Laptop randomly becoming unresponsive

[Jerochy]

Hey guys,

I got an alienware m15x for $400 of a guy, and for the most part it works great. Right now, I'm doing some homework online, and for some reason, it can become unresponsive sometimes. I can still move the cursor and minimize some windows, but I can really do anything else. I even try to ctrl+alt+delete and it takes like 30 sec to come up. 

I am wondering if it has to do with something that is running in the background that is eating up memory or cpu usage. I thought it might be thermal throttling, but all I'm doing is cruising the web and it usually does it right when I turn it on. 

Below I posted some screenshots of what is running when I'm using it. Please let me know if you see something that isn't supposed to be there and I'll get rid of it. Thank you!

[Emanuel_M]

Hey guys,

I got an alienware m15x for $400 of a guy, and for the most part it works great. Right now, I'm doing some homework online, and for some reason, it can become unresponsive sometimes. I can still move the cursor and minimize some windows, but I can really do anything else. I even try to ctrl+alt+delete and it takes like 30 sec to come up.

I am wondering if it has to do with something that is running in the background that is eating up memory or cpu usage. I thought it might be thermal throttling, but all I'm doing is cruising the web and it usually does it right when I turn it on.

Below I posted some screenshots of what is running when I'm using it. Please let me know if you see something that isn't supposed to be there and I'll get rid of it. Thank you!

fresh install of windows, since it was previously owned, do it. Also the CPU is running hot, the thermal paste may have gone bad, since that laptop is old, should replace it soon.

[Jerochy]

fresh install of windows, since it was previously owned, do it. Also the CPU is running hot, the thermal paste may have gone bad, since that laptop is old, should replace it soon.

I already did a factory reset on it, so if it is something software related, I did it. I do think the heat has something to do with it though. Thank you for the feedback!

[Mattyd7829]

check out your hard drive disk queues, it could be your drive going bad.

[kameshss]

I already did a factory reset on it, so if it is something software related, I did it. I do think the heat has something to do with it though. Thank you for the feedback!

Factory reset is just a stupid thing.

 

It comes with dell's crappy s/w which you are not gonna use.

 

Perform Clean installation of Windows.

 

As @Mattyd7829 told, Check for HDD health. Download HD Tune from web, see the health there.

It'll surely help you.

[Mattyd7829]

Disk queues can be viewed from windows, go to the performance tab in task manager and click on resource monitor. In the resource monitor, select the disk tab and in the lowest box of the three you will see a column for disk queue. If this is high (2-3 seconds or more constantly) then your disk isn't running as it should.