Acer laptop Strangely Freezing

**chrisleech11** · #1 26th Jan 2008, 10:37

Hiya,

I have an ACER Aspire 5633WLMI laptop and it does the strangest thing maybe once every two hours and would like to figure out what it's doing and try and stop it.

1Gb DDR2 Ram, 120Gb HDD.

I can be using the laptop for usual things, office, limewire, browsing and all of a sudden it freezes almost like i've paused it (which obviously isn't possible) and nothing will work, the screen stays on, the mouse won't move and if typing it won't register it on the screen.

It stays in this state for about 8 seconds and then returns to normal maybe for the rest of the time it's on or it may do it again.

While it's in it's frozen state and i'm clicking things on the desktop / typing, it catches up what i was doing, after the 8 seconds it'd being froze.

The laptop's only about 9months old and would love some advice as to what it could be

Many Thanks
Chris Leech

~~cheesewheels99~~ · #2 27th Jan 2008, 19:03

are you using vista?

**Carbon** · #3 27th Jan 2008, 23:10

Most likely just something eating up a bunch of CPU. Try hitting ctrl-alt-del and sorting by CPU, leave that on and see if anything starts spiking.

Could also be malware.

**chrisleech11** · #4 29th Jan 2008, 04:36

Hi, i am using XP Media Centre Edition so not Vista. And i shall try that, what does it mean by "Spiking" please?

Thank you
Chris Leech

**Hybr!d** · #5 29th Jan 2008, 05:08

Clean. The. Fans.

**chrisleech11** · #6 29th Jan 2008, 06:07

Thanks Dave, i've never even opened the laptop up as it's still in warranty. It's only about 10 months old and it has done it from about 3 months and onwards........seems strange that the fans would need cleaning after that short amount of time.

i'll try checking the CPU usage next time it does it. Didn't do it all last night when i was on for 6 hours.............seems bizarre!

**Hybr!d** · #7 29th Jan 2008, 06:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrisleech11

Seems strange that the fans would need cleaning after that short amount of time.

I would strongly disagree.

**chrisleech11** · #8 29th Jan 2008, 06:38

Many Thanks Dave, my apologies i'm pretty unfamiliar with hardware and causes of problems etc at the moment...........

So if i just clean it with a can of compressed air?
It could be possible actually as it does spend quite alot of it's time in a dusty area under my bed outside of a laptop bag!

**Mike0001** · #9 29th Jan 2008, 07:04

I don't find this "freezing Acer" at all mysterious. I have one upstairs (now my wife's) which does this. I have stripped it down and cleaned the fans and fan duct (both clean anyway), taken the heatsink off and reseated it with new thermal paste, stuck a laptop cooler underneath and it STILL does it.

If you watch a temp monitor the CPU temp is all over the shop, with sudden gigantic increases in temperature up to 90C.

Complete load of sh*t.

**Hybr!d** · #10 29th Jan 2008, 07:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrisleech11

Many Thanks Dave, my apologies i'm pretty unfamiliar with hardware and causes of problems etc at the moment...........

So if i just clean it with a can of compressed air?
It could be possible actually as it does spend quite alot of it's time in a dusty area under my bed outside of a laptop bag!

Yeah, compressed air will do fine, remove the fan covers first, use a small brush if needed.

The reason fans are worth trying is because if it is anything else you are pretty stuffed to be honest, even if you find a faulty part you can bet you'll pay through the nose to get it fixed.