my computer keeps completely freezing

[Draygoes]

My laptop froze when the CPU cooler got filled up with dusty junk. That's the problem with diagnosing computer problems on the internet remotely. They do things that you wouldn't expect them to do so diagnosing them is extremely difficult if not impossible at times.

I use teamviewer for the worst of it, and can completely agree.
My last fix was interesting, and you can contact me Via PM if you want to hear the entire thing. The final problem to be solved was that the laptop was changing volume on its own. Not the windows volume mind you, but the volume controls built into the laptop. It keeps coming up on screen as muted, unmuted, raise and lower volume. I count that as a hardware issue, because if you had seen what I had seen, its not the Windows volume controls.
Of course this is a laptop that we are talking about, and nearly 4 years old.

 

[cb600fshornet]

First question that should have been asked was there any changes to computer software or hardware before this happened as this may indicate what could be causing the problem.
Usually a faulty PSU or overheating cpu will cause computer to shut down or reset, not freezing.

Very true, no point messing around inside the PC if you've recently plugged in a new printer which installed the drivers incorrectly or something daft...

 

[Draygoes]

Very true, no point messing around inside the PC if you've recently plugged in a new printer which installed the drivers incorrectly or something daft...

I had a flash drive do that to me once. Caused BSOD at random moments. I only found out it was the flash drive after several weeks of thinking that it was something (anything) else.

 

[cb600fshornet]

It's funny how they do these strange things!

When I used to work in a computer shop, a customer came in with a HP laptop that wouldn't boot up, it would just hang at the "Welcome" screen for hours. We put it on the work bench and left it for a couple of hours and came back to it and it was still stuck, I unplugged the charger from the laptop to move it to another area and the laptop immediately booted into Windows! Me and my boss kinda looked at each other like "whaaaa?!" and we tried it again, left it plugged in for 20 minutes and it didn't boot, unplugged it and it booted into Windows straight away! Turns out the smart pin on the charger was damaged, a new charger fixed the issue....

With a computer, nothing is ever as it seems.

 

[Draygoes]

A charger? Wow!

The reason that I never suspected the flash drive was causing the BSOD was because after I had plugged it in, Windows informed me that it had found and installed the driver. It never gave any indication that a mistake had been made.

It would be almost 2 full weeks before I had finally ruled out everything but the FD. I booted in safemode like always, found the FD's driver, removed it, and the BSOD's stopped. Did I mention that the BSOD's where happening completely at random? The FD didnt even need to be plugged in for it to happen. I plugged the FD in after removing the driver, windows did its normal thing, and that time got it right. To this day I have yet to be able to reproduce the problem.

 

[cb600fshornet]

Aaaaha, that's really strange, I think this quote of yours summed it up well

windows did its normal thing

 

[Draygoes]

Heh, yeah thats about right.