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Vista laptop freezing soon after bootup

Vista freeze

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#1
jim_heavenly

jim_heavenly

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I was Googling around to try to find a solution to my wife’s laptop problem and found a topic “Laptop Freezes After Startup” topic 308425 by q_lil_grl  in Oct. 2011 that sounded very similar but as the discussion progressed  the symptoms were different.

 

The laptop is a Sony Vaio VGN-CS110E.  It’s running Windows Vista Home Premium, SP2. 

Intel T5800 Core 2 Duo @ 2Ghz

Memory: 3Gb

32 bit OS.

 

Over the past few months it would occasionally hang/freeze (spinning cursor).  CTRL-ALT-DEL had no effect.  I had to do a hard reset (hold down Power button).  I’d boot up in SAFE mode and take a look around before restarting in normal mode.

 

A few days ago the situation got worse.  It’d hang randomly within a few minutes after booting. 

I tried running diagnostics and the CPU, memory and display checks all ran fine.  The disk check would find some errors but fix them.  I assume these were due to the improper shutdowns.

I tried to eliminate everything – unplug external disk, turn off network, remove mouse…. But it didn’t change.

 

Tried to RESTORE to a save point, but it said there weren’t any.  This sounded really strange since I know that many times it creates one when doing OS upgrades and things.

Tried various things over the next couple of days since I’d like to avoid doing a full system restore, but had no success.   Now I see that there are three save points, but they’re all from the past two days so I didn’t bother.

 

I took the advice of The Admiral of booting up in SAFE mode and in msconfig I disabled all of the non-Microsoft services and all startup tasks.  On the next bootup, I simply tried to play the sample bear video in Windows Media Player in a loop to see if the system would keep working.  After just a few minutes the bear video froze, followed by the sound dying, but the video player bar continued to the end of the video. 

 

On the next boot I hit F8 to get into System Recovery.  I ran Startup Repair which fixed disk errors.  I rebooted and again started the bear video loop.  After a few minutes it froze again.  I tried to click windows front/back (sometimes worked) and hit Ctrl-Alt-Del (nothing).  Eventually it went to a black screen.  After about a minute a Dialog box came up saying “Login process has failed to create the security options dialog” in the header and “Failure – Security Options” in the window along with an OK button.  Hitting OK just returns to the normal, frozen display. 

 

I’ve re-run the scenario multiple times and it appears that it’s freezing about 2.5 to 3 minutes in. 

 

Questions?  Suggestions? 

 

Thanks in advance for your assistance.


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#2
Lemurian

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Vista is a system with bad rep.

It often glitches right after install and as time passes, it usually gets worse.

Install win7 instead.


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#3
phillpower2

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:welcome:   jim_heavenly

 

Overheating is one example of what can cause this behaviour, when if ever was the last time that the notebook was cleaned out of heat trapping dust.

 

Can you hear the cooling fan working at any time.

 

HDD related problems are another possible cause, this includes being low on free storage space, data corruption and mechanical problems, the latter you can normally identify by ticking or other odd noises, you cannot say the same if their are bad sectors on the HDD though.

 

I would start by giving the notebook a clean out the best that you can, a guide here to help, it is by HP but the principal is the same.

 

As an aides jim_heavenly I had Vista on my Vaio for over 5 years without issue  ;)


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