Is a driver problem causing my laptop to freeze?

[puppyluv131]

I have had an ongoing issue with my laptop for a few months now. it will boot up and run fine for 10-15 mins and then freezes and I have to restart it with the power button. I am running on vista and it will run fine in safemode with networking, which is how i'm surviving at the moment..lol. I have tried defragging, error check, virus and malware check, even system restore to before this was happening, etc...all the obvious tools, but it is still freezing! The computer guy in the shop said its probably a driver problem but I want to try to fix this myself before I have to pay out for someone else to do it as I'm pretty good at sorting out computer issues...but this has me stumped. I dont have a vista disk to wipe the drive and start from scratch and this is really a last resort. Can anyone help? :confused:

[Plastic Nev]

Under normal circumstances I would have suggested this may be a heat problem, however considering it will run OK in safe mode and continue for a long period in safe mode it does suggest otherwise, though without anything other than the minimum stuff running heat may not be being built up.

If possible a good blowing out with one of those cans of compressed air could possibly be tried. Otherwise it may well be a driver issue in one of the components that is not active in safe mode.

Device manager may give you a clue if there is a driver conflict, but it would need to be running in normal mode to check.

to get to device manager quickly, click on the start and type in device manager in the search box, then click on device manager. see if there are any red or yellow warning signs.

Also once you have typed in device manager, you should see "Update Device drivers".

Click on that and providing the machine is on line it will search for and update any driver needing an update

 

A thought here at this point, I have heard of a faulty CD/DVD drive being the cause, so if you can remove and disconnect it, then try and hope that is the answer.

Otherwise it is going to be a long hunt through all drivers to find the conflicting or faulty one.

Nev.

[puppyluv131]

Thanks Nev, i checked the device manager and there were bout 10 errors against various ISATAP adaptors...i'm not sure where these have come from or what they are for? My atheros wifi driver is working fine, obviously i can get online ok in safemode. I disabled all these ISATAP drivers but still froze after bout 5 mins.

 

sam:mad:

[RandyL]

I'm clueless here even after looking up ISATAP on Wikipedia. However that shouldn't cause locking up problems as it appears to be network related.

 

Just in case someone has an idea is your computer networked?

 

Like Nev said if it works fine in safemode it's likely not heat.

 

If it's locking up in normal mode and your not networked and you have those errors I'm wondering if it's not malware.

 

What security do you have and what malware scans have you run? Do you use any file sharing programs or torrents?

 

Like I said I'm clueless on this so I'm just trying to gather information for others.

 

You said you don't have a Vista disk so you can't reinstall if you need to. Was Vista preloaded? Did you lose the disks? Did you ever have the option to create the recovery disks. Can you reinstall from the recovery partition? What is the make, model and number of your PC?

[Dalo Harkin]

Whats the make and model of the laptop,

you mentioned that you are connecting wirelessly and that works fine, have you tried connecting with Ethernet?

 

You will have 2x drivers for networking:-

One will be the wireless LAN card or similar and the other will be Intel family ethernet or something similar.

 

With your lappy you would have received a driver disk, if you do not have this then with the make and model of the lappy we should be able to source the drivers for you.