Help! Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop keeps randomly freezing.

[tom_mcdaddy]

So I have a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop which keeps randomly freezing. When it freezes it literally freezes, mouse cursor doesn't move, buttons do nothing, etc and I have to shut down the laptop using the power button. The laptop uses Windows Vista. Here's a summary;

- Freezes regardless of whether currently being used.
- Freezes regardless of software running.
- Freezes sometimes when no software has been opened yet (other than the software that auto runs on starts up - Avast Antivirus and that's it).
- Sometimes freezes when the system has only been on for a few minutes, other times freezes after approx 15 minutes of frequent use. Laptop does not seem to be overheating.
- Have defraged the disk, run a Scandisk, and no joy.
- Have updated the BIOS and all driver updates from Dell website and still randomly crashes.
- Have run a Diagnostic tool from Dell which checks hard drive, memory, CPU, etc and it says everything is running fine.
- Have totally reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled windows vista (legit copy from the disk) from scratch, run the windows updates, installed Avast anti-virus installed Firefox, nothing else and it still crashes.
- Have run the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool which says there are no errors.
- Have run a hard drive SMART scan which says the HDD is in good condition.
- Laptop has a newish battery which was put in several weeks before this started happening. Not sure if that could be related. Have tried running the laptop without a battery (i.e. just off the power cable) and it still freezes.

So now I'm stuck! Any suggestions or advice would be very much appreciated.

 

[hang-the-9]

May be a heat issue, video card issue or general motherboard issue. CPU may be bad but that is pretty unlikely. RAM could be an issue even though it passed tests.

Open the case, make sure the inside is clean. If you know how, clean up the heatsink and re-apply it using new heat grease.

If that does not help, try with new or at least known good used RAM, maybe try one stick of RAM at a time if you have more than one stick.