Computer dies mid-use!

**SueEllen** · 7 December 2009, 17:09

How old's the laptop? If you are adding RAM in 500K increments it indicates that it's time to go and buy an new laptop.

Do you have recovery discs?

**b0redom** · 7 December 2009, 17:26

ciritcal?

500k? I presume you mean 500MB? As above, if you're looking at adding RAM in those sort of quantities, it's time to buy a new laptop.

**NickFitz** · 7 December 2009, 17:29

Suddenly powering off could be a battery problem; the widget for detecting battery time remaining tends to get confused when the battery is nearing the end of its life. My old Toshiba will chunter along showing over 90% for a while, then it drops down to about 5% and before Windows has even managed to get the "low battery" warning on the screen it's out of juice.

My trusty MacBook's battery has started heading in the same direction (although I've been ignoring the OS's warning that my battery is on the way out and should be replaced for a couple of months now) so it's apparently something to do with the nature of batteries rather than any particular manufacturer.

If it's happening when you're connected to the mains then all this is irrelevant, of course

**thunderlizard** · 7 December 2009, 17:35

I agree try the fan cleaning option.

tl, in "To the man who only has a hammer, everything looks like a nail" mode.

**TheFaQQer** · 7 December 2009, 17:51

Have you tried switching it off and back on again?

Oh, wait.....

**BolshieBastard** · 7 December 2009, 17:52

Originally posted by Mustang View Post

My laptop has been slowing upfor a while now. I have taken the following steps to improve it but to no real benefit

1) I have cleared off as much hard disk space that I can but defrag shows I only have 19% free. It is partiioned by the manufacturer (Sony) - is there any way I can move the partition to access some of the disk space the other side of the partition?

2) I have added more RAM (500k) but cant locate where to put the remaining 500k (as suggested by ciritcal). Any suggetions where I can find this? Sony are not interested in helping!!

3) I continually clear out the register and clean memory/disk space.

I have no been getting blue screen errors and the worst nightmare is that it switches off mid-use! I am backing up the hard drive daily!! The constant whirring noise is getting worse though people sggest this is the fan and not the HDD.

What does the panel think?

It could be the fan since when I power up again after I switch on again, no data appears to be corrupted or anything so it may just be that it cools down. I might open it up and see if I can clean the fan area.

Thoughts/suggestions welcome before I bite the bullet and buy a new laptop!!

TIA.

Its ****ed?

**Clippy** · 7 December 2009, 18:20

As others have asked, how old is the laptop? If it's over 4 years old, I'd think about replacing it.

As for suggestions:

1) As mentioned, clean the fan area.

2) Check where your Windows swap file is kept.
If it is on the C: partition, suggest you move it to the D: partition.
This will, depending on size, free up HDD space and should improve performance.

3) To re-size the partitions, try Easeus Partition Master.

4) With regards installing additional memory, some laptops have one of the slots under the keyboard.
Check out the Sony forum at notebookreview.com to see if there are any posts relating to this for your model.

**Spacecadet** · 7 December 2009, 18:25

FANS!

I did mine a month or so ago as the laptop was periodically running slow even after a clean install
(2Ghz dual core and 2GB of ram so no excuse there!)

I even tried to warn you about it
http://forums.contractoruk.com/techn...t-warning.html

**xoggoth** · 7 December 2009, 22:56

Have you checked what is in users\<user>\appdata? Often useless stuff there from things you have uninstalled. You can easily have a couple of Gb of crud per user. You can sometimes clean a disc best by creating some new users and deleting the old ones.

Computer dies mid-use!