Laptop Freezes and Fan Comes on.

[KhaoYai]

I've had this problem before and can't remember what the replies were but that was on an identical laptop that was stolen before I ever found the problem.

 

I run a failry old Acer Laptop running Windows 10.  I only use it for e-mail, letter writing and browsing websites.  Its normally left on all day with only my e-mail open.

 

Every so often and whether its co-incidental or not I don't know but its always when I have Asean Now open, it will freeze, refuse to respond to the mouse or any other button other than holding down the power button to switch it off. Around 30 seconds after if freezes, the fan comes on at a fairly fast speed.  I've felt underneath, it doesn't appear hot and there is no warning or on screen message, it just freezes.

 

I've googled the problem and lots of people seem to have similar problems with a myriad of different answers but I'm yet to read anyone say 'thanks, I did that and its fixed'.  I find it very strange that I'm always on Asean Now when it happens - I can't remember it happening at other times.

 

Once I restart it its OK again, - the fan runs normally which to a novice like me suggests it wasn't really overheating in the first place. The problem rarely happens twice in the same day and I don't have to leave it any amount of time before switching it back on.  It makes no difference if I've been using the laptop all day or its only been on for a few minutes.

 

I'm not particularly techie and probably won't understand any in depth replies but does anyone have any idea what this problem might be?  Better still, has anyone had it and fixed it.  Because of my limited use I'm loathed to get rid and buy another laptop.

 

I have Malware Bytes (free version) installed and both it and Windows Defender have never reported and problems.

 

Edit: I was prompted to write this post as the problem had just occured again - whilst I was on this site.  Another odd thing was that I'd just had a notification that someone had replied to a post I'd made. I'd clicked on that notification and was in the middle of writing a response when the freeze happened.  Strangely, when I restarted and came back on here to write this, the notification that I was responding to was once again showing as unread?????

[treetops]

Run a program that monitors processor or other internal temperatures and see what it comes up with.

[London Lowf]

I had exactly the same a few weeks ago - complete laptop freeze after a few minutes every time I came on here. In desperation I started going through Chrome instead of Mozilla and the problem stopped.

 

A few days ago I tried Mozilla again (as it's my default) and everything has been fine since.

 

I know naff all about tech stuff and so all I can say is "<deleted>!"

[timendres]

The most common reason for problems that are "coincidental" with web browsing is tight memory while browsing pages that are "JavaScript" heavy. Most modern web pages, Asean Now included, make a lot of use of JavaScript to make the web page more dynamic in terms of the UI. This heavy use of JavaScript, if not well implemented, can lead to a lot of memory consumption by the web browser. This is often made worse by using Chrome, which is known to be a serious memory hog.

 

Once the web browser starts chewing up the available memory, the computer will begin to "swap". This is the process of moving memory of a program that is not active from RAM to the hard drive. By moving RAM to the hard drive, the computer can free up RAM to be used by the currently running program so it does not run out of memory. When that "swapped" memory is needed again by the program that was using it, it will be read back from the hard drive into RAM for use by the program that was using it.

 

The problem is that sometimes this swapping process begins to "thrash", where you are repeatedly and rapidly moving RAM to disk, then bring the data from disk back to RAM, then back to disk, then back to RAM. With older machines that have spindle hard drives (moving disks as opposed to modern SSD), this process of swapping RAM to disk and back is very very slow and requires lots of CPU. When the machine is "thrashing", everything slows down, the CPU heats up, the fans kick in, and things go downhill until the machine locks up, or memory is somehow freed up to allow everything to fit into RAM again.

 

It sounds like your machine does not have enough RAM. The simple solution is to add more.

 

If that is not something you want to do, then what you need is a browser that consumes the least amount of memory possible, and you need to limit the number of tabs/windows you open in your browser at any one time (right now, I have three web browsers open - Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, with over 200 tabs open between them! But 64GB of RAM allows me to do this). Chrome is a known memory hog. Firefox is better with RAM than Chrome, in general. Opera is considered less memory intensive than both Firefox and Chrome. So using Opera may help. You will also want to limit the number of applications you have running at any one time.

 

As suggested by @treetops you could open the Task Manager and use it to see what applications are running, and how much memory they are consuming. There are numerous articles and YouTube videos out there that can explain how to do this. It is possible that there is something running you are not aware of that is using more memory than everything else, and getting rid of that process could solve the problem.

[bendejo]

I agree with the above, it may be a browser problem.  Probably the simplest way to sniff it out is to try other browsers, and the easiest way to do that would be with the portableapps versions of other browsers.  These "portable-ized" versions will keep all their related data in the installation directory, so they will not mess with your AppData stuff.

 

Or the humbug could be caused by a browser add-on.  Most browsers will have a way to start without the installed add-ons, a quick web search should be able to tell you how.

 

 

[KhunBENQ]

By theory: even a highly stressed CPU should not overheat to the point that it simply freezes (that's obviously happening, a self protection mechanism before the thing melts).

The fan should run high before the freeze?

Fan could be clogged/dirty with fluff?

Worth a try: buy a simple laptop cooling pad?

 

And as others wrote: use Task Manager and watch CPU performance and memory usage.

 

[KhaoYai]

6 hours ago, KhunBENQ said:

The fan should run high before the freeze?

That was what I was thinking - seems pretty pointless to come on when a problem has already been caused by overheating.  However, the laptop doesn't seem at all hot.

[Bruno123]

Just now, KhaoYai said:

That was what I was thinking - seems pretty pointless to come on when a problem has already been caused by overheating.  However, the laptop doesn't seem at all hot.

Full model number?

[OneMoreFarang]

16 hours ago, KhaoYai said:

but I'm yet to read anyone say 'thanks, I did that and its fixed'.

That could be at least 20 different problems. There is no "do this and it will work again" answer.

 

Sorry to say it like this but with your limited computer knowledge it is more likely that you make it worse than that you will fix it. I suggest ask an expert (a real expert) to fix it.

And I can tell you already that the expert will also do a lot of trial and error. If he is lucky then he guesses the first time right and he fixes the problem in 10 min. If he is not lucky then he will try 20 different possible solutions until hopefully he will find the underlying problem. There is no easy fix for this.

[Bruno123]

7 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

That could be at least 20 different problems. There is no "do this and it will work again" answer.

 

Sorry to say it like this but with your limited computer knowledge it is more likely that you make it worse than that you will fix it. I suggest ask an expert (a real expert) to fix it.

And I can tell you already that the expert will also do a lot of trial and error. If he is lucky then he guesses the first time right and he fixes the problem in 10 min. If he is not lucky then he will try 20 different possible solutions until hopefully he will find the underlying problem. There is no easy fix for this.

 

Erm....you have no idea as to whether the fix will be easy or whether it requires skills beyond the OP. Your post is simply conjecture.

 

It could be something as simple as an underpowered CPU in conjunction with old spinning disc tech. But not one person, prior to my post, asked anything with regard to the specification of the laptop.

[KhaoYai]

40 minutes ago, Bruno123 said:

Full model number?

[KhaoYai]

25 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

Sorry to say it like this but with your limited computer knowledge it is more likely that you make it worse than that you will fix it. I suggest ask an expert (a real expert) to fix it.

Therein lies the problem.  For what I do, I don't need a powerful laptop or the latest model.  I can replace this one for 5000-6000 baht in Thailand - I suspect that trying to get it fixed will cost more than that.

 

I normally have 2 identical models - one in Thailand, the other in the UK - that way I avoid having to carry one. All I have to carry is my portable hard drive.  If I can't fix this problem easily I might just buy another and leave this one in Thailand as my other one was stolen during a break-in.

 

I still find it strange that to date, the problem has only ever happened when I've been on this site.  I sometimes use the laptop to view Formula 1 through Sky Go when in the UK.  Its never frozen during that use and my novice thinking is that such use would put much more strain on the processor than viewing a website.

[Bruno123]

20 minutes ago, KhaoYai said:

Therein lies the problem.  For what I do, I don't need a powerful laptop or the latest model.  I can replace this one for 5000-6000 baht in Thailand - I suspect that trying to get it fixed will cost more than that.

 

I normally have 2 identical models - one in Thailand, the other in the UK - that way I avoid having to carry one. All I have to carry is my portable hard drive.  If I can't fix this problem easily I might just buy another and leave this one in Thailand as my other one was stolen during a break-in.

 

I still find it strange that to date, the problem has only ever happened when I've been on this site.  I sometimes use the laptop to view Formula 1 through Sky Go when in the UK.  Its never frozen during that use and my novice thinking is that such use would put much more strain on the processor than viewing a website.

 

You can likely fix the problem temporarily by changing your Browser to one that can block scripts automatically.

Something like Brave, turning on the Block Scripts option via Settings. https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360022806212-How-do-I-use-Shields-while-browsing

 

You can block Cross Site cookies too.

 

https://brave.com

 

The real issue with that laptop is the lack of SSD. CPU isn't great, but you cannot change that. But that, in conjunction with the very old magnetic spinning disc storage method, can lead to the freezing and churning that you are experiencing.

Fitting an SSD will cost 600 baht + VAT plus the cost of the SSD at any official ACER service centre. So total cost from perhaps around 1500 baht to 2000 baht dependent on the capacity of the solid state drive.

 

That way you won't even need to keep it on, as it will start up and shut down in seconds and generally be more of a pleasure in use. 

 

You won't be able to change the drive yourself, as it's a horrible design:

 

 

 

Edit: Actually looking into this further, it might be a BIOS issue. Taking a quick look.

[KhaoYai]

6 minutes ago, Bruno123 said:

You can likely fix the problem temporarily by changing your Browser to one that can block scripts automatically.

I should mention that I currently use Firefox.

[Bruno123]

1 minute ago, KhaoYai said:

I should mention that I currently use Firefox.

 

Try updating the BIOS; you are three iterations behind.

[Bruno123]

41 minutes ago, KhaoYai said:

 

I need the part number; such as NX.MNZCF.001...

 

Check the underside. This is to check that you will flash the correct BIOS file.

[Bruno123]

If and when you do you replace this device; get yourself a second user DELL Latitude.

They are usually solidly built, are easy to maintain and often get long term support.

 

 

[KhunBENQ]

1 hour ago, Bruno123 said:

You can likely fix the problem temporarily by changing your Browser to one that can block scripts automatically.

Something like Brave, turning on the Block Scripts option

Much recommended and an easy try.

 

To the OP: it's well possible that your laptop heats up just on this site.

There will be similar heavy load websites but just by chance you don't come accross them.

There have been complaints by other users in the past that the site loads very slow/drags down their device.

 

[London Lowf]

7 hours ago, KhaoYai said:

That's interesting - I also have an Acer Aspire, mine's an A515-55. As far as I know, it's a decent spec?

 

I only ever have one browser open at a time, and only one tab therein.

 

But, as I said earlier, the problem seems to have gone away.

 

 

[RedBackman]

Update your bios is good advice in general so I'd do that regardless, really a crapshoot if it will solve your current problem though. If this issue is really only happening on this site that's not too big of a problem, trying a different browser would be a good troubleshooting step.

 

As far as buying more ram or an ssd or taking it to get serviced I wouldn't recommend it for your laptop just because it's an older model that should probably be on the verge of replacement anyway. A 2.5" sata ssd could maybe roll forward to a new desktop or external storage but m.2 nvme drives are the new standard so it's less than ideal . And the ddr3 ram you'd buy for it is going to be useless outside of old laptops. Just from a cost perspective put any money you'd spend on this towards something new.

 

Also your current system is pretty low spec to be running Windows 10 well, so if you really only use it for letter-writing, email, and web browsing various linux distributions are focused at being friendly to older hardware. Just a thought if you want to squeeze more life out of it.

[KhaoYai]

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions but it seems I was wrong about the problem only occuring when on Asean Now.  Today I had several tabs open (but not Asean Now) which is not something I normally do. Two of them had a lot of graphic content and the laptop froze again after about 30 minutes use.

 

I've also noticed that its quite a lot older than I thought it was - its just not worth the time or money trying to locate the fault. Updating it and adding more memory with no guarantee its fixed is most likely a waste of money. I'm going to replace it and leave this one in Thailand to replace the one that was stolen last year.  I have a Thai friend who's an IT teacher, I may ask him to look at it and he may well have some memory kicking around.

[mvdf]

10 minutes ago, KhaoYai said:

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions but it seems I was wrong about the problem only occuring when on Asean Now.  Today I had several tabs open (but not Asean Now) which is not something I normally do. Two of them had a lot of graphic content and the laptop froze again after about 30 minutes use.

 

I've also noticed that its quite a lot older than I thought it was - its just not worth the time or money trying to locate the fault. Updating it and adding more memory with no guarantee its fixed is most likely a waste of money. I'm going to replace it and leave this one in Thailand to replace the one that was stolen last year.  I have a Thai friend who's an IT teacher, I may ask him to look at it and he may well have some memory kicking around.

I highly recommend switching to a Chromebook. Some of them are affordable but all share one thing in common: they work like a charm. Plus they're virus-proof, malware-proof and very easy to use. When a chromebook is restarted or rebooted, a systems check is automatically performed which is how topnotch performance is maintained.

 

[RedBackman]

47 minutes ago, KhaoYai said:

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions but it seems I was wrong about the problem only occuring when on Asean Now.  Today I had several tabs open (but not Asean Now) which is not something I normally do. Two of them had a lot of graphic content and the laptop froze again after about 30 minutes use.

 

I've also noticed that its quite a lot older than I thought it was - its just not worth the time or money trying to locate the fault. Updating it and adding more memory with no guarantee its fixed is most likely a waste of money. I'm going to replace it and leave this one in Thailand to replace the one that was stolen last year.  I have a Thai friend who's an IT teacher, I may ask him to look at it and he may well have some memory kicking around.

Yeah, if it's not overheating and it's happening on multiple sites/browsers it definitely feels like a low memory issue. There are some steps you can take to reduce windows memory usage, like turning off features you don't use and disabling startup programs you don't want. A big one is that you mentioned is using Malwarebytes, These antivirus programs can be resource hogs and aren't really necessary. Windows defender, browser adblockers and common sense should be enough to protect you. I would uninstall the additional 3rd party antivirus stuff and see if your situation improves.

 

 And again don't sleep on linux, you'll be using the same exact browser but the OS is just better for low end systems. Older computers can go from unusable to snappy just like that.

[Bruno123]

On 6/1/2022 at 3:26 PM, KhaoYai said:

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions but it seems I was wrong about the problem only occuring when on Asean Now.  Today I had several tabs open (but not Asean Now) which is not something I normally do. Two of them had a lot of graphic content and the laptop froze again after about 30 minutes use.

 

I've also noticed that its quite a lot older than I thought it was - its just not worth the time or money trying to locate the fault. Updating it and adding more memory with no guarantee its fixed is most likely a waste of money. I'm going to replace it and leave this one in Thailand to replace the one that was stolen last year.  I have a Thai friend who's an IT teacher, I may ask him to look at it and he may well have some memory kicking around.

 

Learn from this mistake. Do not again buy plasticky crud that you need to disassemble completely in order to do simple maintenance. 

Swapping the storage to solid state should take minutes and be user-friendly. Your laptop is not.

Do not buy anything with a mechanical hard drive; no matter how tempting, unless it's something like a second user DELL Latitude, where a storage drive can often be swapped in a few minutes, even by a novice.

Check beforehand as to how easy or difficult it would be to upgrade RAM and storage drive.

 

Did you even attempt to update the BIOS? I doubt it ???? 

[DezLez]

On 6/1/2022 at 9:42 PM, mvdf said:

Plus they're virus-proof, malware-proof

No they are not!

Just google "Chromebook viruses" and see the results!

[KhaoYai]

1 hour ago, Bruno123 said:

 

Learn from this mistake. Do not again buy plasticky crud that you need to disassemble completely in order to do simple maintenance. 

Swapping the storage to solid state should take minutes and be user-friendly. Your laptop is not.

Do not buy anything with a mechanical hard drive; no matter how tempting, unless it's something like a second user DELL Latitude, where a storage drive can often be swapped in a few minutes, even by a novice.

Check beforehand as to how easy or difficult it would be to upgrade RAM and storage drive.

 

Did you even attempt to update the BIOS? I doubt it ???? 

It was never a mistake. It cost me less than 5000 baht and I've had 5 years out of it. I know people who spend 40 or 50,000 on laptops and do nothing more with them than I do.  Why on earth would I want to spend that?  It may very well be easy to install more memory - I have done that before on a Sony and it was very easy. However, after discovering that my  laptop is much older than I thought and in light of the current problems, it will be replaced.  I don't think its cost effective to spend any money at all on it.

 

No, I didn't try updating the bios. Whenever I've tried doing anything other than downloading programmes etc. in the past, its caused more problems so I leave such things well alone. I asked for advice and I do listen to it but if I think its beyond my capability, I either leave it to the professionals or replace the item. 

 

I'm also wary of any form of updates due to problems I've had in the past. For example, when I was on Windows XP, the boffins always advised me to carry out updates.  On numerous occasions when I did that, my PC crashed and I quite often lost data - I know of others who often had the same problems.

 

Its very easy for someone who understands computers to say - just do this or just do that. If I tried to explain how a car automatic geabox works, would you be able to repair one? Each to his own.

 

I don't know what others find but whenever I've gone on Google to find a problem fix, I find that when I'm told to ' click on settings and scroll to this' or 'open' that - those things are not on my computer and the photos of dialogue boxes don't even resemble anything I can find on my system.

 

I understand that SSD hard drives are a big improvement and I will most likely replace my laptop with one that has an SSD

[mvdf]

19 minutes ago, DezLez said:

No they are not!

Just google "Chromebook viruses" and see the results!

Did you just try to waste my time by making me do that nonsense??? Adding you to my IGNORE list!

 

[Bruno123]

19 minutes ago, KhaoYai said:

It was never a mistake. It cost me less than 5000 baht and I've had 5 years out of it. I know people who spend 40 or 50,000 on laptops and do nothing more with them than I do.  Why on earth would I want to spend that?  It may very well be easy to install more memory - I have done that before on a Sony and it was very easy. However, after discovering that my  laptop is much older than I thought and in light of the current problems, it will be replaced.  I don't think its cost effective to spend any money at all on it.

 

No, I didn't try updating the bios. Whenever I've tried doing anything other than downloading programmes etc. in the past, its caused more problems so I leave such things well alone. I asked for advice and I do listen to it but if I think its beyond my capability, I either leave it to the professionals or replace the item. 

 

I'm also wary of any form of updates due to problems I've had in the past. For example, when I was on Windows XP, the boffins always advised me to carry out updates.  On numerous occasions when I did that, my PC crashed and I quite often lost data - I know of others who often had the same problems.

 

Its very easy for someone who understands computers to say - just do this or just do that. If I tried to explain how a car automatic geabox works, would you be able to repair one? Each to his own.

 

I don't know what others find but whenever I've gone on Google to find a problem fix, I find that when I'm told to ' click on settings and scroll to this' or 'open' that - those things are not on my computer and the photos of dialogue boxes don't even resemble anything I can find on my system.

 

I understand that SSD hard drives are a big improvement and I will most likely replace my laptop with one that has an SSD

5000 baht new? I don't think so. 

I did not suggest to spend 40k. Read my suggestion again; I suggested 'second user'.

My DELL Latitude is the same age as your ACER, though with an Intel i5 CPU. I spent 3,000 baht. Still runs perfectly; just needs a new battery. 46k new.

This is what I mean. You needs are few, so you don't need to waste your money on the latest and greatest.

If your laptop was as solidly built with a better design, then it would be worth spending the 600 baht on an SSD that you could quite easily fit yourself. Takes seconds on my device. Yours has to be completely disassembled; so not worth the cost of someone doing that plus the cost of the parts. Especially when you aren't even sure that it will fix the issue.

 

Your analogy with regard to an automatic gearbox is pure nonsense. Of course if you gave me a detailed video guide and it was within the capability of a normal untrained person, I could do it.

 

Anything that I suggest to you, I KNOW that you can do, with a little guidance. So it would be a matter of you communicating that you need guidance. Then you will get a personalised tutorial. One that fits with your device. Remember that I asked for the product code? That gives me the exact device description.

 

What people like yourself do not realise, is that when you tell yourself that you cannot do something, you diminish your own capabilities. If you think you cannot, you cannot.

Don't be so afraid all the time. Your XP stories are XP stories. XP is more than twenty years old. Things have changed. 

We are here to help. I'm sure that you would prefer to just muddle along on your own.

 

[Bruno123]

31 minutes ago, mvdf said:

Did you just try to waste my time by making me do that nonsense??? Adding you to my IGNORE list!

 

 

When was the last time you had any kind of virus on Windows? Malware is what most people are defending against and the suggestion is that you use additional antivirus software on a ChromeBook....just like Windows.

 

[Bruno123]

I bought something like this; https://th-th.facebook.com/marketplace/item/566444005263067/ for use when here.

 

Compare the ease of getting to user replaceable parts to your e-machines laptop.

 

 

 

 

The problem is that you end up using the device sub-optimally for the lifetime of the device because any kind of maintenance is prohibitive.

 

600 baht to fit your own SSD quickly and easily; compared to perhaps 2000 baht from your local tech as he had to take the whole thing apart....and perhaps cracked the plastic along the way.