HP Probook freezing constantly, a real mystery

keepinternetfree

Honorable
Oct 30, 2013
3
0
10,510
Hi everyone,

I have a ~2.5 year old Probook 4220s. Over the summer (maybe 2 or 3 months ago), I was running Skyrim for one of the first times, and I got pretty into it and didn't realize that my computer was quite hot and the fan was going crazy. Eventually, it crashed (shut down completely and abruptly), wouldn't turn on for maybe ten minutes, and if my memory serves me right I smelled something burnt.

Since then (I'm almost positive that's what started it), my laptop has been experiencing seemingly random freezes, where the screen will lock up, the wi-fi light will turn orange (when it's on, it's white), and the computer doesn't unfreeze, so I hold the power button and turn it back on. This happens maybe once a day and is quite irritating. Also, more rarely, the computer won't boot at all (the power light blinks on and off but the computer won't turn on for a short while).

I described the problem to a friend and he said it must be bad memory in my harddrive. I cloned the harddrive onto a brand new one. Eventually the freezes became more common and at one point my computer wouldn't even turn on, so installed the new one, but the problem has persisted.

I suspected it could be bad RAM, but I ran a diagnostic (Memtest86) that is supposed to detect these things and it didn't find any problems. Also, nothing related to the crashes has shown up in the Windows event viewer logs.

As a final note, it does not seem to freeze when it's plugged in. I'm not entirely sure this is the case, but it's at least a lot more rare: I've been paying attention the last few days and not a single freeze has occurred while it was plugged in. However, I did buy a brand new battery maybe a month or two before the big crash happened.

So, in short, I'm just wondering what else could it possibly be? The laptop is in great working order besides this one issue, so I would hate to have to buy a new one :( Any and all help is greatly appreciated!

Thank you so much!
 

keepinternetfree

Honorable
Oct 30, 2013
3
0
10,510


I should have mentioned, I did consider that, but the freezes are truly random. Sometimes they occur within minutes of the laptop being turned on, sometimes the laptop is running tons of stuff and gets pretty hot but there aren't any issues, so I don't think it's that. SpeedFan looks like a very nifty program though, I'll download it anyway, thanks!
 

keepinternetfree

Honorable
Oct 30, 2013
3
0
10,510


Nope, no USB. It usually happens while I'm in class or at the library (student)...Could it be the motherboard, or the power supply, or something?
 

knownToPolice

Honorable
Dec 18, 2013
1
0
10,510
I have a similar problem with a probook 6545b - randomn freezes, no event log issues, diags pass, happens in safe mode. I couldn't figure it until I realised - it freezes when I move it. When I leave it on a flat stable surface its fine - the moment I move it / pick it up everything ceases. Try it yourself.

I think it must be a problem with the 3D sensor unit on the hard drive - when the sensors detect movement they park the heads but don't release it, so everything freezes.

Its early days but I'll keep investigating