Solved Vista Home Premium x32 freezes after startup

[cert323]

Hi
I have/had a Sony Vaio FW180D Core 2 P8600 4GB Radeon HD3470. It was connected to my LCD TV as a part of my entertainment center. Everythingworked perfectly until I left a video on MPC player on pause overnight. Next day, windows froze and was unable to startup,startup repair ran but was unable to fix anything. Since then I had reinstalled windows/factoryreset multiple time, ran all Vaio updates, uninstalled the Ati driver andcleaned registry, hard drive diagnostic, but the problem keeps coming back. Thelaptop even freezes on a clean boot, but works without a hitch on safe mode. Same occurrenceevery time, the laptop will work fine for the first few days, first freeze and Iwould have to do a hard reboot, Windows checks disk for consistency, and itwould freeze minutes into startup after that, the cursor is the only thing thatworks.

Sorry for the story like post but I’m not very technical and didn’t want to leave out anything important
Any help is much appreciated

 

[richc46]

Welcome
Although, I am sure that you are giving an account description of what has happened the facts contradict themselves.
If there are problems after a fresh install, it means hardware problems.
If there are no problems in safe mode that usually means a driver.
Lets try to see what has happened.
Think, did you reinstall and then the problem began after you installed some other software?

 

[cert323]

I did three factory resets since the problem started last month, the first two times I reinstalled all the programs I had before the problem started. AVG, Magic iso, MPC home cinema, Utorrent, and Ccleaner. It was not till this final time I reinstalled windows I had installed all the new Vaio updates, TweakNow RegCleaner and redid my ATI driver. Each time I preform a factory reset the computer would work fora few days to week and then start to show problems again. I have an external hard drive that is connected to the computer, did a check disk and I came back fine also.

 

[richc46]

Did you use the regcleaner before the problems?

 

[cert323]

No I only used the regcleaner once and that was when I uninstalled the ATI driver. And the Ccleaner I have not used since I hook the laptop up to the TV

 

[richc46]

So many contradictory facts, I must be missing something. The fact that it goes into chkdsk, usually means hard drive and many of the symptoms also point into that direction, lets find out

Test Hard Drive

Hard drive scan usings SeaTools - SeaToolsfor Windows | Seagate - Both long and shorttests

 

[cert323]

thanks on it right now

 

[cert323]

Hi Rich

I tried to install the HD scan in safe mode through a usb and windows came back with errors, lasts one stating that something was corrupt. After that safe mode freezed up also and reboot me back to normal boot up. I tried booting back in and its going to startup repair.

 

[cert323]

I also neglected to say this because it thought it was fixed, but the first time the computer froze I got a BSOD. My fault, I shut down the computer while it was running startup repair. I Google the error code and found that it could be fixed with Windows 7 self heal funtion. I pop in my Acer restore CD with Windows 7 Home Premium and the problem went away.

 

[cert323]

Hi Rich
I just did a clean install of Windows 7 on the laptop, formatting everything including the Sony recovery partition. Since everything is new would it be safe to say that if the problem arises again, it should be a hardware problem.

Thanks for all your help so far

 

[richc46]

If you fomatted and the problem does happen again, yes, its hardware.

 

[richc46]

If you fomatted and the problem does happen again, yes, its hardware.

OOPs, thats if you have no new software installed. Let it run for a while and see what happens.

 

[cert323]

All I did so far was windows updates, avg free, and some vaio compatibility updates for windows 7.

I did a hard drive diagnostic through vaio recovery on drive c and d both came back clean.
Is there any differnace between that and the seatools one.

Thanks

 

[richc46]

Sea tools is "one size fits all" Yours is for your own computer, I would say yours might be better.

 

[cert323]

Hi Rich

So the problem came back, quicker than usual on Win7 than Vista… lol…. It froze in both normal and safe mode, so I must be hardware as you have stated before. Not sure if it’s worth taking in for servicing since it is closing in on four years and it would be a good learning experience to tinker with it, through a bit of help from Google and YouTube….. I’m most likely gonna make it worse.
So thanks again for taking the time out of your busy schedule to help and answer my questions the last few days.

 

[richc46]

Sorry that it turned out to be a costly problem, but I do wish you luck. Come back any time to visit, have fun and learn.
I will mark this as solved.