Laptop (windows 7) lags non stop during usage and makes loud buzzing sound

sssdthree

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Oct 5, 2012
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10,510
My laptop was working well for the past 2 years but today out of the blue it started lagging or freezing nonstop whenever i try to use it. Even being on the desktop itself and moving the mouse around is a mightmare with how much the cursor freezes/teleports. On top of that, whenever audio or video tries to play, the screen freezes up again but this time with seriously annoying buzzing sounds, possibly from the built in speakers. The same can be said for video games, in fact it is worse. I thought at first it could be a heating issue so i cleaned the fan thoroughly but nothing changed. Also it should be mentioned that this laptop has 4-6 gigabytes or RAM installed but for some reason the bios and dxdiag are saying that only 2gigs of RAM are installed. (there are 2 RAM cards, one 2gb the other possibly 2 or 4gb installed) Also the OS is currently and has always been Windows 7 64 bit.
Is there any information or suggestion as to what could be the problem or a solution? I do not have another pc readily available at hand so this one is of great imprtance to me,
Thanks
 

sssdthree

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Oct 5, 2012
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10,510


It is a laptop, Lenovo Thinkpad 3254A74
I was having thr lagging issues before the cleaning, and the fan itself is one that can simply be unplugged, cleaned, or replaced. Rather small. There was no need to touch the heatsinks connected to the GPU and CPU that i saw, also this being a laptop, those parts are heavily reinforced and i prefer not to touch them anyways.

As an update on my sitatuation, i have 2 PCI slots for RAm cards. One card is 2GB, The other is a larger 4GB. For some reason the laptop no longer recognizes the larger card. If i try to boot the pc with that card alone, the pc will not boot at all. On the other hand the pc will now only boot with the 2GB card, but only ONE of the PCI slots recognizes it and allows it to boot. I find this rather strange and i began to think the problem could be motherboard related especially in that memory area? But this problem happened overnight out of nowhere.

I rebooted with that one 2gb RAM card and this time there was no lagging or buzzing sound but the laptop has become excruciatingly slow. It can barely handle simple tasks anymore with only this 2Gb of ram in which about 1.5 of it is in use in the basic background processes .
Im pretty stumped on what the true problem is here
Actually cancel that, there is still freezing and serious buzzing noise when i try to run a game or view videos
 
Being able to access the fan without removing the whole heatsink assembly is a nice feature not found on all laptops. While the fan was out did you clean the vent(s) real good to clear them of any obstructing dust/debris? Sorry if that seems obvious, just covering all bases before moving on. Of course, if the vents were neglected when the fan was cleaned, you'll want to address that. Do you have any temperature monitoring programs installed? Does the system lag at all if run in "safe mode"?

Although I don't think that the memory problems are related to the lag, which I'm currently attributing to heat, it may be that they are related. When did you first find that your reported ram does not match the amount installed? Was the laptop purchased with the same ram or was any replaced or upgraded?
 

sssdthree

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Oct 5, 2012
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Thats fine.. Hmm yes, all vents were thoroughly cleaned to remove all dust and debris at the same time the fan was cleaned. As for the RAM, initially the laptop came with 4gb installed. I then added the other 2GB from my old Asus laptop to improve performance but this was more than a year ago. During this time it always showed 6gb and had absolutely no issues. When i noticed the difference was only today during the whole freezing/buzzing issue sadly. I know for a fact yesterday the problem did not exist, and the RAM was still at 6gb. (i have this habit of checking my pc stats before running a video game) i felt for some time that the problem could be software related, because there is absolutely no lag or buzzing in safe mode. But then again many features are disabled in safe mode including networking and sound at times, so there is much more RAM available for use. After restarting my pc with only the 2GB pf recognized ram installed, there was no lag on the desktop, and no buzzing sound. Again its just painfully slow almost to the point of uselessness. My RAM monitor shows that i have about 1700mb installed but almost always only 700-400mb available for use.. And that is after taking the time to close all unecessary runming programs. So now if i try to run a video game for example, the freezing, lagging, and buzzing returns, making the game almost unplayable (on lowest settings)
i did not have a temperature monitoring software installed, i will get to that now and post results.. It may take some time with the rate the pc operates at now sadly lol


Ok, so CPU core #1 is running at 49-53 degrees. Max was 57 degrees.
Core #2 : 48-50 degrees. Max was 52 degrees.
Generic Memory again even by this program is claimed to be at 1.6GB max with only 0.3 gb available. Basically it is at 97% load, and it shows with the performance.
The discrete graphics card in use is an NVIDIA 610M. GPU: 46-49 degrees. Peaked at 51 degrees.
HDD is at a constant 43 degrees.
All these temps though are taken whilst being on the desktop running the program.. I am unable to rum anything else at the same time due to maybe lack of resources. And unreal freezing/lagging out, and programs becoming unresponsive.
 
2GB is the minimum to run Win 7 64bit so there is that...
This is a very strange thing to happen suddenly and it's probably good that you keep on top of your system's performance

Your temps as shown are fine so I'm going to go a different tack now and look at two things; First, it seems it may possibly be related to the Intel HD graphics driver you can download and reinstall the driver for your Intel graphics or, 2) try the steps shown here http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-system/laptop-keeps-freezing-and-making-a-buzzing-noise/de2c4317-5cfe-4258-87e8-835692824f3b .
If that's not helpful, open the back and check that the CMOS battery is at 3v, replace if not (for some reason I cannot figure, that battery going bad can have strange effects on the PC's operation)
 

sssdthree

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Oct 5, 2012
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10,510


Ok, so I ran the SFC system scan and it returned with a message such as "this error was found but was unable to be fixed." But I have not yet tried to fix it manually, I wanted to try to update all drivers first.
Secondly for some reason the "Automatically Update" option for Windows Updates was turned off and there was about 400+MB of updates that needed to be completed. I set those last night and restarted my pc.
For some reason today I felt like switching the RAM cards again as a test. This time I insterted BOTH cards, large and small. The one slot which I said was previously not recognizing any cards is still not recognizing any cards, but I put the smaller 2GB card into that slot and switched the 4GB card in the place of the smaller card (in the slot the smaller card was previously that is actually recognizing it)
The pc managed to boot this time for some reason, but with the results I expected if it was to miraculously boot up. It only recognizes the larger card now, so both cards are installed but rather than 6GB I now have 4gb. Basically it seems like that slot alone is recognizing cards.
The pc has regained some of its former speed of course, now that it is twice the amount of RAM. Currently I am downloading and updating NVIDIA and Intel display drivers. I have not tested a video game for freezing and buzzing yet, I plan to do that after the updates are completed and do yet another full system scan for malicious software.
Although I should mention that for some reason my pc automatically restarted itself twice out of nowhere, whilst I was on the desktop. My temperatures are still fine so it is not a known overheating issue, as far as I can tell. I decided to go the the advanced section of system properties and disabled the "restart on system failure" option. It is to my understanding that disabling this will cancel a random restart during failure and possibly offer a blue screen with event log instead. But up to this moment (45 minutes later) the pc has not restarted or blue screened. I guess this is a good thing but I will wait it out and see if anything else randomly occurs.
So simply put, drivers are currently being downloaded and installed, security scan soon to be implemented, and then video gaming will be tested for freezing and buzzing. Why that one PCI slot has suddenly stopped recognizing RAM cards out of the blue is still a dilemma though.

OH also I must add, after the restart I now have a strange message on the lower right corner of my desktop saying
Windows 7
Build 7601
this copy of Windows is not genuine

This appeared out of nowhere out of the 2-3 years I have been using this laptop with genuine windows installed.

Ok so after all drivers updated, I tried loading a youtube video and the freezing/ buzzing still occurs.
CPU temperatures peaked at 70-72 degrees but for some reason my GPU showed no temperature. The software I am using shows my GPU to be the discrete NVIDIA card but unlike last time, no temperatures were shown. Could this be that the IntelHD graphics were in use instead of the NVIDIA graphics? and if so, why would the integrated graphics in particular be the cause of such an issue... I don't know, I will try to enter bios and try to manually switch to high performance graphics.

Ok so strange again. When viewing videos on a browser under integrated graphics there is slight lagging/buzzing but it is still there. When I switch to the high performance graphics, the freezing/buzzing is intensified, in fact I can say it is 2-3 times worse when I set this card to use.
The same goes for games, When I try to run them under IntelHD the freezing/buzzing is terrible. The problem is there even on a game's launcher rather than in the actual game itself. When I switch to NVIDIA card I expect better performance but nope, the freezing/buzzing again increases 2-3 times making the game itself or even its launcher almost unusable.
By the way, all drivers have been updated and yes the battery in the back is at 3V.