Laptop freezing randomly.

enjobg · January 17, 2015

Hi everyone,

I'll try to be quick on this one and provide as much info as I can while my laptop is still running as this is my second time writing this post and last time it froze after 10 mins of writing.

Main question is what could be the problem and what can I do to fix it?

Quick overview of the last 4 days:

So for the last 4 days my laptop has been freezing randomly for no apparent reason (even after I reinstalled my windows and still had nothing but my drivers installed it froze after staying idle for 10 mins). This started in Wednesday I believe and after some testing (PC wasn't booting up at all) I found out I had a problem with "aswrvrt.sys" file so I just started a quick windows repair unfortunately the PC froze in the middle of the repair and after some time I just got a really quick BSOD and couldn't boot more than the bios (or a blank screen of the windows installation on the usb flash drive I had). I was able to open a command window in there but nothing from there worked, even when I tried to check my HDD I would just get an error "A system restore is pending, please reboot" or something like this. Next day I got a hold of linux(ubuntu 14.10 64bit) and successfully booted it using the "Try" thingy, formatted my windows drive and had no problem installing windows again but just as I said after I installed my drivers and rebooted I took a break for 10-20 mins and when I got back the laptop was frozen again I left it for some time like this but no change, it was just like it's idle with no sing of using any resources. This time I did a full formatting of my HDD and installed windows no problems in the morning yesterday and after being turned on for 2 hours during the night it started freezing again (no problem booting up this time). Now I'm dual booting linux and win 7 and it seems like the freezings don't happen that often on the linux (had only 1 until now and that was last night while I was writing this), every other time that linux froze it recovered after 30-40 secs with an error that it stopped responding.

I'm suspecting a HDD failure here but I'm not very familiar with hardware problems so I can't really say. I did run some tests just in case and RAM tests had no problems but everytime I tried running GSmartControl and do a self-test it would fail on 10% (just seconds after running). I don't know if it can be any of the other hardware parts I don't even know how to test them...

Laptop Samsung NP300E5A I'm not sure about the exact model but the specs are:

CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-2450M CPU @ 2.50GHz

Graphics: GeForce GT 520MX

HDD: SAMSUNG HN-M750MBB

RAM: 6gb (not sure about anything else)

And if someone could help me with the GSmartControl output as I can't understand anything it says.

Edit: I also just found the UltimateBootCD and I will try testing with it will report back if I find something.

SAMSUNG_HN-M750MBB_S2RRJ9HBA05712_2015-01-17.txt

BitZnBytez · January 17, 2015

Try and troubleshoot if it is the drive that's going bad. Do you have a spare drive you could use and put in your pc? or maybe just take the drive out and see if it freezes then (although I am not sure if the pc would even freeze when in bios with the drive plugged. Maybe try and stress the hdd by running something like crystaldiskmark to see if anything happens.

MiniMoose1211 · January 18, 2015

^ That is prob your answer. 60% of the time it's the hard drive if it's a laptop.

enjobg · January 18, 2015

Try and troubleshoot if it is the drive that's going bad. Do you have a spare drive you could use and put in your pc? or maybe just take the drive out and see if it freezes then (although I am not sure if the pc would even freeze when in bios with the drive plugged. Maybe try and stress the hdd by running something like crystaldiskmark to see if anything happens.

I don't have a spare drive but anything that stresses the hdd makes it freeze instantly. After running UltimateBootCD today everything except the HDD was ok, when I ran the HDD diagnosis first it scrolled hundreds of lines with error (during a full surface scan) and after that just gives an error about bad sectors and a message like contact the manufacturer. I'm guessing my first assumption is correct then. I should have another HDD in a few days and I'll see if it works with it.

BitZnBytez · January 18, 2015

I don't have a spare drive but anything that stresses the hdd makes it freeze instantly. After running UltimateBootCD today everything except the HDD was ok, when I ran the HDD diagnosis first it scrolled hundreds of lines with error (during a full surface scan) and after that just gives an error about bad sectors and a message like contact the manufacturer. I'm guessing my first assumption is correct then. I should have another HDD in a few days and I'll see if it works with it.

Yeah it definitely seems like it's the HDD that is going bad. Please update if your pc works again when the new HDD arrives. Hope everything turns out well for you :-)

enjobg · January 20, 2015

Yeah it definitely seems like it's the HDD that is going bad. Please update if your pc works again when the new HDD arrives. Hope everything turns out well for you :-)

Ok, so I got a second drive to test it and it's working perfectly with the new one, not a single freeze no matter what I do. Tried the old one again and it's freezing every time something starts to use the HDD more than idle. I'm kind of surprised to see that the HDD was the first part to fail given that I used to do a lot of heavy video editing on it I was expecting the GPU to fail but it somehow survived for nearly 2 years. I'll be marking this as solved then

BitZnBytez · January 20, 2015

Ok, so I got a second drive to test it and it's working perfectly with the new one, not a single freeze no matter what I do. Tried the old one again and it's freezing every time something starts to use the HDD more than idle. I'm kind of surprised to see that the HDD was the first part to fail given that I used to do a lot of heavy video editing on it I was expecting the GPU to fail but it somehow survived for nearly 2 years. I'll be marking this as solved then

That's great to hear, man. Glad you got it solved. At least it was the easiest replaceable part in the pc that went first. Replacing a laptop gpu would not be fun if it's even doable - doubt it really. Cool, man