Laptop Problem

Hey all you geeks,

A few weeks ago, my laptop dropped off my bed (about a 2 or 3 foot drop) onto the floor and landed on its backbone. Everything appeared to be working fine after that, but I'm noticing that every once in a while it appears to be cramping up for about 2 seconds. The mouse icon is still mobile, but everything else freezes for about 2 seconds.

Does anyone know what could be the problem here?

I can't speak to your level of proficiency with windows but since the system boots and otherwise seems fine I would tend to think that your system is suffering from an unrelated problem.

Perhaps spyware/Viruses?

I can't speak to your level of proficiency with windows but since the system boots and otherwise seems fine I would tend to think that your system is suffering from an unrelated problem.

Perhaps spyware/Viruses?

typically you don't get freezes from drops. I agree with spyware, have to loaded any new software?

I would tend to agree with you guys, but my level of proficiency with Windows is quite good, and I am very careful with everything I accept. I don't think it's Spyware. This all happened right after it was dropped...

1) was your laptop on when it dropped
2) is everything recognized in bios (ram, hdd, etc.)

I'm thinking the problem is hardware situated.

1) was your laptop on when it dropped
2) is everything recognized in bios (ram, hdd, etc.)

I'm thinking the problem is hardware situated.

The laptop WAS on when it dropped (damn, system just hanged while I was writing that :rant:) and I'm pretty sure the BIOS recognizes everything...

I think something must have happened to either the monitor cable or power cable/inverter - I just got my laptop back today from Toshiba, and they ended up replacing the entire mainboard, as it was having issues going to sleep, and if it did, the USB ports wouldn't activate when it did come out of sleep.

When in doubt, you could try running the recovery disc, and see if that clears it up, if not, it's probably something HW-related.

I think something must have happened to either the monitor cable or power cable/inverter - I just got my laptop back today from Toshiba, and they ended up replacing the entire mainboard, as it was having issues going to sleep, and if it did, the USB ports wouldn't activate when it did come out of sleep.

When in doubt, you could try running the recovery disc, and see if that clears it up, if not, it's probably something HW-related.

Back everything up before you run any recovery disk. A lot of the disks that come with the PCs only come with the reformat option, unless you installed this directly from OEM than you should back up.

I never asked, which versoin of Windows?

Let's dig a little deeper:
Does everything freeze (if you have a freeze but are playing and MP3, does the music stop too?)
Do you now notice any physical damage to the laptop?
Where did it drop (the top, side, corner?)

Really, there aren't too many reasons why something would just freeze after being dropped. Typically, if there was a problem with it after being dropped (physically with the hardware) it would not boot, or would hang when booting, or would give the always fun bluescreen of death. The only thing I can think of that might do it is possibly cracked or out of place memory, cracked motherboard relating to memory or processor, or the processor is out of place. Typically though, you see thing much worse happening.

The other thing that I would throw out there and lean towards if possibly Windows updating. There are bad updates and one might possibly have installed around the same time and it would be a coincedence.

I don't go on line over the weekend typically (I do work on computers for a living so I don't touch them when I am not at work), but if you don't have anything by Monday I will check back in then.

Back everything up before you run any recovery disk. A lot of the disks that come with the PCs only come with the reformat option, unless you installed this directly from OEM than you should back up.

I never asked, which versoin of Windows?

Let's dig a little deeper:
Does everything freeze (if you have a freeze but are playing and MP3, does the music stop too?)
Do you now notice any physical damage to the laptop?
Where did it drop (the top, side, corner?)

Really, there aren't too many reasons why something would just freeze after being dropped. Typically, if there was a problem with it after being dropped (physically with the hardware) it would not boot, or would hang when booting, or would give the always fun bluescreen of death. The only thing I can think of that might do it is possibly cracked or out of place memory, cracked motherboard relating to memory or processor, or the processor is out of place. Typically though, you see thing much worse happening.

The other thing that I would throw out there and lean towards if possibly Windows updating. There are bad updates and one might possibly have installed around the same time and it would be a coincedence.

I don't go on line over the weekend typically (I do work on computers for a living so I don't touch them when I am not at work), but if you don't have anything by Monday I will check back in then.

If it was freezing before and after it was dropping, then I would think spyware/Windows-related, but they way it sounds, it began freezing after it was dropped, and to me, that would be something got jarred, possibly the hard drive, since it was on the time - but I wouldn't really know, I've never dropped my laptop to know for sure, but I do know that even moving my desktop around (when off), will sometimes cause power connectors to loosen and then when I turn it back on, my cd drive wouldn't power up.

In my experience, PCs are just flaky like that, jar it just right, and a cable might loosen up just enough to lose connection.

He could try running stressing programs like Sandra or memtest, and see if it errors at all.

When the computer hangs on me, the mouse can still move... Does that help?

Since your computer boots without any errors, that to me says the hard drive is ok. The problem i'm leaning towards is that your RAM got jarred around or cracked or something. Because your computer is freezing up a bit while Windows is booted and running that to me says that the memory is ****ed up somehow.

Try running a program like memtest and see if it comes back clear.