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laptop freezing for few miniutes

Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 11:33 am
by killadark
i have been having this annoying problem of my laptop freezing while watching any online video playing music on itunes or watching anything on vlc
the freezing time is random sometimes 40sec or even a 1-2min
also laptop only freezes when i connect to the main router in my hostel (we have 3 routers out of which only 1 gives me this problem it is a buffalo router which is the main one the others are access points )i dont have this problem if i connect to any other router or i turn off my wifi.
this is the buffalo router we use
http://www.buffalo-technology.com/produ ... er-router/

Re: laptop freezing for few miniutes

Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 12:33 pm
by UberGerbil
When you say "freezing" -- do you mean a hard lock where you have to reboot, or just the video app hangs (or just the picture freezes), or what? You're giving a duration, so it sounds like it recovers eventually. You might want to keep several utilities running (ProcessExplorer, a temp monitoring app, etc) to see if you can see anything odd just before and after this lock. You could also try looking in the event log for errors that correspond to the locking. I'm being somewhat vague here, because you haven't indicated which OS you're running so the exact utilities and steps will vary somewhat.

It's possible this is overheating issue -- perhaps you get higher bandwidth from that one particular router, and that's enough to push your machine over the edge? Is the machine running hot (especially when it freezes)? Even if that's not the cause, it's a good idea to try to blow out the dust bunnies periodically.

You could also try updating your drivers -- WiFi, chipset, maybe video as well.

Re: laptop freezing for few miniutes

Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 12:47 pm
by killadark
Im using a windows 7 machine with 4gb ram 2.2ghz c2d i think that will be able to handle high bandwidth and the laptop never is hot its a sony vaio vgn-nw27mf
i do sometimes get display drivers have been recovered but it has dissapeard coming after an video driver update all my drivers are up to date

and as i said it locks up only when viewing video on my vlc player (havent tried others) or youtube videos or any other flash based video, when it locks up i can hear the sound of the video in really slow mo all cracked up and irritating i have also tried fixing my registry also which dint work

Re: laptop freezing for few miniutes

Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 1:07 pm
by FakeAlGore
killadark wrote:
i have also tried fixing my registry also which dint work


This is almost always a bad idea. Registry repair utilities and optimizers generally break more things than they fix.

Update your video drivers especially if they're crashing. Either the latest ones from NVIDIA or AMD or the latest from Sony's website will suffice.

Re: laptop freezing for few miniutes

Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 1:41 pm
by UberGerbil
So there's not actually a problem with your laptop when this freeze occurs -- you can do other things in other apps, etc -- just the video (flash or otherwise) is frozen or the sound is playing but the visuals aren't keeping up, etc? So you may be right, it might be a problem with the router. Have you tried any other intensive bandwidth tests (large file download, speakeasy speedtest, etc) when connected through this router to see if they exhibit freezing or abnormally low bandwidth?

What firmware is the router running -- stock Buffalo (what version?) or DD-WRT (which Buffalo also supports). See this thread @ DD-WRT. A bit more googling with the product ID might find you more (with possible fixes); I don't know anything about this particular model.

Re: laptop freezing for few miniutes

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 12:28 am
by killadark
actually the freezing occurs 98% of the time when i try to watch online videos or play file which are especially flv and as i said the sound goes all hay wire(in other words its very irritating and cant even mute it its like a robot taking in slo o or sumthin like that) when stuck the hdd stops responding all togeather as the hdd light is off and utorrent stops downloading nothing works i mean its a proper freeze no mouse moving and stuff

Re: laptop freezing for few miniutes

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 12:30 am
by killadark
UberGerbil wrote:
So there's not actually a problem with your laptop when this freeze occurs -- you can do other things in other apps, etc -- just the video (flash or otherwise) is frozen or the sound is playing but the visuals aren't keeping up, etc? So you may be right, it might be a problem with the router. Have you tried any other intensive bandwidth tests (large file download, speakeasy speedtest, etc) when connected through this router to see if they exhibit freezing or abnormally low bandwidth?

What firmware is the router running -- stock Buffalo (what version?) or DD-WRT (which Buffalo also supports). See this thread @ DD-WRT. A bit more googling with the product ID might find you more (with possible fixes); I don't know anything about this particular model.


the problem weirdly only affects my laptop there are 25 more ppl using it as i live in the hostel the connection speed is 20mbps so i doubt the router to blame

Re: laptop freezing for few miniutes

Posted: Mon Nov 07, 2011 9:55 am
by SteveEdson
And as i said it locks up only when viewing video on my vlc player (haven't tried others) or youtube videos or any other flash based video, when it locks up i can hear the sound of the video in really slow mo all cracked up and irritating


Was this ever solved? I have the exact same problem, same router. Windows 7. Acer laptop though

Re: laptop freezing for few miniutes

Posted: Mon Nov 07, 2011 12:21 pm
by 5150
FakeAlGore wrote:
This is almost always a bad idea. Registry repair utilities and optimizers generally break more things than they fix.


This is a bit OT, but I've never had CCleaner's registry cleaner cause any issues and I've been using it on hundreds of computers for about five years.