# Dell Latitude D630 Freezes



## BBrown8061 (Dec 5, 2009)

My Dell Latitude D630 Freezes without explanation. I can't even get to the Taskmanager. I have to do a hard restart. I have removed Virus protection, moved back my restore point, eliminated un necessary programs. Any suggestoins?

Thanks
Bruce


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## IT-Tech (Oct 12, 2009)

Hi and welcome!

A freezing system such as this one can come from numerous possible problems. This could be malware related, hardware related, driver related, and software related.

I personally prefer to troubleshoot the hardware before going into any LONG system scans for viruses and malware. Once I know the hardware is good working condition I know I will not be wasting my time looking for software related issues.

When your laptop “freezes” does it feel EXTREMELY hot?

Does it FREEZE if you disconnect all external devices and run the system, such as USB devices or drives?

If you go into device manager, how is your hard disk drive identified as? 

You will want to download the hard drive diagnostics from the manufacturer to test the drive to ensure it is not faulty. If you provide that information I will gladly help you locate some test software for the drive.

Most Dell systems have a diagnostics partition; if you have one on your system, you may use it to test the drive and other hardware. However, I personally prefer the manufacturer’s software for the hard disk drives.

Also, what is your BIOS version on this system?

You will also want to test the memory using MEMTEST386 which you can download an ISO image from here:

http://www.memtest86.com/download.html

Thank you very much!


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## BBrown8061 (Dec 5, 2009)

No, the laptop is not hot when it freezes.
There are no external deivces plugged in. Both at work and the office, it is on a docking station. 

The hard disk drive is ST90811AS

How can I find the BIOS version?

Can you give me more detail on how to run MEMTEST386?

Also, when I first reboot the computer and use it for a while. It works fine. It seems that the longer it is on or idle the more chance it has to freeze -- example it was on overnight with only Outlook running. And this morning, it was hung up


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## IT-Tech (Oct 12, 2009)

That's a seagate drive, so you will want to get the Seatools ISO so you can boot to it and run the drive diagnostics without Windows interferring with it.

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=720bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

More information on MEMTEST

http://www.custompcblog.com/troubleshooting/memtest86-memtest-86-tutorial-guide

It's a pretty straight forward process once you get the CD created and boot to it!

You can check your BIOS version by entering the BIOS setup, I believe Dell actually list the BIOS version on the BIOS SETUP main screen. You can also obtain it by looking at the screen when it boots... it should give you a BIOS date and version number.

Thanks!


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## BBrown8061 (Dec 5, 2009)

Nothing has come up on any of the test, yet the problem still continues. AVG uncovered one risky items and another program uncovered another. Do you have any suggestions on a utility that might uncover a hidden virus? Also, today, I have tried not using Internet Explorer and things seem to be running a bit better. Is there a chance that something is corrupted in Internet Explorer or Windows XP?


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## IT-Tech (Oct 12, 2009)

Hi and thank you for the update!

Since all of your testing is coming up without any failures and you have detected and removed some malware, I am going to refer you to the Virus/Trojan/Spyware Removal forum.

Please read this information before posting in the Virus/Trojan/Spyware Removal area; this will help speed up the process!

Thank you very much and good luck!


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