[lp4ever_1128]

Hi,

My Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop with windows vista has been freezing lately. It started a few weeks ago, and it started by Chrome freezing and that caused the entire computer to mess up. The mouse would work, but I could only click on a few things. Usually it wouldn't let me open anything else, but sometimes it lets me open the start menu, but when I click shut down or restart, it doesn't do anything. It also won't let me ctrl+alt+delete most of the time, and the few times that it has let me, when I click on Task Manager, it doesn't open. I end up having to do a hard restart. Then when I open Chrome it loses my tabs and all of my settings and extensions. I Googled around and found that losing the tabs, settings, and extensions could be a messed up profile, so I created a new one. That helped for the first couple of times, but then it stopped helping. Then I found another thing that said a file called "Preferences" might not be working properly within Chrome, so I fixed that. Then it stopped messing up my settings and extensions, but it still loses some of my tabs.

It seems like what is happening now is that Chrome messes up at some point, but still lets me open tabs and do things for a little while, but then it freezes and I have to do another hard restart. When I open Chrome back, it has tabs that were open from a certain point, but every tab that I opened after that doesn't load back. I have tried running Spybot and Microsoft Security Essentials, but they didn't find anything. I ended up downloading Malawarebytes, but that didn't find anything either. Does anybody know what could be happening?

Also, at one point of it messing up I got an error message upon restart. It said something about a driver that was missing for some kind of extra hard drive thing? I'm not really sure, but when I searched for it, it seemed like it was something that was only needed if you had more than one hard drive in the computer.

Also, sometime today it says that there was a problem installing windows updates. I don't know if this is related to the problem or even if the above error is related, but I thought I would add it just in case.

Any help is appreciated, this problem is getting very, very irritating.

[lunarlander]

When normal things that should work start to misbehave, I usually start checking ram and hard drive.

To check ram, go download memtest86 : http://www.memtest.org/#downiso
Burn the iso image file to a CD using Imgburn: http://www.imgburn.com/
Boot it and let it run overnight and see if there are problems in the morning.

To check hard drive, right click on the drive and choose Properties, Tools tab, Check button. It will schedule a test at next reboot. Reboot.

[lp4ever_1128]

Should I do either one before the other? And are you saying that the memtest86 creates a file, and that I need to burn that file to a disc, and then run the disk overnight?

[lunarlander]

The memtest86 download is an 'iso' file. This iso file needs to be burned to a CD using a program. One cannot just copy the iso file to a regular CD burning program, because the iso is a CD Image. You need to use Imgburn to burn that image to a CD.

Then boot with that created CD and run it over night.

[lp4ever_1128]

okay thanks, i'll try that. and also, is the hard drive thing the chkdsk thing? if so, it already did that half of the time that i had to do the hard restart and it never found anything.

[DoubleHelix]

Chrome wouldn't cause your entire computer to lock up. The mysterious hard drive error and the behavior you describe makes me think the problem may be a failing hard drive. If you're being prompted to run chkdsk almost every time you restart, that also indicates a hard drive problem. If you're not doing a full surface scan (which will take hours), you may not find errors. Before you run any checks, run through your normal full backup routine since I suspect you could lose the drive any moment.

[lp4ever_1128]

well, it isn't almost every time i restart, it is only the times i do a hard restart. when i restart normally, it doesn't happen. is the full surface scan what lunarlander described above?

[lp4ever_1128]

and to lunarlanding, would it make a difference if i downloaded that iso file and burned it from a different computer (XP), or does it need to be on the computer having problems?

[DoubleHelix]

Still sounds like a hard drive problem to me.

It's just an ISO image. You can burn it on any computer.

You've already done your normal full backup?

[lp4ever_1128]

no, i haven't done a full backup yet, but i do keep most everything backed up anyway. the only things not backed up right now are the most recent pictures i have taken and the programs like word, chrome, etc.

and thanks for the other answer.

[lp4ever_1128]

should i download the .gz or the .zip?

[lp4ever_1128]

sorry for all of the questions and new posts, but do i need to download imgburn onto the vista, or will it be able to read it anyway? and what exactly will it do? just run a test on the memory? are you saying to do it overnight because it takes a long time?

[lunarlander]

You should download the zip file. Windows can extract zip files.

You need to download and install Imgburn. Use that to burn the extracted iso.

The memory tests are lengthy, and, a one pass with the memtest will not always reveal anything. Thats why you need to run multiple passes. Leaving it on over-night is the easist thing to do.

[DoubleHelix]

You should run backups frequently enough to avoid losing data you don't want to lose. You can't backup programs unless you're referring to the installation executables.

[lp4ever_1128]

yeah, i just backed it up about a week or two ago, and haven't added too much since then, so i should be okay.

and what do i need to do when i burn this file onto a cd? i downloaded both imgburn and extracted the iso file. so when i burn the file, i just stick it in my vista and it will load, or do i need to put it in the computer, then reboot and it will run automatically?

and what are the chances that this is going to harm the computer in any way? i remember one time i had a problem with this computer, and dell was doing something to try to fix it, and it ended up being worse off.