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Dell M70 freezes randomly during startup

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  • CPUs
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March 17, 2013 6:08:29 PM

My dell m70 laptop has begun freezing during startup. Sometimes it won't make it through the bios initialization and sometimes it freezes during or after windows loads. It has a new HD (8 months old) and has worked flawlessly exc. for needing a new monitor. Since the monitor was installed it worked fine up until yesterday when it would freeze during screen saver. Then it started freezing earlier and earlier till, it won't even make it through the first initialization screen sometimes. Is this a hardware problem? If it happens before Windows loads, there's no reason to reload windows, then, right? So how would I go about trouble shooting this. I am hardware capable as far as repairs, etc., but havent ever seen this problem before and don't know how to proceed. If you need more information, please let me know what and I'll do my best to get that to you. Thanks in advance for any and all help, here.

Best regards,
Keith

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March 17, 2013 6:22:13 PM

Hi :) 

Run a hard drive test in DOS... HIRENS BOOT CD etc, it sounds like a failing hard drive...

All the best Brett :) 
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March 17, 2013 6:31:34 PM

Probably the laptop video card going bad. My guess is the longer your laptop is powered down, the further it will go before freezing (video card failing). The hotter your video card gets the faster it will fail when you turn (restart) on your laptop.
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March 18, 2013 4:40:43 AM

Ok, does seem heat related. I turned off the laptop last night and when I cranked it up this morning, still working after 45minutes. Before, I couldn't get 5 minutes out of it. Ok, hopefully this means the hd isn't going bad. However, the video card is still a question. Is the video card replaceable on a Dell M70? Can i add additional cooling or new cooling fans and have a chance of fixing this? Also, do I need to replace the heat paste? I've heard others recommend this as a fix. Don't know. Thanks for all your responses.
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March 18, 2013 4:46:12 PM

xkadet said:
Ok, does seem heat related. I turned off the laptop last night and when I cranked it up this morning, still working after 45minutes. Before, I couldn't get 5 minutes out of it. Ok, hopefully this means the hd isn't going bad. However, the video card is still a question. Is the video card replaceable on a Dell M70? Can i add additional cooling or new cooling fans and have a chance of fixing this? Also, do I need to replace the heat paste? I've heard others recommend this as a fix. Don't know. Thanks for all your responses.


Is this your laptop? PDF Youtube video card replacement video, must have audio...lol
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March 20, 2013 5:15:31 PM

Ok, here's an update. Turns out it's not heat related. So, I'm back to square one on this problem. It usually allows windows to load before the freeze but not always. It's a complete freeze with no blue screen, ctrt alt del, doesn't work, no apparent activity on the HD, no other symptoms except frozen computer. Not reproduceable with any program, sequence of events, or time frame. Completely random (redundant, I know). When it works, the screen looks a little striped during startup until the hi resolution screen comes up and then it looks normal. I had a little problem with the montitor driver at first until I ran the windows auto driver load wiz. It went on line and found one, installed it, and that one worked. But then this problems started up and I'm not sure how close in time the problem started to when the monitor was replaced. It was very close, however. I just don't recall if it ever worked correctly after the new driver was installed. Admittedly, I don't know if this freezing is coincidence or cause and effect, yet, regarding the monitor replacement. But it is suspicious. Could it be the monitor driver?
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March 20, 2013 5:21:10 PM

If you hook up the laptop video to an external monitor does it exhibit the same freezing?
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April 3, 2013 4:18:51 AM

Ok, I was thinking it might be the new monitor, however, i replaced it with the old cracked monitor that woeked fine except for the slight crack in the corner obscuring a few things, and it still freezes. I've run all t he tests that I can, ran reimage repair, taken it apart again just to see if there were any bad connections from my previous work, and, no. Everything looks fine. Not long after I got this, had to replace the mother board, but that was 7 years ago. It's worked great since then until now. Don't know where to go at this point. Any further ideas?? Thanks all, for the help.
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April 3, 2013 12:50:13 PM

Brett928S2 said:
Hi :) 

Run a hard drive test in DOS... HIRENS BOOT CD etc, it sounds like a failing hard drive...

All the best Brett :) 


Did you try Brett's suggestion? Is there any errors (clues) in the event viewer?
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