HP PAvillion a636n lagging

[yaMI pleHouY]

I'm not exactly sure as to what happened with this computer as I was away at college when it was bought. But the general idea I get is this. They buy the computer. It works for a while and then starts locking up and lagging all the time. They call HP who send them a recovery dis of some sort. That doesn't work, so they decide that the hard drive needs replacing and send a new one. That doesn't work, so HP sends the same recovery discs and tells my family to reformat again. This doesn't work either. My mom also says that she gets some errors everytime she reformats. I'm not sure what they are since I haven't seen any of this. Any ideas as to what's wrong?

 

[jjsevdt]

What is running slow and when is it lagging?

 

[Lax]

QUESTIONS 101

 

[yaMI pleHouY]

Everything lags. It doesn't seem to be at any certain time. IT just slows down for no reason and then speeds back up randomely.

 

[X24]

idk if this would be the ram, or the processor or what.

one guy was having this problem with a compaq laptop i believe, so idk, maybe its the ram they used.

 

[yaMI pleHouY]

I'm beggining to think it's the RAM. I have another computer which I believe uses the same RAM, so I'm going to find out for sure and if it's the same I'm going to swap them and see what happens.

 

[drunkbum222]

If its not the ram then its hopefully the Hard drive. If you need a new one get it fast from Compusa. western digital 160gb 7200rpm hard drive-$30

 

[Praetor]

My mom also says that she gets some errors everytime she reformats. I'm not sure what they are since I haven't seen any of this

What errors? -- ask her.

IT just slows down for no reason and then speeds back up randomely.

Sounds like throttling.

I'm beggining to think it's the RAM. I have another computer which I believe uses the same RAM, so I'm going to find out for sure and if it's the same I'm going to swap them and see what happens.

Easier and more thorough to test via http://www.memtest86.com/

 

[yaMI pleHouY]

My mom wouldn't know. She's pretty technologically illiterate. I'm going to run that program though.

 

[ripken2004]

well try out memtest as praetor pointed out there, go into safe mode and run it(press f8 at the boot screen), run it all night long

i dont think that its the hdd, could be the cpu but check the ram first

 

[Praetor]

My mom wouldn't know. She's pretty technologically illiterate. I'm going to run that program though.

Yes but if she's saying she's getting errors ... then something has to be telling her ... and odds are it'll tell you the error code or whatever (no matter how wierd)