Possible problem with my laptop

I am using my laptop at work and twice now it has gone totally non responsive. The mouse no longer functions and the touchpad does not function either. The keyboard is totally non responsive as well. Even if I hit the capslock key it does not even trigger the caps lock light to come on. The first time it did this I wasnt really paying attention to what I was working on at the time but since I was doing programming with visual studio I figured maybe I just overloaded the memory and it froze. This time though I was running visual studio but was just doing some text editing nothing that would take up major resources. So now I am wondering if this could be first signs of a possible hardware problem with my laptop. Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.

 

If you could give us some more info on the laptop it would help you get an response..........Make & Model and any other info.....hope that helps

 

OK let me run back to my office and grab it its 4 years old and about the only spec I remember is its a Sony Vaio with 256 MB of Ram.

 

OK its a Sony Vail PCG 9E4L. It has a Mobile AMD Athalon XP 1500+ 1.30 GHz processor. It has the 256 Mb of Ram. It also has an ATI Rage Mobility-M1 AGP PCI video card with 8.0M of SDRAM. I am running XP sp2. I should also point out that when I purchased the laptop I got the extended warranty and had the motherboard replaced probly about 3 years ago.

 

Well its plugged into a surge protector and has the battery in as well so if the power cord failed it should automatically go to battery power right.

 

Well it shows the logo that is charging the battery and running off electric and when I do run the battery down and plug it in it gets recharged so I dont think thats the problem

 

Even if I was running on battery power why would that cause the computer to freeze up entirely. I wouldnt be to concerned about this except for the fact that it takes the keyboard with it too and even the caps lock and num lock lights dont respond when I hit the keys.

 

Yeah it powers up fine just today for the 2nd time froze while I was working. I just am wondering if maybe my hard drive is goin bad or possibly some other piece of hardware.

 

Ok I will give that a shot and let you know what I find.

 

Ok I am running the disk check on drive C as far as the errors that I can view from the Control Panel I am not sure what I need to go to to do that.

 

Chkdsk didnt find any errors and there were no errors in the event viewer so any other suggestions.

 

This is just a shot beerbsh316 but have you recently installed any new programs, possibly IE7 through updates, or any other..........The reason I ask is that there has been a rash of weird problems in the last while with some new programs. If that is the case then you might want to uninstall them and see if your problem disappears, the next would be to use "System Restore" and roll back to a date before the problems occurred. Like I said just a shot beerbsh

 

Nope no recent updates. Since I am only using it to program it isnt even hooked up to the internet so definately no recent updates. I just really find this problem weird because normally I can tell when I am multitasking too much and causing the freeze but this is just like poof its dead with no warning.

 

It just froze again today and I wasnt even running my programming software so nothing resource hungry was running. I really think some hardware within the laptop is going but I have no clue what part.

 

Another one too would be to run Memtest, Tim is looking for PSU problems with Everest, as well as Temp problems which is a good possibility, and Memtest is looking for RAM problems another possiblity Memtest is available here at Major Geeks here http://www.majorgeeks.com/MemTest_d350.html

Hey and Thanks

 

OK for the everest it is showing:
Motherboard 23 C
CPU 23 C
Aux 24 C
IBM IC25N030ATMR04-0 27 C (started at 22 C)

for the voltages it is showing
CPU Core 0.01 V
+2.5 V 0.01 V
+3.3 V 3.21 V
+5 V 3.15 V
+12 V 7.62 V
Debug Info F 00 00
Debug Info T 84 80 80
Debug Info V 00 00 CA 7F 7F

 

Looks like you have a PSU problem there beerbsh316, as your +2.5 Voltages are way to low, as well as +5, +12, the deviation should be no more than 0.25Volts Shot of my Desktop voltages for comparison
http://img353.imageshack.us/img353/9701/screenhunter3yh0.jpg

A PSU swap in a Laptop is not the easy job it is in a Desktop, so you might want to take it to the shop, but it can be done, just depends on your tech level (Not to mention "Comfort" level)............Make certain that the PSU you purchase is compatibile with your computer and Good Luck

 

Do you have any approximations as to how much that might cost me. Since it is such an old laptop it is probly not going to be worth fixing.