RAM or HD issue?

mordeith

Just looking for some advice here. The wife's laptop has started to freeze every now and then. You can still move the cursor around but Windows itself locks up. When its re-booted it sometimes runs a chkdisk and repairs missing files and stuff. Just wondering if these symptoms are a sign of RAM going dodgy or the hard drive?
Thanks

Overheal

it could be running chkdsk if you're forcibly shutting it off - ie. Killing Power. It's generally not a good idea to force a shut-off, unless you have definitively no other option.

Now as to the actual cause of your problem it could be either but I'm willing to bet it's the RAM - a lack of it. What programs do you have running, how much RAM is there, and what operating system is it?

mordeith

Thanks for the reply.
Its Windows Vitsa with 4GB RAM and plenty of harddrive space free 160gb. It can freeze at any time but generally when browsing the web. There wouldn't be anything else running except for the av software (Microsft security essentials). I suppose the best thing is to remove one RAM chip at a time and see if the problem persists with either chip removed
EDIT: And yes, the chkdisk only appears after a forced shutdown

ricman

The most likely cause is a virus,do a virus scan,full, there should be at least 3gig empty space on the drive.
download cccleaner and run it.the harddrive might be running out of space.How old is the pc.viruses get worse ,take up ram,memory ,and drive space.
you could defrag the drive,when drives fail ,they start to get noisy, then they just stop working,The drive being faulty is unlikely,how much ram has the pc.if ram is used up windows uses the drive as storage space,system restore can take up alot of space.
go to my computer icon, right click drive,c ,click propertys ,it say 40gig drive,7gig free for example.too many programs installed,take up ram, each browser tab takes up ram,i,d 4 or hard.drives start to fail after 4 years in my experience.windows likes at least ten per cent free hd space.chkwork,use dsk after forced shutdown is normal.try reboot,f8 ,safe mode ,click safe mode with networking,use the net ,does it still crash.http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/tp/memorytest.htm


see http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000708.htm
Windows Vista has a Windows Memory Diagnostics tool that can be easily accessed by clicking on the Start menu, and typing memory in the run line. Running this command will open this tool giving you two options, to either restart immediate or to test memory the next time the computer restarts.
i dont advise taking out the memory,
its more likely to be a virus.

ElectricGirl

If you check and there is no virus I would recommend the program Tuneup Utilities 2011. It has a free trial of something like 14 days and fixes everything. I have used it on numerous issues on numerous computers and if it isnt a virus then this fixes the issue I say 99% of the time. Hope this helps

mordeith

@ ricman. Besides the fact that I need an hour to decipher your unpunctuated text I appreciate the advice. I'll do a complete anti-virus scan and see what comes up. Regarding the memory I removed one chip at a a time to see what happened and each time Windows would refuse to load completly with only 1 chip in. It would get to the desktop but wouldn't load all the icons completely and the mouse waiting cursor stayed for ages. Only when I put the two chips back in did it boot again properly.
The laptop also restarted itself while I was donaloading a game wth Big Fish game manager. No that I think of it that particular programme seems to be crashing a lot lately. Perhaps that's the cause of all my woes?

@ Electricgirl. Thanks for the tip, might try that out

ricman

TRY reboot pc,hold down f8,go to safe mode menu,chooses directory services restore mode,this replaces the bootup files .with more stable versions.
Your pc needs 2 slots of ram filled to boot up.
You could use system restore to restore to last restore point, but you lose any data,mp3s etc you downloaded after restore point date.
try this,
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/uk/
it does a virus scan ,it can take over an hour if theres alot of data on drive c:

try this
http://www.updatexp.com/windows-xp-chkdsk.html
go to start run, type chkdsk c: /f /r this cleans up the drive,fixes drive errors,it can take over 60 minutes to finish.

mordeith

ricman wrote: »

TRY reboot pc,hold down f8,go to safe mode menu,chooses directory services restore mode,this replaces the bootup files .with more stable versions.

Good tip, I'll definitely try that

You could use system restore to restore to last restore point, but you lose any data,mp3s etc you downloaded after restore point date.

I'm pretty sure Sytstem Restore retains data, and that it just rolls back any new drivers installed or software changes, but definitely worth a go.

ricman

say the restore date ,is january 17th, if you use that restore point,you lose anything you downloaded, data saved after jan 17th, or programs installed.or pics, mp3s downloaded.
also run cccleaner program,it gets rid of old temp,files, cleans up the hardrive .http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner
if system restore doesnt work, it means theres very likely viruses on the pc.

tricky D

mordeith wrote: »

The laptop also restarted itself while I was donaloading a game wth Big Fish game manager. No that I think of it that particular programme seems to be crashing a lot lately. Perhaps that's the cause of all my woes?

If you are using a 'free' version of a Big Fish game the likelihood of malware on your machine rises quite significantly. Quite a few of the torrents ship with malware.

mordeith

Ah no, tis the official client alright

ricman

you could run a linux livecd,eg mint, see www.linuxmint.com,
if that runs ok from cd, no crashes,or slowdown that means the problem is with with the os,windows, probably a virus,or missing files .mint fits on 1cdr,Burn the iso to cd,using imgburn ,burn image to cd command.
you may need to set boot options,cd= 1st boot device,f2 or del should open the bios menu after turning on the pc.