My laptop is constantly freezing...

[Movieguy]

I have a Gateway NV78 with Windows 7, which I've owned since December 26th of last year, and it's been running well until recently.

It seems that whenever it's idle for a long period of time, it will freeze when I try to use it again. It freezes in that I can still use the mouse, but none of the items on the screen will react to it. Sometimes I can Ctrl Alt Del my way out of it, but other times, I'll try to start the task manager, and it just takes me to a black screen, and I have to crash out of it.

I've had Avast installed on it ever since I got it, and it's always up to date. I've also tried the Eusing Free Registry Cleaner, and Spybot, which found only one issue last time I used it. And I did recently update my display driver. Still, my laptop keeps freezing.

Does anyone have a clue as to what could be causing this?

 

[Warren1]

Ok, I feel this thread could be better adressed in Security/Hacking, but can you please tell us what the name of the virus you found was? Maybe, it corrupted something in the registry?

 

[berry120]

Ok, I feel this thread could be better adressed in Security/Hacking

Why?! It's not a security / hacking issue just because spybot once found an issue.

You say you've updated the display drivers, have you updated any other drivers and applied all the windows updates? If you updated the display driver before the problem started, you could try rolling the display driver back - it's possible it's caused the problem.

 

[Jmaloney]

Avast is pretty good, but you could try Microst Security Essentials and Malwarebytes if you still think its a virus...

 

[Movieguy]

I actually found a solution, it seems. The freezing occurred when the laptop turned off its display after being idle. Since I have it plugged in pretty much all the time, I turned off that function, utilized a screensaver for when its open, and just close it when it's not in use. That seems to have worked, but I will keep the other program suggestions in mind, should this start happening again.

 

[serpentracer]

a lot of computers don't like to return after it goes into sleep mode or turns off the display. often a updated driver will fix the issue.