Laptop freezing issues

Applications Hardware
1

I am having Laptop freezing issues. Whenever I try to use Firfox and vlc, chrome and vlc, firefox and chrome, or anything similar to that my computer freezes. I always have to kill one of the processes before I can use my laptop again. I am guessing this is a hardware issue because when I move the HD to my other laptop it works just fine without freezing. I can also move my HD from my good laptop and put it in my old laptop and the same thing happens with the freezing. Can I please get some ideas on what the problem is?

2

All the programs mentioned by you are relatively memory-intensive. How much memory do you have installed and what OS/desktop is your computer running?

To confirm a possible memory shortage do the following: open a shell window and issue

> /path/to/outputfile ; vmstat 5 | tee -a /path/to/outputfile

Let it run for some lines of output until the output is relatively stable. Now start the two programs in question and watch the change in the display. You should be able to see the free memory amount dropping and at the same time the swap activity going up. This would confirm a memory shortage.

The only way to cure such a problem is putting more memory in.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

3

I have a dual boot of Fedora and XP. I use Fedora way more often though. I have 4 GB of ram and a 4 GB swap. 4 GB of ram is the maximum with this computer.

Is this part a mistake?

> /path/to/outputfile

Shouldn't I touch that file to create it first?

Why do you think it is ram instead of cpu issue? I was thinking it was a cpu issue. Ram is much easier to replace so I hope your right.

4

No.

No.

As he says, "all the programs mentioned by you are relatively memory-intensive."

You'd expect a bad CPU to affect everything, not just particularly large things.

5

The way you presented your problem it would have been easily explainable by a memory shortage. That doesn't mean it is a memory shortage, though. This is why i asked you to confirm this.

Always keep in mind that i know your computer only from what you are telling me. Because this picture is necessarily incomplete i come up with all sorts of theories - it falls upon you to falsify them. You haven't said how much memory is installed in your laptop, so i supposed the problem to come from a memory shortage - your information that you have 4GB installed and 4GB swap configured pretty much clears this suspicion.

I'd still try to do as i have told you, just to ultimately falsify this. Another thing might be a problem with the applications: start them from a command line and watch carefully for any output they might produce. Firefox and vlc (i haven't used chrome yet) produce no output at all as long as everything works perfectly, so any output at all will be relevant.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

6

First I think you should update your drivers. There are also need to perform followings steps.
Hereafter, reboot the laptop and check the ping results for websites:

  1. Press 'Windows' + R key, type cmd in the Run dialog box and press Enter.
  2. Once the Command Prompt window appears, type ping dell.com and press Enter.
  3. Check if the ping statistics are Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0.
  4. Now, type ping 143.166.224.244 and press Enter; check if the ping results are similar.

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