Convinced this is not a virus! Computer always crashes, hangs, etc..? :(

Hello everyone! I really hope that I'm posting this in the right spot. Pardon me for the record, fair warning, I'm a bit computer illiterate.
Anyhow, well my problem started around June or so, I dropped my computer down the steps and apparently had damaged the SRI (I think) whatever that is. I guess that's all they found wrong with it, because that was the only thing they fixed and when I got my laptop back there was no longer any physical damage. However, it still acted the same. My laptop stayed on for a max of 30 minutes, usually less. It would always eventually hang, crash with the blue screen, and while watching youtube videos and things like that it would lock up and make this awful sound. The only way to regain access would be to flat out restart it, and sometimes that didnt even work! When I would turn it off, sometimes when I tired to turn it back on it would technically turn on but nothing would start. I would have a black screen, the power & wifi light would be on but nothing would happen and the caps lock and num lock lights would flash, thats it. Then I would have to hold down the power button, repeat that process, let it sit for a while and eventually try again. I have seriously tried everything I could think of. Ran about 4 different virus scans, none of them found anything but tracking cookies. I did disk cleanup and defrag too and while it made my computer faster and the blue screens did stop, it still continued to hang. Finally, I did a google search and saw something on yahoo answers about possibly damaged registry keys. I downloaded Glary Utilities and let it scan and fix my registry and this seemed to do the trick. My computer has been acting right for about two weeks, but now for some reason it's acting up again just like it was before

I know it's not a virus, I havent downloaded any suspicious files or been to any suspicious websites. The only new thing I've done was install sims 3 generations for my little brother. But that's just an expansion pack and the regular sims was already installed and had been for a while so I don't think it's that. I installed it about a week ago and my computer just started acting like this last night. I'm always with him when he plays on my laptop too, hes only 9 and I know he's not doing anything stupid. I'm just so confused and I need to fix this asap, is there anything else I havent done that I could do? I really don't want to have to send my computer back to get fixed because I have an online course that needs to be completed by Friday and obviously this piece of crap laptop has been slowing me down alot. Also a brand new laptop is out of the question I'm a broke college sophmore...lol.

Thanks and if this is in the wrong section I am truly sorry!

 

First off what operating system do you have?

You say you've done disk cleanup and defrag. Have you done an error-check (check-disk on earlier PCs)? If not, I'd try that by clicking Start> Computer, right click C: drive (or your main drive letter), click Properties> Tools> Error Checking. Make sure you have scanning for and repairing of bad sectors checked. If you're asked to schedule this at next restart click yes and restart your computer. This may take quite a while but you should see some steady process. Try to pay attention to the process and see if there's a lot of bad sectors or repairs happening.

 

I apologize I should have stated that, I'm using Windows 7 and if it's relevant at all my laptop is an HP G71.

Running the error-check now! I'll update when it's done, thanks!


Edit: I got asked to schedule for the next time my computer restarts so I'm going to try and finish a section of my course first, and then restart my computer.

 

Don't really have to go to shady sites or download anything to catch something.
Sometimes just from going to a friendly page if they don't know about it.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive-by_download

 

Sorry for being so late with replying!!
Anyhow, I ran the error check but it took some time so I did other things while it was running. I'm assuming if found and corrected all of the errors because when I came back it was at the start screen (where you choose which account youre going to logon your computer with etc).

Well, either way, my problem is still here. I almost want to say it's getting worse, my computer was virtually unusable this morning. It was staying on for shorter periods of time, usually no longer than 10 minutes. It just kept freezing, restarting, and when it restarted it didnt want to come back on just stayed black while the caps lock/num lock lights flashed. I'm running out of hope and options! Is there anything else I can do?


Also: I checked out the drive by download article, and did two more virus scans which took FOREVER to do because of the freezing/restarting/etc. I ran two virus scans with Kaspersky and Avast! and both of them found nothing, same with AdAware..

 

Another thing I noticed, theres lights at the bottom of my laptop. They all have icons above the lights one is a power icon, a lightening bolt (the light lights up when the charger is plugged in), and one with an icon that looks like a stack of 3 CD's. Normally when I turn my laptop on, the power light and the one that looks like a stack of CD's lights up. However when my laptop turns on but stays black and the num/caps lock lights flash, the light with the stack of CD's icon doesn't turn on. What could this mean? And what does that icon stand for? Sorry for the horrid explanation it's the best I can do, I stated before I was computer illiterate haha.

 

I'm looking at my wife's HP laptop and that stack of CDs icon is your hard drive indicator. If you get no lights then there's no hard drive activity. I'm wondering if you have a heat build up issue. Possibly vacuuming the vents on the bottom and back of the computer (with the computer off) may help with that. Dust bunnies and overheating can cause strange and usually unwanted behavior. Do you feel heat from the keyboard?

 

That makes 100% perfect sense because when I dropped my laptop down the stairs, my fan broke as well. I could hear it when it would move and it sounded like something was actually caught in there! But I thought this issue was fixed along with the SRI, because I haven't heard anything moving in there ever since.. and plus if they fixed one thing why wouldn't they fix everything? Who knows lol but to answer your question, no I don't feel heat from the keyboard but the trackpad can get pretty warm at times. I also tend to have to put something under it when I have it on my legs because it can get unbearably hot after a while but I was under the impression that that's normal. However I will take your suggestion into cleaning out the vents and such, I haven't done it in a while so whether this is the culprit or not I'm sure cleaning them out wouldn't hurt!


I also think it might be something wrong with my registry because when I do the registry scan & repair with Glary Utilities its almost like a temporary fix. I did a scan earlier around 12 ish and have literally been watching netflix movies all day without a single issue. I did the same thing last week as I stated in my original post, and obviously it didn't last, so no telling how long this will last. Just throwing it out there!

 

I'm thinking like cabbiinc that it could be a hard drive problem due to the fall.

See if you can pull up your chkdsk results to look for bad sectors.

Go to Start and type in power and when Windows Power Shell shows in the list of results click that. Then copy and paste this text into the window and hit enter.

Code:

get-winevent -FilterHashTable @{logname="Application"; id="1001"}| ?{$_.providername –match "wininit"} | fl timecreated, message

I'm not sure how the list of results will be sorted (I'm running a fresh install so only have one result) your recent chkdsk result may be at the the top or the bottom of the list. You want to find the 8/01/12 results and then You want the line where it says "0 KB found in bad sectors". Is your number 0 or is it higher? Picture: http://www.modernstreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/how-to-run-chkdsk.jpg

Edit: Also, in Computer, right-click the C: drive and select Properties. Then under the Hardware tab do you see a brand name for your hard drive in the list of devices (one will be an optical drive the other is probably the HD)?

 

Well I followed your instructions and looked up what you said on Power Shell, and for some odd reason the chkdsk results from the first weren't there! There were however, results from two other dates in June (both after the drop) and both of them have 0 where you said. I'm going to run another chkdsk when I restart my computer before I go to bed and after I do that I'll be back with the results, how weird!

I also did what you said looking for the brand of my hard drive. There were 3 drives under the hardware tab, two of which have DVD/CD underneath the type column but the one that doesn't is called Hitachi HTS545032B9A300 ATA Device.

 

So I finally ran a successful chkdsk last night and the result is the same, 0 KB in bad sectors.

 

I think if it was a HD problem you wouldn't get three good chkdsks. A HD that was causing slowing and shutdowns would propagate errors rather quickly. So the HD is probably fine.

If you wanted to you could run the Hitachi diagnostic tool (CD IMAGE version) which has to be burnt to a blank CD as an image file. Imgburn's "Write Image File to Disc" option would do it. http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=61 Then boot from the CD and run the Quick test. (The advanced test offers to Erase the disc to fix errors which is NOT what you want to do! That would destroy all your data.) The quick test would just verify the drive is OK. I'm 99% percent sure it would pass the quick test so you can skip this, I just wanted to give the link in case you get desperate and wanted to try it later.

I'm really not sure where to go from here. I just wanted to verify that the chkdsk passed which it did. That 4 days later you have no errors pretty much rules out a mechanical problem with the HD.

I hope someone gets back to this thread with some more ideas.

 

Well thank you for your effort! If all else fails I will definitely be trying out the link you left for me. I really hope I find out what's wrong with this thing before classes start back up.


Also my problems are back! They're just minor, but my laptop did hang last night and restart, and had the issue where it stayed black and the num/caps lock lights flashed. That only happened once and I've been using it all morning and no issues. This thing is driving me crazy!!!

 

recently I had a bad JAVA update which caused the same problems, check by removing Java then reinstall it.