the PC) If there is a process which kicks in and eats all your CPU, you will see it at the top of the processes list. Make a note of the process name and then google it or post it here. It may well be some crappy software (i've had this in the past) or your antivirus kicking in to do a scan on files. Let me know if this helps. As others have said, you could load XP but given the time and hassle, its easier to find and fix your vista issue I would say. Cheers! Edited September 5, 2010 by Sinistercr0c Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DSPUK Posted September 5, 2010 Report Share Posted September 5, 2010 Download Linux Mint to CD - fomat your HD and load Linux - hell of lot quicker than windus and you still have Firefox to use as browser - also more secure, Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paddy Galore! Posted September 5, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2010 ok, deffo a memory problem been browsing thru the log and it's been struggling since the day i bought it by the look of things, would one of those add on hard drives sort it? or can i add something to the inside? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UKPoacher Posted September 5, 2010 Report Share Posted September 5, 2010 What RAM have you got? If it's less than 1.5 Gb then I'll wager that's your problem. You can buy RAM upgrades online and fit them yourself in minutes. My Laptop had 1 Gb of RAM straight from the shop and was always freezing and crashing with Vista. I was pulling my hair out and tried all these remedies to no avail. I then put two 2 Gb cards in, total cost around £25 and it is like a new machine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paddy Galore! Posted September 5, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2010 What RAM have you got? If it's less than 1.5 Gb then I'll wager that's your problem. You can buy RAM upgrades online and fit them yourself in minutes. My Laptop had 1 Gb of RAM straight from the shop and was always freezing and crashing with Vista. I was pulling my hair out and tried all these remedies to no avail. I then put two 2 Gb cards in, total cost around £25 and it is like a new machine. Bingo! same here chap, 1gb ram & 120gb mem. downloaded a load of free repairs online, don't know how good they really are but according to them they've cleaned and repaired quite a few errors, only problem is they won't do all of them for free. i'm gonna take silpig5's advice and see his mate to find out a few more things (price especially) and go from there, i'll ask him about adding some more gizmos while i'm at it. Fingers crossed but it hasn't frozen for about 3hrs so far.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ST3V3 Posted September 5, 2010 Report Share Posted September 5, 2010 the problem isnt the 120gb hard drive its the 1gb of ram it needs more look underneath the lap top there will be a panel that comes oot proberly couple of screws holding the panel on and a picture of what looks like a spider with a square body. take this panel off and youll see a circuit board approx 2.5" by .75" this just clips in there should be at least 1 other empty slot next to it get another stick of memory and put it in the empty slot job done. if you were local i would do it for you and supply the memory as have a few sat around that would sort it. steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paddy Galore! Posted September 5, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2010 Once again PW comes up trumps, thanks again for all the help and advice, and a big thanks for the offers to sort the flippin thing for me. It nearly got a good hiding with a big stick but i'm glad i didn't cos it looks like it can be sorted. Cheers boys atb, gram. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nobby63 Posted September 5, 2010 Report Share Posted September 5, 2010 Hi Chaps ! Would like to help but need to know some details first has this lappy been up graded from xp to vista ? when talking about memory ? do you want RAM memory or HARD DRIVE free space ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nobby63 Posted September 5, 2010 Report Share Posted September 5, 2010 Good time to missout ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paddy Galore! Posted September 5, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2010 Hi Chaps ! Would like to help but need to know some details first has this lappy been up graded from xp to vista ? when talking about memory ? do you want RAM memory or HARD DRIVE free space ? hi mate, it came with vista pre installed, no disc etc. my neighbour and a few others on here reckon it could do with more RAM, actually, so do windows, their website help forum advise it. my neighbour said it might suit me to uninstall vista and install xp instead, never used xp, is it worth it in your opinion? As for hard drive free space not sure i can get rid of much more, everything is running at the bare minimum ie graphics and stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nobby63 Posted September 5, 2010 Report Share Posted September 5, 2010 The Lads are right you do want more RAM your m/c will run quicker with 2 gb which is more suited for vista and if you deside to change back to XP you will need firstly to format your hard drive, by just dropping a XP disc in the drive the windows operation system will not allow you to go over vista to an older version of windows XP ( fact ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UKPoacher Posted September 5, 2010 Report Share Posted September 5, 2010 Bingo! same here chap, 1gb ram & 120gb mem. downloaded a load of free repairs online, don't know how good they really are but according to them they've cleaned and repaired quite a few errors, only problem is they won't do all of them for free. i'm gonna take silpig5's advice and see his mate to find out a few more things (price especially) and go from there, i'll ask him about adding some more gizmos while i'm at it. Fingers crossed but it hasn't frozen for about 3hrs so far.... Click Here A Memory RAM upgrade is the quickest, easiest & cheapest way to dramatically improve the speed & performance of your PC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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