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I just got a brand spankin' new Toshiba Satellite L675 a few days ago after my defective dv9K got the inevitable BSOD that would've costed more to fix than this cheap computer I bought; although I see now that there's a good reason for it.

I can't get all of the specs because my Satellite is currently still booting up after starting it approximately 15 minutes ago, but it's got about 3G RAM and DualCore AMD processors. Booting this thing up seems unreal, but it gets worse after waiting a half hour for it to start responding. When I browse the 'net, this thing locks up entirely every time I load a web page. It's not my browser, Google Chrome, I'm sure, because any application seems to be capable of locking this thing up.

If I switch tabs in Notepad++, it'll freeze up my computer completely for at least 10 seconds about a third of the time. About nine-tenths of the time I open a new tab my computer freezes up for at LEAST a full minute (60 seconds) and can remain unresponsive for up to ten minutes. Once again, I know for a fact it's more than just the pages I'm visiting, because this applies to YouTube and just plain Google search results. I've got no more than a tenth of the programs back that I've had on my last computer which never experienced such horrendous behavior and no new programs besides them, and I've only had one download that my antivirus claimed was unsafe and I neglected to open it and deleted it accordingly.

I'm very confident this arctic freezing is a problem with my computer and I ask now for you experienced users who may have actually encountered this same problem what solutions I can look to aside from straight up returning it and getting a new computer, which I'm strongly considering.

Would any programs actually help fix this problem or would any programs exist by default that are better off deleted? Or would there be settings somewhere that can resolve this issue? Everything I've said has been very literal, and you should agree that it's not normal for a computer to freeze up so commonly as if it thought it was an Icee machine.

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    also... dude. paragraphs. its one huge wall of very hard to read text
    – Journeyman Geek ♦
    Apr 27, 2011 at 14:46
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    If it's "brand spankin' new", why not take it to a Toshiba repair depot, and have it serivced under warranty?
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Apr 27, 2011 at 18:20
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    There are things called line breaks. You use them to break text up into more readable paragraphs.
    – Hello71
    Apr 28, 2011 at 0:51
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    Thanks for being so useful, I'm glad this is grammarnazi.com and has everything to do with writing formal essays and nothing to do with computers.
    – Jack
    Apr 28, 2011 at 16:17
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    How you ask a question has everything to do with getting it answered. At the extreme you could have assumed all of us are telepathic and just sat at your computer waiting for a call... =) ... but you didn't because its called communication.
    – mindless.panda
    Apr 29, 2011 at 3:23

2 Answers 2

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Well, there's a lot of things that can cause freezing - is your system swapping a lot? What's ram usage like and so on.

I'd probably suggest ruling out software issues by doing a full system restore - which'll restore the system to factory spec - you will lose all your changes, but if that fixes it, you know its prolly software, else its a hardware issue and you'd need to get it fixed professionally.

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  • I'll back up my work and try that. It may take a long time to simply back up my data, so I may not be able to respond for a while.
    – Jack
    Apr 27, 2011 at 14:49
  • Yep, do a backup and then take the laptop back to the shop and show them what's (not) happening for their opinion.
    – Linker3000
    Apr 27, 2011 at 15:25
  • If its a brand new machine and its having this many problems I'd look into dealing w/ Toshiba pretty soon.
    – mindless.panda
    Apr 29, 2011 at 3:25
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The most obvious thing to check - is the CPU fan running, and is the laptop reaching extreme temperatures? Is it uncomfortable to touch the bottom because of extreme heat? If so, your laptop is overheating, and throttling the CPU down! That will require a warranty repair if there is one, or take it to a trusted computer repair shop for them to look at it.

If not, you may have other hardware failing, so try some diagnostics. You will need a working computer to begin testing this, as you will need to be able to download and burn a CD/write a floppy disc. Start by downloading Memtest86+ then run the RAM test for a while to see if the ram is failing.

The next likely culprit is that your HDD may be failing. If the drive has a bunch of weak/bad sectors (or just a couple in a very inconvenient location), the HDD may be spending 20-30 seconds for each read request to access the data that is requested. You will need to know what manufacturer made your drive (Western Digital, Seagate etc) then download the manufacturer's diagnostic and drive fitness tool and run that to make sure your drive is good. Contact the manufacturer of your drive if you have any questions about the results of the test, or the manufacturer of the laptop if it's under warranty.

If you can't get the manufacturer's tool for any reason, you can get Hiren's Boot CD and run HDAT2. Boot from the CD you burned, choose DOS programs > hard drive tests > HDAT2. Run the drive test > check and repair bad sectors. If there are no bad sectors and the drive test does not take a long time to run, the drive is probably good. You may instead be looking at a more serious issue.

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