Computer will freeze up

R

renyhp

New Member
Hi all,
I don't know if I'm posting in the right section, and I if I'm not, I'm sorry for this.
I have a problem with my computer: it will freeze up totally random, and quite frequently too, and I don't know the causes. The freeze consists in the fact that it simply won't work at all, I can't move the mouse or do anything, and I have to shutdown brutally. I also re-partitioned the HDD (I had Ubuntu 12.04 and Windows 7 before, and now I installed Fedora 17 on the whole disk), but nothing changed, though I noticed the freezes became much more frequent since I installed Fedora. Recently I also had to buy and change the mouse, but I don't know if it's the cause: it was Linux-compatible. The freezes have place also when I boot from CD, so is the problem a hardware problem? Hope that someone can help me...
 
mrgcat

mrgcat

New Member
renyhp said:
Hi all,
I don't know if I'm posting in the right section, and I if I'm not, I'm sorry for this.
I have a problem with my computer: it will freeze up totally random, and quite frequently too, and I don't know the causes. The freeze consists in the fact that it simply won't work at all, I can't move the mouse or do anything, and I have to shutdown brutally. I also re-partitioned the HDD (I had Ubuntu 12.04 and Windows 7 before, and now I installed Fedora 17 on the whole disk), but nothing changed, though I noticed the freezes became much more frequent since I installed Fedora. Recently I also had to buy and change the mouse, but I don't know if it's the cause: it was Linux-compatible. The freezes have place also when I boot from CD, so is the problem a hardware problem? Hope that someone can help me...
Click to expand...

I have had something similar once with my computer, for me the sound would freeze.

It went away after a while, but reading up online it maybe that you have cheap RAM, as that does cause freezing. Maybe replace the RAM and it will work?
 
R

renyhp

New Member
mrgcat said:
reading up online it maybe that you have cheap RAM, as that does cause freezing.
Click to expand...

I don't think I have too little RAM, the PC has 1 GB of RAM, and when I bought this computer with Vista x64 it would work great. I don't think Fedora or Linux-based OSes require much more RAM than Vista... or do they?

mrgcat said:
Maybe replace the RAM and it will work?
Click to expand...

Or are you suggesting the RAM hardware is broken?
 
Punk

Punk

Moderator
Staff member
R

renyhp

New Member
Punk said:
if you want to check you RAM, do a memtest:

http://www.memtest.org/
Click to expand...

Done. I had never done it before, so I don't know what all that stuff means. Here is a picture of my monitor (it could have been a little annoying to copy all that codes by hand :p Sorry for low quality, anyway I think you can read clearly...)
(You said you've let it run more than 7 hours before... You can see I've let it run much more time than you :D )

pict.jpg


Punk said:
any chance you got malware? Do the following:

http://www.computerforum.com/131398-important-please-read-before-posting.html
Click to expand...

I couldn't do that because I just have Fedora on my PC (and not Windows), and if I could and wanted to, I don't think I could have the time to do all that things: the computer freezes just a few minutes after I turn it on (but never the same number of minutes, of course).
However, I don't think I got malware, because I got 4 errors on my RAM, so probably that's the problem, right? (If it is, how can I fix it?) Anyway, I formatted the HDD many and many times, and also I haven't been surfing the net on that PC for a long time (because of other problems...) So it's unlikely there's malware on my computer, isn't it?
 
Punk

Punk

Moderator
Staff member
Ok well you have bad memory. If you have two or more sticks of RAM I suggest you test them one by one by taking the other ones off the computer. Then run memtest just like you did. Once you've found the bad stick, I suggest you replace it with a new one :)
 
B

Brilliant6

New Member
renyhp said:
Hi all,
I don't know if I'm posting in the right section, and I if I'm not, I'm sorry for this.
I have a problem with my computer: it will freeze up totally random, and quite frequently too, and I don't know the causes. The freeze consists in the fact that it simply won't work at all, I can't move the mouse or do anything, and I have to shutdown brutally. I also re-partitioned the HDD (I had Ubuntu 12.04 and Windows 7 before, and now I installed Fedora 17 on the whole disk), but nothing changed, though I noticed the freezes became much more frequent since I installed Fedora. Recently I also had to buy and change the mouse, but I don't know if it's the cause: it was Linux-compatible. The freezes have place also when I boot from CD, so is the problem a hardware problem? Hope that someone can help me...
Click to expand...

I had this problem on my last computer and got one of those free scans that takes about four hours to run.
It found a Trojan virus but I didn't write down the name. Anyway I presume you have scanned for this problem.
 
R

renyhp

New Member
Punk said:
Ok well you have bad memory. If you have two or more sticks of RAM I suggest you test them one by one by taking the other ones off the computer. Then run memtest just like you did. Once you've found the bad stick, I suggest you replace it with a new one :)
Click to expand...

Many many many many thanks!!! I found out I had 2 512MB sticks, and now I have only one... (and the other is in my hands now :p )
Just a last question: I heard about using external drives as RAM memory... is it true you can? And if, how can I do such a thing? (I'd like to avoid buying a new RAM stick, I saw they are quite expensive, so if I could buy a pendrive instead, it could be better)
 
Punk

Punk

Moderator
Staff member
A basic google search gave me this:

http://www.ehow.com/how_8163551_use-external-hard-drive-ram.html

I have never heard of that before so I would be careful if you really want to do that. The best option would be buying new sticks, they're not that expansive online. I remember buying a stick of 1GB for about 15 euros (about 20 dollars). You just need to pick the right one for your computer depending on it's specs.
 
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