Sony Laptop Freezing

[MrBlue]

I have a Sony PCG-K195HP that I bought about 20 months ago, and I've had a problem with it freezing almost since new. It happens MAINLY when I run one of my applications that provides live stock market prices. The fan gets noisier, the temperature rises and then it freezes. However, it recently froze when simply displaying a screen-saver!!

It is XP Service Pack2, with extra 256MB RAM (total 768). Luckily I have an old Sharp laptop with Windows 2000 Pro with 192MB Ram, and the applications run perfectly, with no problems whatsoever.

Could it be a dodgy video card? Heatsink? CPU?

I sent it back to Sony TWICE under warranty and all they did was a recovery, and never fixed the problem.

I updated the BIOS. No joy.

I just did a recovery myself, as suggested by Sony, so it's in its original state (XP Service Pack 1). Loaded and run my application this morning and it froze after about 3 minutes.

As you can imagine I'm very, very unhappy that I can't use a fairly high spec machine for what provides my main income.

Has anyone else experienced a similar problem?

Should I throw it away and buy a Dell?

If Sony repair it now they will charge me for something that should've been done for free under warranty. Is this fair?

[capscorp43]

Hi

Three things in my mind

1. Ram it should be in 2 x 256, or 2 x 512 format, not 1 x 512 and 1 x 256. Try to take that 256 one out and then check the performance.

2. Do you have some antivirus software installed, if yes then scan thoroughly and clean the HDD.

3. Some viruses can be simply cleaned by partitioning the disk. Make a fresh partition and instal the windows by yourself. Hopfully it ll work for you.

God knows better

[MrBlue]

Hi

Three things in my mind

1. Ram it should be in 2 x 256, or 2 x 512 format, not 1 x 512 and 1 x 256. Try to take that 256 one out and then check the performance.

2. Do you have some antivirus software installed, if yes then scan thoroughly and clean the HDD.

3. Some viruses can be simply cleaned by partitioning the disk. Make a fresh partition and instal the windows by yourself. Hopfully it ll work for you.

Hi, thanks for your suggestions. I doubt very much whether it is a lack of RAM as I said, I use the same software on an old Win 200 Pro machine with only 192MB RAM without any probs. The laptop originally came with 2x256 in 2 slots. I bought extra 512 intending to upgrade to 1024, before I knew that the original 512 was slpit into 2x256. This was only done recently.

I've scanned using Norton, Avast, LavaSoft, Comodo, Bitdefender... prob about 2-300 scans over the 20 months.

Partitioning is beyond my technical ability unfortunately. Struggling to restore my back up from the recovery I did over the weekend. Lost my Outlook completely, and all my emails for 2 years. It won't run Outlook and I don't know how to re-install it. Really wish I'd left it alone to freeze to its heart content. Now I'm totally unhappy!

[MrBlue]

Hi

Three things in my mind

1. Ram it should be in 2 x 256, or 2 x 512 format, not 1 x 512 and 1 x 256. Try to take that 256 one out and then check the performance.

2. Do you have some antivirus software installed, if yes then scan thoroughly and clean the HDD.

3. Some viruses can be simply cleaned by partitioning the disk. Make a fresh partition and instal the windows by yourself. Hopfully it ll work for you.

Hi, thanks for your suggestions. I doubt very much whether it is a lack of RAM as I said, I use the same software on an old Win 200 Pro machine with only 192MB RAM without any probs. The laptop originally came with 2x256 in 2 slots. I bought extra 512 intending to upgrade to 1024, before I knew that the original 512 was slpit into 2x256. This was only done recently.

I've scanned using Norton, Avast, LavaSoft, Comodo, Bitdefender... prob about 2-300 scans over the 20 months.

Partitioning is beyond my technical ability unfortunately. Struggling to restore my back up from the recovery I did over the weekend. Lost my Outlook completely, and all my emails for 2 years. It won't run Outlook and I don't know how to re-install it. Really wish I'd left it alone to freeze to its heart content. Now I'm totally unhappy!