I'm having an issue and can't really seem to find any solution online.

What it appears to be is when I'm browsing, it can sometimes completely hang my system. It doesn't crash, but it hangs anywhere from 5-10 minutes. The mouse will move, but I can't close any windows, open any programs, or ctrl-alt-del...anything. It will then just come back and act as though nothing happens. It doesn't say a plug-in has crashed or become unresponsive.

This has happened in both chrome and firefox.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled browsers. I've uninstalled and reinstalled flash. I've made sure drivers were up to date.

I'm really at a loss here. Any ideas where to start?

8/22/2011 9:10:49 PM

No ideas?

8/23/2011 8:05:55 PM

are you sure it's the browser doing it?

8/23/2011 8:10:23 PM

run in safe mode and see if its still doing it. If not, then it could be something running in the background. Does IE do the same?

8/23/2011 8:30:49 PM

If you see this behavior outside the browser you might have a bad HDD. I would concur with the safe mode idea, choose safe mode with networking and browse for 20 minutes on safe sites (usually your antivirus will not run in safe mode).

Of course you can delete your browser and reinstall and make sure you do one extension at a time, to make sure none of them are causing it to crash.

8/23/2011 8:43:11 PM

Actually yeah, I'm not positive it's the browser anymore. I put the computer to sleep this morning, and when I came back to work again it took about 7 minutes to go from the login screen to being active again. Granted the browser was open in the background, but I still don't know.

The safe mode thing might not be a good way to tell because it doesn't happen every day. Maybe every 3-5 days I'll get one of these lockups.

Is there any tests like memtest that I can pinpoint what the issue might be?

On a side note, how easy is it to do repair work on a laptop? Or am I screwed?

Bought this thing in December of last year.

9/3/2011 11:55:11 AM

It's a seagate drive and I just ran the SeaTools long generic and SMART checks, both passing. Maybe it's not the HD.

9/4/2011 12:32:29 PM

Do you live above 8,000ft, use non-ECC ram and have a file system that rivals nasa? It could be cosmic radiation...

yeah... long chance. lol

9/4/2011 6:31:39 PM

I would try uninstalling your antivirus (for a week or 2) and see if your computer still locks up. Just don't go to sites you never go to or heard of and you should be okay.

9/5/2011 5:55:02 PM