barrowhill said:
Have Lenevo (IBM) ThinkPad Z60t which regularly freezes up. Nothing
operational i.e mouse or keyboard functions. Have to hard power down - 5
sec on on/off switch and restart.
Any suggestions as to what might be the cause ??
Is this for another friend? ;-) Quite a collection of sick computers! ;-)
There isn't any way to tell from your post. It could be hardware or it could
be software. Random locking up is usually caused by bad hardware and/or
overheating, but the symptoms could look random and not really be and
therefore have to do with bad drivers or the like.
To troubleshoot on the software side:
The First Question Of Troubleshooting: what changed between the time things
worked and the time they didn't?
The Second Question of Windows Troubleshooting: what is the malware/virus
status of the machine? If you think it is clean, what programs (and
versions) did you use to determine this?
Be sure the computer is clean:
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware
If the computer is virus/malware-free, try clean-boot troubleshooting.
Clean boot in Windows XP -
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353
Clean-boot advanced troubleshooting in Windows XP -
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316434
How to Troubleshoot By Using the Msconfig Utility in Windows XP -
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310560
You can also boot with a Linux Live CD such as Knoppix or Ubuntu and run
that way for a while. If the machine behaves, the issue is undoubtedly
caused by something in Windows; i.e., software. If the machine misbehaves
under Linux, the issue is undoubtedly caused by hardware.
Since this is a laptop, there isn't too much hardware troubleshooting you
can do but you can test the hard drive and the RAM.
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Tshoot
Malke
