Win7....system freezes up..is it Windows Explorer crashing --fixed

I have this happen every once in a blue moon on my desktop....but it is happening several times a week on the laptop now.
Normally, I just force a restart.

However, I get no message window saying Windows Explorer has stopped working.
When it was "woken up" there was a black screen, with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner.
And, when it just happened on the laptop a few minutes ago, there was no message saying windows shut down unexpectedly, etc etc etc...
On the forced restart, it just started as if it were asleep.

No clue what is wrong.
Battery is charged.


Installing new RAM fixed the problem.
Thanks.

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

Run CCleaner and Malware Bytes, Clean everything from your browsers and restart..

If that does not help, PM me..

A laptop of mine started to do all very slow and freeze from time to time, it was the hard drive.

I started to notice with the browser.

Try hdtuner or other app to see if it gives you errors

a reply to: semperfortis

We run those every day.
Without fail.

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

The two main causes of system freezes is overheating, and RAM going bad. You can check out this link for several programs that offer CPU temperature monitoring:

superuser.com...


As long as the CPU stays below 60C you're not overheating. That means one or more RAM modules are going bad.

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

Is it a physical HD or an SSD ?

If physical I'd suspect your HD is on it's way out.

a reply to: _BoneZ_

I'll have my husband open defraggler and get the temp....thanks.

a reply to: gortex

It's a regular HD.

System freezes are a pain in the butt, the dreaded blue screen of death actually is extremely helpful and much preferred.

Memory and motherboards generally dont just start causing system freezes unless the RAM is being overclocked but your on a laptop so the next thing is CPU temp getting too high like others have mentioned or the hard drive - since its a win 7 laptop its very likely the cpu wont get damaged unless its hit with a high heat which it will do its best to throttle it back, so seems kind of unlikely.

Im thinking hard drive is most the likely cause, followed second by a driver update for just about anything however if you have turned off winupdate its obviously not this.

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

Is it a physical HD or an SSD ?

If physical I'd suspect your HD is on it's way out.

A good start. Run error checking by right clicking on the bad drive, selecting "Properties" and then locating the "Tools" tab.

You can also try to repair system files by following these instructions.

At the Command Prompt (using administrator privileges), type sfc /scannow. The utility will scan your system files and attempt to repair any damage that it finds. Note that it might ask you for the Windows 7 distribution media in order to carry out these repairs.

www.howtogeek.com...

Keep us posted.

a reply to: Biigs

Thanks for that....hard drives are pretty easy to replace if that is the issue and i have discs to reinstall Win7 64 bit.
I'm betting replacing the HD is a piece of cake next to replacing the one on my Small Form Factor Dell

....although all that talk of clocking is something that always makes my eyes glaze over.

a reply to: eisegesis

thanks....I was thinking that was something to do before going HD shopping

originally posted by: DontTreadOnMe
a reply to: Biigs

Thanks for that....hard drives are pretty easy to replace if that is the issue and i have discs to reinstall Win7 64 bit.
I'm betting replacing the HD is a piece of cake next to replacing the one on my Small Form Factor Dell

....although all that talk of clocking is something that always makes my eyes glaze over.

Dont worry about clocking especially on a laptop, your eyes have already glazed over havnt they? haha, okay stay with me...

Check your drivers in device manager, check out the big things, graphics adapters, networking, sound card and USB - if any of those got updated around the time it started flipping out try to roll it back (using your laptops driver disk, if not you can find older versions on the laptops manufacturer website - you would be surprised how often windows thinks its smart and updates to an unstable version)

Also if you do plan to go with a HD reinstall, get an appropriate sized SSD - it'll make that little laptop wizz faster than it ever thought possible as spinning disk laptop drives are only 5400 rpm and not 7200 like nearly all desktops do - and SSD will SMASH your loading and searching/indexing time like mad. EDIT: therefore even if its not whats causing the issue, at least your laptop will be running on rocket fuel for not much money!

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

One of mine started doing the same thing, no errors, blue screens, or logs of any kind, very annoying.

Turned iut to be hard drive, so got a new one before it completely failed, hooked both up to my desktop, booted with acronis boot cd, cloned bad hard drive to new hard drive, installed new hard drive, fixed locking up issues and didnt have to reinstall crap

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

As others have said, it could be the amount of RAM installed on the machine. Most of the laptops sold always seem to come with low amounts of RAM, low enough that even Firefox could crash the computer (IE: My current PC that I'm typing this out on would stop running Windows Explorer if I did anything too quick...4gb of RAM isn't decent to support Windows 10...Upgraded to 16gb, and haven't had a problem since).

On the side - you can kill Windows Explorer, and can actually bring it back relatively easy.

Either:
1. Press the Windows Key + R and type in "c:\windows\explorer.exe" (without quotes) into the dialog. Press Enter
OR
2. Press CTRL + SHIFT + ESC all at once, which brings up Task Manager. Under File -> Run New Task, this will bring up the same dialog. Type in "c:\windows\explorer.exe" (without quotes) and then press ENTER/Ok.

Fun fact: If no explorer.exe instances are running, the first time you run either command, it brings back the Windows shell that we all know and love. Any time you run the command after...It will open up a new folder window.

-foss

a reply to: fossilera

You might be right about the ram, but not the way you think, it could be the hardisk still but due to the page file being overused.

I have a truck load of ram and SSDs so i disable the page file completely (it still has a absolute min but doesnt use it)

a reply to: Biigs

I am a tech, but not that kind of tech - I know just enough about my own computer to mess something up, heh.

Page file might cause it as well?

Didn't see it mentioned... A good place to look for critical system errors is in the Windows Event Logs.

Albeit a lot of technical jargon within, there should be a bit more info as to what is causing any Critical System crashes.

originally posted by: fossilera
a reply to: Biigs

I am a tech, but not that kind of tech - I know just enough about my own computer to mess something up, heh.

Page file might cause it as well?

The page file comes into play when the system gets low on RAM or notices some rarely called memory data sitting in the RAM. It moves that data to a special partition called the "page file", the page file is therefore MUCH more extensively used when the computer is very low on RAM - then even highly active data in the RAM is moved and so the page file is hammered making your poor hard drive attempt to act like RAM - which of course it doesnt do very well and also increases the seek time of all other data AND increases the read and write count. This extra activity is especially mean to spinning disk drives because they have to spin up the disk (or keep it spinning at max) and the read and write arm has to look for the data all over the disk, especially if you have a few partitions as well as the page file. Since SSD has no moving parts its only the wear on the disks read and write count.

So basically; always pack lots of ram and check its usage in task manager from time to time, if you notice its getting close to full - buy more ram before you punish your hard drives!

Have you checked the reliablity monitor to see what it says?